The Love Scientist: The Science Behind Love, Fatherhood & Emotional Success

0:00You want to have sex all the time. But then at some point, something changes. Why? Because your relationships are the most important thing in your life. Who cheats more, men or women? These relationships have the power to change your psychology. Is that good or bad? Dr. Anna Machine is a world-leading love expert, having led one of the largest studies on the evolution of love. She is also celebrated for her pioneering work into the science of fatherhood. she has written two popular science books, Why We Love and Life of Dad, The Making of the Modern Father. I explore how evolution has shaped us, essentially.

0:39And my particular area of specialism is the science and anthropology of human love. You are the teacher that we all wish we had, but we never got to have. There isn't a hierarchy of love with romantic love at the top, and that's the pinnacle. You don't have to constantly pursue romantic love if you don't want to. because it's not actually the best form of love. In fact, it can be very stressful and very risky. So attachment relationships are quite rare in your life. They are very, very intense. They are actually developmentally significant. Trying to date using dating apps, which I'm afraid from a neuroscientific point of view, handicap your brain, make it actually quite hard to date.

1:24Are we the only mammals that practice monogamy? Is this something that we are naturally biologically programmed to do?

1:41Anna. Hi. How would you describe your profession? Wow. Okay, I'm an evolutionary anthropologist and anthropology is the study of humanity. Okay. And I explore how evolution has shaped us, essentially. And my particular area of specialism is the science and anthropology of human love. So close human relationships, essentially. Let's deep dive into that one because I think this is an area in which a lot of people can feel identified in one way or another. What is the actual definition of love? Well, there isn't one, which is why for me it's such an amazing subject to study because love is very, very complex.

2:21so at the most basic level love has what we call two dimensions it has the biological dimension and that's things like um neurochemistry genetics psychology physiology your neural structure in your brain your neurochemical levels that go around your body and all of those things intertwine yeah to create the biological side of love and then we have what we call the cultural social dimension and that's things like your religion your politics the family you were brought up in the the films you watched as a child how your society defines love so it's actually very very complicated and that's in a way why I study it I've been doing it for nearly 20 years because the answer to the question what is love is very very complicated and actually we all have our own unique definition of love so I ask people it's one of the first questions I ask them when I interview them and you get 300 different answers for example but that's what's amazing about it That's what makes it human, because we can define love pretty strictly in like lesser mammals.

3:20But in humans, it's very complicated. Does one definition of love impact the second one? So perhaps because of the way that I was brought up and the different movies that I was exposed to, my religion, my culture, that is going to trigger my neurotransmitters and then everyone from a neurological perspective go through the same experience? So from a neurological perspective, before your conscious brain kicks in, okay, so you experience love at the unconscious and the conscious level. So at the unconscious level, we all do the same thing. So we have the same set of neurochemicals. There's four neurochemicals involved in love.

3:58And the same areas of the brain are activated. Which are oxytocin, which everyone's heard of, dopamine, serotonin, and beta-endorphin. Okay. Okay, so people talk about oxytocin as the love hormone. It's not actually the love hormone. It's just got really good press. Actually, beta-endorphin is the hormone of love. Oxytocin is the hormone of lust and traction, basically. If you were to draw a correlation or an example of how these neurotransmitters equate to particular emotions, perhaps oxytocin means I am physically attracted to this person, but I don't love this person. And beta-endorphin, you said?

