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The science of falling in love
Anthropologist Helen Fisher took her insights out of the laboratory and into online dating.
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Being in love was like having someone “camping inside your head”, scientist Helen Fisher once quipped.
PHOTO ILLUSTRATION: UNSPLASH
Anjana Ahuja
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The scientist Helen Fisher once revealed how she ended up marrying the love of her life at 75. After months of chaste socialising, she and her beau played a game of pool, each having written down on a cocktail napkin what they wanted as a prize if they won.
After he triumphantly potted the winning ball, she opened his napkin to reveal the words: “sex and clarity”. Her napkin read: “a real kiss”. The eventual arc of their relationship – from friends to bed mates to spouses – would have been little surprise to Dr Fisher, an anthropologist who studied the science of love and attraction. Both friendship and lust, she believed, could blossom into romantic love and then a deeper attachment.
