The Fifth Week

We changed the meet-up time from 8pm to 7pm. 

It went gang-busters. I don't like to count, but we used up all the chairs, it was quite a group there. I joked about the balcony collapsing under the weight and we all laughed nervously. 

The question this week came from (person A) who shared that he had been reading Alain De Botton’s The Consolation of Philosophy, in particular the chapter entitled “Consolations for a Broken Heart”, focusing on Arthur Schopenhauer.

Below is a photo of Schopenhauer laughing. 

Schopenhauer believed that subconsciously we selected a partner on the basis of who would be the best to create children with. (An insight I find amazing for the mid Eighteenth century!)

Schopenhauer is regarded as the Grandfather of psychology, there’s some debate about the extent to which he influenced Freud – but it seems pretty clear to me that both Freud and Brentano were both impacted by him: even though they didn’t entirely agree with him. Brentano thought he was a grump. Schopenhauer was a grump, but he LOVED his poodles and women. 

(Person A)  quoted Schopenhauer as roughly saying: “when you break up, don’t be upset because it is caused by biological factors telling your partner that you don’t have the right genetic material and so their biological will against their will, reduces their sexual attraction to you”.

The question (person A) was asking was: is the success of our relationships the result of biology or is it choice?

I conceded that there could be biological factors at play, however at the end of the day, the success of a relationship came down to choice. 

First to the biology.

Way back in 2004 the ABC science show, Catalyst, reported some interesting developments. In a nutshell: it was the role our biology played in selecting a prospective partner and it certainly looked like it plays some part. You can read the transcript for yourself here:

Alternatively you could cut to the chase and read this much shorter article about the research here: ‘smell test’.

In our discussion we agreed that there was ‘soft-determinism’ or compatibilism  at work – biology may influence who we find attractive, however the success of the relationship came down to something else.

A counter-argument presented, based on evolutionary biology, was: given the high rate of divorce, perhaps it’s the case that marriage went against humanity’s programming. If you looked at species similar to ourselves (take Bonobos for example) what you find is that they were polyamorous; they liked to have sex with a number of different partners. 

Perhaps humans were better suited to that?

Here’s a couple of articles if you are interested in the research about this:

This is more of a simple breakdown of it:

At first sweep the research seems to suggest that humans aren’t made to be monogamous. The high rate of divorce would seem to suggest this.

But as you begin to read around a bit, you find doubt creep in  about the certainty of their position:

(scan halfway down the page to find theinformation – it’s not well labeled – seems to be based around the public askingexperts questions.

The conversation moved on. Regardless of the ‘wiring’ of Homo Sapiens, it was still not a conclusive basis for success or failure in a relationship.

Then (person B) hit on something.

He talked about two relationships. In one relationship he had devoted all his time to one person; his partner. That relationship came to an end. In his next relationship one key difference was that he made sure that he maintained relationships with his friends. He said that this was a much healthier relationship and successful as a result. 

I think this is a key. 

Isolation can tend to mean we depend on one person for all our needs, and that can be destructive.

The counter-argument came from (person C) who knew of a person that preferred to keep their own company. Upon pressing a bit further we found that the situation described didn’t sound like this person was very happy – key to the point was that he’d had a very difficult life and didn’t like people.

I can’t really recall the next few steps but (person A) raised the question about sexual attraction in relationships. I said it was important however not the basis of success. (Person D) said his parents had been together and didn’t find each other attractive and yet stuck together for the friendship. Not sure how we’d verify that, exactly, however there seemed to be great positivity about that relationship.

We then talked about arranged marriages and the success attributed to them. Addressing that some cultures will make getting a divorce under those circumstances next to impossible, even under pain of death – there were plenty of examples where people grew to love one another. At this point I do recall research about this – (can’t for the life of me think how I would locate it), however it was about people that committed to stay together tended to fall in love. Not a highly charged sexual relationship, but rather one in which the person could not imagine life without the other person.

A key point throughout human history is relationships with other people. The problem with our society, especially a consumer society, is that we tend to think from the perspective of a consumer. Namely, what is it I get out of the deal? Counter-intuitive to this is that the very opposite idea is a key to success. Not asking ‘what do I get’ but rather, ‘what can I give?’

Over millennia religion and philosophy and these days even neuroscience (see Daniel Dennett – Stumbling on Happiness\) point out that those people who live and serve others, wind up being the most satisfied in life. This principle applies in relationships. If we serve people, we make their lives better, we help them to become happier people.  It might just be the key to a successful relationship is not just biology, but rather making the decision not to use a person for our own ends, but to serve that person. This opens a whole world up as to the question of: what do we mean when we use the term love??


Update: This article from The New York Times dated back to January 2015 brings up the evolutionary biology stuff, but then has a nice little twist towards the second half of the article - namely similar conclusions to the ones we reached around the table on Sunday night.