4:40Beta-endorphin. beta endorphin is more relative to that long-term feeling so yeah you're absolutely right so oxytocin oxytocin dopamine and serotonin yeah are very much there at the start of relationships okay so they are there so oxytocin for example lowers your inhibitions to forming new relationships it's a hormone right it's a hormone yeah um and it's it's actually quietens your amygdala which is the fear center of your brain and therefore it makes you more confident about going to speak to somebody new it also orientates you to what we call social beings in the environment so it blocks out all the other noise and says right here's somebody who's social go and talk so oxytocin is completely irrational because it's released by the amygdala not the neocortex it's not released by the amygdala but it acts on the amygdala interesting okay so it is to it's not irrational from a biological point of view because it's only released in circumstances where the person who you've locked eyes on is is a good bet for you in terms of a relationship so it's a bit let's say in love okay let's talk about romantic love because this set of hormones are released in all love so whether it's it's child's parent religious love um friendship love community love whatever it might be but let's talk about romantic love so when you lock eyes with someone across a crowded room and you think i you know i i want to go and talk to this person you basically what happens is you're taking a lot of sensory information visual information auditory information you know um olfactory so smell all those sorts of things you take it in you don't know you're doing it it's unconscious it goes to a very complex algorithm in your head which no dating app will ever ever reach um and a calculation goes on and what it's calculating is that person's what we call biological market value now your biological market value is a bit like the stock market okay you have a value on your head but that value is calculated from the likelihood that you will be reproductively successful with that person with any person your your biological market value is is stuck okay some of us have high value because we're gonna you know maybe uh you know we are young we are you know successful so we're reasonably high up the hierarchy so we have access to all the resources first all that kind of thing therefore you have a high market value yeah humans are sortatively made which basically means ultimately in long-term relationships they tend to end up with someone of the same market value as themselves okay so um you know that's why you get very very rich old millionaires going out with very very young beautiful models because actually they have the same market value because youth and beauty in women is a high market value because it's associated with fertility and health and the possibility of having children.

7:10Whereas as a man, you tend to become more valuable the older you are. This is a very controversial topic. It is. Can we simplify this? So in our society, because I would imagine that that unconscious algorithm that you're referring to, it is very much a combination of our genetics, but also how we've been nurtured throughout our life. No, no, no, no, no. This is entirely unconscious. This is the same system yeah that happens in all mammals okay all mammals do this unconscious but is it not also affected with the stimuli that society has been feeding us so going back to your example rich man dates very young beautiful women so would a monkey understand that in a different ways is it this not something that so a monkey we define beauty right um but beauty is beauty is defined actually on a genetic basis so when we look at beauty particularly facial beauty people we find more beautiful actually have a higher degree of what we call facial symmetry okay okay so facial symmetry is linked to the power of your genes so you your genes are trying to make you perfectly symmetrical because we're a bilateral species we've got two eyes two ears two legs okay when you are in the womb and you're developing that gets knocked off course because there are always environmental challenges in the womb you know it might be that you grow up at Your mom's a bit stressed or you grow up, you don't have enough food or whatever it might be.

8:29And that makes you more asymmetrical. And that makes you more asymmetrical. But if you've got really strong genes, the risk of you becoming more asymmetrical is less because your genes are so strong and so good that they can push through the environmental bit and the environmental effect is less. Why are genes weak or strong? Because some genes are stronger in terms of their power to represent themselves in you. OK, and you're less that they are healthier genes. Is that something that I can influence in terms of me having a healthy lifestyle and then that would make my genes stronger, more powerful?

9:04Not really. What you do in your lifetime tends not to affect your genes. There is a slight, there's a slight, yeah, you can in terms of epigenesis, which is very complicated. Not all genes are susceptible to epigenesis. Okay. And actually what tends to happen with epigenesis, let's say the classic one is they, in Sweden in the 1900s, there was um a big uh glut of food so everyone ate like mad and then two generations later their offspring were much more likely to get diabetes because they had managed to alter their genes but it wasn't didn't affect them it didn't affect their children it affected their grandchildren yeah that's how it went through but it's very rare so usually what you do in your lifetime will not affect your genes at all okay so but if you're highly you know very very low asymmetry so you're nearly perfect in terms of symmetry what you're saying to the world is look at this i went through all these environmental challenges in my mother's womb but look i still managed to be this and that's why people who are attractive are more closer to symmetry because we want their genes for our offspring we want those genes those genes are great and that's why um we are all attracted so there are some cultural ideas of beauty but there are also some universal so unconsciously when i see someone beautiful i define this person as beautiful because of his or her symmetry yes and basically what i want if it's a romantic relationship is to pass on those genes you want those genes for your kids because those those are healthy genes now obviously because human relationships are conscious and unconscious so that's the unconscious bit and that happens in the first nanoseconds of you clapping eyes on someone okay you don't know you're doing it very quickly though your conscious brain kicks in now your conscious brain is much more complicated when it comes to what you find attractive when you say very quickly how quickly does the contrast bring kicking really within seconds okay okay within seconds you will start to think things like um oh i like their shoes or and particularly when they've opened their mouths you'll be like oh wow they're funny or oh actually they're not that great or i didn't like that opinion oh my god they agree with me on this or they like the same band as me or or what's that accent or you know and your brain starts to think about them now at that point it gets more complicated because you're not you don't you've left the unconscious drive which all mammals have which is that biological market value drive and then you start to think about okay um yes do we have things in common do i think they're funny are they intelligent are they creative what would my family think what would my friends think all these things start to come in and they can actually suppress the biological drive so people say am i you know is it deterministic am i just driven by am i biological no you're not and actually in very many cultures because of the cultural rules associated with love some cultural rules go exactly in the opposite direction to biological drive and they say actually even though your biology is driving you this way our cultural rules say you can't do you can't love that person so actually and the cultural rules are more powerful um so it's it's really and this is why love's complicated because animals don't have the cultural bit they just have the biological bit whereas we've put these all these layers of meaning and rules, there's lots of rules about love.

