Was it a major decision to provide matching services for gay couples?
HF: No. They asked me right off the bat whether I thought that the brain chemistry for gay was any different from the brain chemistry for straight, and I'm absolutely convinced that it isn't.
It's the same model for matching?
HF: Absolutely. We don't have quite as many gays to study as straights, but that's changing thanks to the new ad campaign, and I've been asked whether they'll have the same patterns as the straights, and everything makes me think yes. Explorers are going to go for Explorers whether they're gay, straight, black, white, pink, green, old, young, cats, dogs, male or female. If you're a person who loves risk and novelty, you're going to want somebody to do that with you. Period. Homosexuality is about which sex you're attracted to. It's nothing about how you feel when you're in love.
IK: I can tell you that gay couples are having the same issues as straight couples: boredom in relationships, emotional infidelity, sexual infidelity. If the post-matching process is exactly the same, I would think the pre-matching systems are probably the same.
What else is shifting in the world of dating and couples?
IK: So many gender stereotypes are being turned on their heads right now, between stay-at-home dads and the guy who makes less money than his wife. It's tremendously exciting, though I sometimes worry that the residue of the third-wave feminist cultural product creates almost a new set of expectations.
Like that all women want casual sex?
IK: Yeah, or that women should always be asking guys out, stuff like that.
HF: A good example of that is who pays. From an anthropological perspective, the guy always pays.
Why?
HF: Because throughout the animal kingdom, it's food for sex. A male chimpanzee will get the sugar cane and the female will go up and stare at him. You know, if somebody's staring at your food, you've got to deal with this. So the male gives her the sugar cane and she'll turn around and copulate with him and then march off with the food. Women biologically know there's no such thing as a free lunch.
I'm not in Ian's business, but I'm single. I find that I want to split the bill until I'm ready to make a relationship. At the very moment he pays, we've already begun down a new route in my head.
IK: I meet a lot of men who are confused. Who are somewhat wired to be a pursuer in something and confused about paying the check, or calling someone again, or courtship around sex. Everything is upended.
HF: That's what's so interesting! Because we're seeing the shedding of thousands of years of traditions where men knew what they were doing and women knew what they were doing and now we're here in this amazing time in human evolution.
IK: When I met my wife we had a great first date and we were very attracted to each other. And she still gives me shit about this because I kissed her on the cheek, and she still says, "I can't believe you didn't kiss me on the lips." And I say, "But I knew that I liked you!" Guys get it internally even if they never stop to think about it: If I postpone sex, it will lengthen the courtship period and increase the dopamine activity and enhance the whole reward system. So in an age of casual sex you have a bunch of guys who are slowing the process down.
HF: We have these innate sexual practices that we don't even realize. That's the difference between short-term and long-term reproductive strategies.
When we meet someone do we decide short-term or long-term pretty quickly?
HF: Different people would do different things, but what they call "beer goggles" is a short-term reproductive strategy. But then you might take her to bed and wake up and she says something about Nietzsche or Tolstoy that makes you think you could have a good intellectual conversation with her and then you take her to breakfast and over breakfast she laughs at your jokes and you start falling in love with her. So short-term can turn into long-term.
What is the thing about your fingers? It's a question on the Chemistry questionnaire -- about how long your pointer finger is versus your ring finger.
HF: It's called digit ratio. In the womb, the brain is washed over by estrogen and testosterone. If you have a lot more testosterone than estrogen in the womb, it is going to build a longer fourth finger than second finger. If you've got a lot more estrogen in the womb, the pointer finger will be longer.
What does it say about your personality?
HF: Well, there are three testosterone bursts. There's one in the womb, and there's one in infancy and a giant spurt in puberty. But if you have more testosterone in the womb and you have a longer fourth finger, you're more likely to have musical ability, mathematical abilities, to be an engineer or architect or good at computer programming. You tend to have poorer social skills but be direct, decisive, ambitious, competitive. What they call extreme male brain is when you're overly flooded with testosterone and are pushed into the autistic spectrum. And football players are very high on testosterone and estrogen. So you can be high in both.
What does it mean to have more estrogen?
HF: Usually that you have good verbal skills, can find the right word rapidly, are good at remembering, better at compassion, nurturing, patience, have good people skills, and are better at reading posture, gesture, tone of voice and facial features.
Do you believe lifelong monogamy is possible and natural?
The word "monogamy" means a pair bond, which doesn't necessarily mean sexual fidelity. What you're asking about is a long-term pair bond including sexual fidelity. So ... sure! Forty-three percent of people are serial monogamists, but that leaves the balance of people who form a pair bond and sustain it long term.
Builders go for Builders, Negotiators for Directors and Directors for Negotiators, and Explorers are going to keep going for a lot of different kinds of people! I get asked all the time can people settle down. And I think a good Explorer can find another good Explorer who keeps them running home for the novelty.
IK: I think that the beginning of a relationship, especially falling in love, is such a heightened state that people often don't know each other for a few years. Romantic love will mask more fundamental truths about our personalities, and I meet a lot of people who don't understand that they're really sexually incompatible until they're well into the relationship.
HF: Yes! In fact I say to people, "Don't marry him till that's worn off and you know what you've got."
-- By Rebecca Traister
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