The Mask of Love and Sexual Gullibility

Abstract

Many people describe the time of being newly in love as one of life’s peak experiences. Years later, almost half of them people divorce after thinking they were to be married for life. How did they make such a grievous mistake? Traditional theory assumes that lovers are biased in judgments about their partners. This chapter suggests that evolution has shaped people to form lasting alliances, not just by overvaluing their partners, but also in becoming more lovable themselves. During passionate love, people tend to overestimate their partner’s positive qualities, and they themselves change so as to match those positive impressions. The combination of enhanced positive qualities and partners’ illusions is a largely unintentional process that evolution has shaped because it improves pair bonding, which in turn improves reproductive success. Recent data indicate that female sexual desire during courtship and newlywed phases is often followed by a loss of sexual desire that undermines both spouses’ marital satisfaction (McNulty, Maxwell, Meltzer, & Baumeister, under review). Men may therefore be gullible in terms of entering into a long-term commitment based on false assumptions about the amount of sex involved. This may serve as a useful model for the hypothesis that people become more lovable when in love.