12:11Cultures always have rules about love. And that then kind of knocks the biological drive off course. And how does then love progress? So it's initially started by this release of oxytocin, I would imagine also maybe some dopamine at some point. But then how we go to that beta endorphin? Okay, the problem with particularly oxytocin is it's very short-lived in its effect. Okay, so if you get a hit of oxytocin, it probably lasts about half an hour. The other thing is, as you progress through that relationship, you become more and more what we call tolerant to the effects of oxytocin. So you need more and more to be released with that person for it to have the same bonding effect.

12:49Also, oxytocin is only released in some quite narrow relationships in any real quantity. And those are the romantic relationship and the parent-child relationship. In other relationships, let's say friendships, we don't see a lot of oxytocin going on. And the problem with humans is unlike, again, most mammals is we have lots of different sorts of relationships, a lot of platonic relationships. And that's a problem because oxytocin can't really underpin those because it's mainly released during sexual intercourse and sort of during interactions between parents and children, particularly if you're a mother, breastfeeding, for example.

13:24So what do you do with all these friendships? How do I underpin my friendships? How do I have these decades long friendships? and so what we need is something much more powerful to underpin those and something that's not restricted to what we call the reproductive relationships and that's beta endorphin and we we found beta endorphin because it's actually what bonds monkeys which are our closest relatives oxytocin bonds little tiny mice yeah and whilst little tiny mice are great they're nothing like humans um so beta endorphin is actually the hormone of long-term love it can underpin all relationships because it's released by lots of different behaviors which aren't associated with reproduction you know laughter touch um talking dancing exercise you know if you go to the gym and you get that amazing feeling afterwards that kind of euphoria yeah that addiction that's beta endorphin that's addicting you to to exercise it's why you know we we want to go to the gym again um and that's what underpins long-term love uh and you don't single person can also experience beta endorphin absolutely you can be and this is one of the one of the things i argue great and it's particularly what i argue and the reason why i wrote my book is because we tend to focus a lot on romantic love in this culture because it's a massive multi-billion dollar industry because it's the media is obsessed exactly but actually beta endorphin is released in all human relationships so with your friends you even get a hit you know if if you've got a dog you get a hit with the dog um so beta endorphin is underpins all forms of human love and therefore you can get that hit whatever kind of relationship with them that's why i kind of argue there isn't a hierarchy of love with romantic love at the top and that's the pinnacle and you've got to achieve romantic love because that's the one that's the most beneficial for you it's not actually it's actually just a spectrum and you can pick any of those loves in your life and they are just as good for you from a health and well-being benefits in terms of releasing all these wonderful hormones and you don't have to constantly pursue romantic love if you don't want to because it's not actually the best form of love in fact it can be very stressful and very risky um so so yeah that's what i'm kind of trying to sort of change our conversation around that because there's you know the power of romantic love is is massive in our culture let's deep dive into the more commercial definition of love which are the romantic ones yeah um are there different types of love because usually in the first few years of a relationship you go through this so called honeymoon period in which you want to spend all of your resources with this person your time and your money yeah and it's unconscious and you want to have sex all the time but then at some point something changes why and what changes in that first stage so that first stage is obviously underpinned by oxytocin dopamine and serotonin serotonin is the hormone of obsessive love and what's really interesting about serotonin at the start of relationship is while oxytocin and dopamine go up serotonin goes down and for a long time that was really confusing because serotonin is the happy hormone and it's like what why why is this going down and actually but what we realized was um people with very low levels of serotonin are much more at risk of having obsessive compulsive disorder and so it's actually underpins obsessive love and people always go well you know that sounds like stalking no you have to have a certain degree of obsession with the person you're in a new relationship with to to like bother to spend time with them to find out who they are to like adapt your life around them all these sorts of things.

16:45So we actually need you to be obsessive at the beginning of a relationship. And that's why, yeah, at the start of a relationship, you kind of daydream about the person all the time. You want to be with them all the time. You bore everyone senseless with photographs of them, you know, that kind of thing. That's serotonin, because unless you're obsessed, you might not invest enough in that relationship. So for a period of time, you've got this serotonin drop. And everyone goes through that period. Everybody goes through that period. We can't put a timetable on exactly when that changes into what we would call love.

17:14Because people always ask me this when I do talk. So, you know, exactly when this is happening, it depends on you as an individual. It's very individual. It also depends on the dynamic between you and the person you're in a relationship with. So we can't give you a timetable. Some people it will happen in six months. Some people it will happen in two or three years. It just depends. But at some point you will switch from this, what we call very early stage of attraction and love and high lust, so very high levels of circulating sex hormones, to what we call companionate love. and can companionate love is a much deeper, more enduring love, not as passionate, not as exciting.

17:49Probably some people find it quite mundane. Some people find it quite hard to deal with, but it's a more settled form of love. And that's when we get things called an attachment. And there's been a lot about attachment, particularly on social media. So attachment relationships are quite rare in your life. They are very, very intense. We define them by the fact that they are actually developmentally significant. And what that means is these relationships have the power to change your psychology. Is that good or bad? It can be a really good thing, or it can be a really bad thing, depending on who you're attached to.

18:21So most cases, if you, for example, I would give a personal example. When I met my husband, I had an insecure attachment style because of my upbringing, and he was very secure. And over time, because he showed me that he wasn't going to leave me, that you know he wasn't going to abandon me i myself became secure so he changed my brain psychology and that's what we find developmentally significant so when you're a tiny baby you have the most profound attachment of your life which is with your carers or parents or whoever raised you and that is really developmentally significant because for the first two years after birth your brain is rapidly growing so the attachment you build with them actually fundamentally underpins the architecture of your brain.

19:04And so attachment relationships are really, really important. And that's what we see in that kind of second stage of a relationship. You become attached to that person. They become what we call your secure base. And in a good relationship, they should make you feel supremely confident and supremely safe that you can go out into the world, meet its challenges, meet its risks, be ambitious, do whatever you want, because you are so secure in your relationship with that person that you know you'll come back, they've got your back that if it's a bad day they will make you feel better if it's good day they will be your cheerleader okay and that's that's long-term love and humans we can love for decades for lifetimes and that's why we need beta endorphin we can we can that's why we need beta endorphin because it's an opiate uh we don't grow tolerant to it and it addicts you to the other person but why does then love sometimes feel like an effort so in the first years love is love Love is an effort.

19:54But not in the first years, right? It can be. That makes you wonder if is monogamy and the so-called dream that we've been sold of long-term love a real thing or an invention? Because definitely everyone can experience that unconsciously and naturally without feeling that you're putting any effort whatsoever. You can love someone in the short term because you will be doing things that you would never do. for anyone else that you don't have those feelings for. But then if you look at that same relationship with that same person in the long term, you end up doing perhaps the same sacrifices, but now you call them a sacrifice when in the very beginning, you would not label them as a sacrifice.

20:39It was an act of love. Yeah, that's because of that change in neurochemistry. So at the beginning, you have dopamine. Dopamine is your hormone of motivation. So you know how you read stories of people doing great feats in the name of love so i write about a few of them in the book um that's dopamine driving you and dopamine will make you do the most amazing things because of these sensations of love you have for this person when you move through into the deeper stages of love where you have attachment and you have beta endorphin dopamine is still there but it's very much in the background it's nowhere near as significant as it is at the beginning um and so that's why it becomes more might feel yeah more not sure i don't like that word but it becomes harder and it becomes more effort but what i will say and i think in particularly in the environment of which we operate today as social beings in terms of very social media based lots of dating is on apps all those sorts of things we've lost the understanding that actually relationships are effortful they're supposed to be your relationships are the most important thing in your life in terms of we now know from endless data sets that when we look at people's health mental health longevity life satisfaction the biggest factor in all those is the relationships you build with other people these are general relationships not romantic no any relationship if you have a really good social network it's very healthy you spend a lot of time with other people you know you even you know you you spend a lot of time doing things for other people that's really important that is the biggest factor you will have much better mental health much better physical health your longevity will be increased your life satisfaction is higher so the point is your relationships are valuable they sit at the very basis of your survival and therefore if something's really valuable we should invest in it and that means they are effortful they're supposed to be they're supposed to be costly and what we've lost particularly with trying to maintain our relationships in an efficient way on social media or trying to date using dating apps which i'm afraid from a neuroscientific point of view handicap your brain make it actually quite hard to date um we think we can do these things efficiently while we're doing something else so we can sit on the tube and we can do all this so we can and actually you're supposed to invest time and cognitive energy in them because they are that valuable so it's like capital investment you you capital invest in something you make an effort you put that money in you you follow it you try and build the money the same with your your what we call social capital which is your relationships you are supposed to spend time maintaining them and investing in them.

23:06I think the benefits of relationships are generally for the white population quite clear. But when it comes to romantic relationships in particular, when we look at movies, I mean, the movie is probably an hour or two hours long, right? And then they go through this troubled period, but then they love each other happily ever after. They don't show you what happens after that, right? So 20, 30 years down the line, are they still maddling love and so cute with each other? So we don't really get to see that, right? And we just end with this very short dopamine-based definition of love. And then when I look at these things, I look at other species or other mammals.

23:50Are we the only mammals that practice monogamy? Is this something that we are naturally biologically programmed to do or it's a complete invention by perhaps religion uh no we're not naturally monogamous there is no true monogamous species in the world um a lot of species that were thought to be monogamous simply hadn't been observed enough and quite often you will observe them for example i when i did my master's my professor was a studying gibbons which was supposed to be one of the really strong monogamous primates um and then he spent a couple of years watching them and they were always sneaking off behind a tree to have sex with somebody else so from an evolutionary point of view is that for both uh female and male because from an evolutionary point of view restricting yourself to one person is actually a really bad idea because all evolution wants you to do is pass your genes down so particularly if you're a male as much as possible as much as possible so if you're a male and bearing in mind you are not going to be out of the business for months whilst you're pregnant of course you kind of want to go behind a rock and have sex with a few other females because then you're spreading your genes and if you're a female the ideal scenario is particularly in in what we call socially monogamous people so there's a difference between reproductive monogamy and social monogamy social monogamy is we all is we live together as a couple and we raise children as a couple reproductive monogamy is we are also actually reproductive monogamous we don't have sex with anyone else a lot of socially monogamous species are not reproductively monogamous they just they they will go and have sex somewhere else and particularly if you're a female what the ideal scenario is you've got a really good mate here and he is an amazing parent he's really good at investing in the offspring and making sure the offspring survive perfect that's what you need because you want the genes but he's not actually great on the genes front so what you're going to do is you're going to go behind that rock over there yeah have sex with that really good looking monkey who's got amazing genes and then come back and get him to raise your kids and that's what they do because that from an evolutionary point of view that's the best thing to do it sounds practical really good genes you get really good genes and you get really good investment yeah and and humans do that as well humans do that as well there are many studies that show particularly women women are more likely when we look at the people they have affairs with the men they have affairs with heterosexual women they tend to be much better looking than their partner because actually what they're getting from this guy is the genes now They don't know they're doing it.

26:13That's the main factor they look at. They don't, but they don't know they're doing it. Okay. It's unconscious. But again, it's that checking out the genes from the spatial symmetry. They don't know they're doing it. But is that at the cheating level or I'm finishing this relationship? No, that's at a cheating level. That's infidelity. Okay. So we're not a naturally monogamous species. There isn't. Most of the rule, most of the monogamy we have, social monogamy, is imposed by rules, by societies. Because obviously there are some societies in the world that aren't monogamous. but it's imposed by society mainly to keep control why do men cheat why do men cheat yeah men cheat for various reasons so um and i'll say women cheat for the same reason um so they will cheat there are cultural reasons why they might cheat so it might be that it's something in their culture which is just accepted and that's what people do so there are some societies where it's quite normal to have lovers alongside your actual partner which cultures just out of curiosity um so there are some cult well there are cultures that we wouldn't call it they don't call it change so you have polygamous cultures okay so where people have more than one partner yeah um there are certain societies where in certain classes it's the normal thing for you to have a lover so for example if we look back at i mean i don't think it's quite as bad as it was um but if we look at for edwardian britain aristocrats because they used to marry based upon pragmatic reasons not love they would always have lovers and that was accepted one didn't talk about it but one had them so people cheat for various reasons it can be culturally acceptable it can be something that they saw as a child in their parents and therefore they've kind of been brought up in this environment where again it's what you do there is a certain genetic predisposition to to be unfaithful it's not a big effect but there is one and it's not deterministic so you could have a gene that increases the risk that you're unfaithful but there's lots of other factors is that the same for both men and women yeah so and it's a vasopressin gene so vasopressin is another one of the sort of sort of bonding hormones it's not that powerful in humans but it's on a vasopressin gene so there's lots of different reasons why somebody might cheat and also some people are just not good at long-term relationships yeah so depending upon again your genes influence how you behave in relationships so if we look at let's say the oxytocin receptor gene there's a there's a there's a mutation on the oxytocin receptor gene which we call the nesting gene and that makes it more likely that people are in long-term relationships they get more satisfaction from being into long-term relationships they're much more motivated to want to be in long-term relationships so they spend a lot of time maintaining it people who don't carry that version are much less likely to be motivated to be in long-term relationships so it could be some people are genetically predisposed just not to do these relationships they just don't want to they don't want to be in a long-term relationship some people are more addicted to the early stages the oxytocin dopamine serotonin stages and just don't find the beta endorphin bit particularly fun so there's lots of different reasons and people who have insecure attachments yeah um are more likely to have unstable relationships whether or not they cheat they are more likely to have unstable relationships and then why does it hurt us annoy us or bother us if someone cheats on us because I have I think all of my friends would fall under this category so if their partner cheats on them they would be hurt yeah and I just don't know if that's just because society has told us and preconditioned us that that is wrong and we have this definition of what is right and what is wrong and it's very binary but is there a chemical reaction there isn't a chemical reaction what what you have going on there is jealousy and jealousy is an emotion like any other emotion and emotions evolved to highlight something in our environment which is either a threat or a benefit to our survival so if somebody cheats on you that is a threat to your survival and particularly the idea that your genes are going to survive down the generations so it has merit it has merit of course it does absolutely jealousy all all emotions yeah are there to protect you now the extreme emotions like extreme anger or extreme jealousy can be damaging and unhelpful but in moderation jealousy is a good thing it's what it's doing it's highlighting this threat to you it's saying there is a threat over here what are you going to do about it are you going to confront the person and say what the hell is going on are you going to double down and be like right i'm going to really invest in this relation i'm going to save this relation or you're just going to go actually do you know what i'm walking away.

30:45Is there a better approach in those situations? Not really. No, it's just you, that's what, that's what it's there to highlight you to do. And you have to decide in that, in that time, what am I going to do? Am I, am I going to stick with this person? Am I going to walk away from this person? You know, or am I going to go and confront the lover? What am I going to do? Who cheats more, men or women? Neither. Really? Yes, it's a myth. Because the myth is that men cheat more than women. No, definitely not. Really? No, it's equal. Wow, that's so revealing. There's a lot of myths about sex differences in love, and most of them are wrong.

31:20Let's go back to the definition of love through society. A lot of people say two different things, and I think depending on the culture can mean, again, a different thing. They can either say, I love you, or I'm in love with you. Are these two things different? people tend to mean something different yes there isn't an absolute definition of those but if you talk to people when people say i'm in love with you that tends that's something they tend to stay in more in the earlier stages it sounds more powerful though yeah it does whereas in in sort of longer term they will more like say i love you and some people have used that as kind of the break between what we call the attraction initial stage and that companionate stage so when you've moved from passionate love to companionate love so passionate love is i am in love with you and companionate love is i love you should you get married in that i am in love with you stage because it sounds very emotional driven by your limbic system it's really hard to say because there are no hard and fast rules because my brother is getting married it's very well i don't want to put the kibosh on your brother's wedding um so it's really you know you will meet I have studied people who have married three weeks after they met and they're still together.

32:35I have studied people who've married 10 years after they met and got divorced two years later. There really is no real. Recipe. There's no rule. Okay. There's no rule. I mean, obviously, what we would say in those first stages is you probably haven't moved to companionate love. You haven't formed a full attachment necessarily. And yes, you've probably still got quite a low level of serotonin. you've probably still got your dopamine making you do mad things um but at the same time there's no correlation actually because there are so many things that go into the success of a relationship more than what your neurochemistry for example is doing um so it really depends on you know compatibility you know are your attachment styles compatible do your personalities fit together well do you have shared values about the future do you have shared ideas about children there's lots of things that go into whether or not a relationship will maintain itself more than you know neurochemicals can you love two people at the same time through the same type of love so either the beta endorphin long-term love and loving two people at the same time at a romantic level or um also at the entry level point of love which is that oxytocin driven love yeah um you can and certainly polyamorists would say you can um so polyamorists are people who have more than one romantic relationship so they're not so it's an open relationship but it's not just about sex it's also about that deep romantic connection and polyamorists would certainly say you are the the difficulty we have with love is yes we can put you in a scanner and we can look at the screen and we can go yes the bits of your brain are activating that we should be in love we've seen a change in your um your chemistry we can see an attachment being formed but because there's always that little bit of love which is subjective to that person if you say to me i'm in love with this person i'm not in a position to say to you no you're not because we don't we will never know completely how you feel when you're in love and actually how you feel when you're in love and how i feel are probably really different because there are so many factors so um it's it's so when a polyamorous says to you i love these three people you have to go yes you do and i've spoken to a lot of polyamorists and genuinely yeah they seem to be able to do it we don't know why some people are capable of polyamory and some people aren't we don't know what drives them because unfortunately there's not been a lot of neuroscience on it yet some studies show that people who are polyamorous have higher circulating testosterone whether they're men or women who knows whether that is some people say polyamorous love is slightly different to monogamous love because we see a slightly different brain activation there tends to be much more what we call conscious activity in the polyamorous brain than there is in the monogamous brain that seems to be more unconscious but that could be simply because if you've got three relationships going at the same time they take more focus they take more attention they take more organization and planning and that's why you have more it's like a nightmare well no i mean i couldn't do it i mean when i've interviewed them i go how do you go oh we have a big google calendar and you have to like work out who's with who and you know because i remember talking to a woman who had three boyfriends and i was she was like what i tried to do is i tried to go on holiday with each of them separately the three boyfriends separately yeah and they and then we all go on holiday together and i'm just like this this i mean i can just about cope with one you know um but for them it works really well and they say you know actually in a way it makes your heart bigger the more you can love the more your heart grows they say you know because a lot of people will say polyamory is immoral but what they say is it's highly moral because what people who are monogamous who want relationships outside that they cheat there's lots of lying and actually polyamory is that full acceptance yes i'm going to have all these relationships i'm telling you up front i'm a polyamorist this is what i do you can either be with me or not and there's a constant conversation they tend to be very well maintained relationships actually because they constantly negotiate how it's working and they have lots of um not hard rules but rules about if this makes you feel uncomfortable we need to talk about it yeah and so actually they tend to be quite good relationships do you have a statistic to how what's the percentage of people that cheat it's it there isn't a set statistic because it's very culturally sensitive as to how many people cheat it tends to be around 30 or 40 percent is where it hovers 30 or 40 percent yes wow yeah jesus and then going back to long-term committed relationships i've read that for a man when you're in a long-term relationship one of our hormones testosterone our levels drop is this true yeah and and what are the consequences of this and why is this happening okay so as a man, testosterone is really a great hormone if you're dating.

37:30Because it makes you more competitive with other males. Oh, that's what it is. And men with higher testosterone tend to have what we call more masculine features. They tend to be more attractive. So they have firmer jaws, they have broader shoulders, they have narrower waists, they have bigger chests. And that's all more attractive, basically, because it shows, you know, athleticism, health, protection, all these sorts of things. however when you get together with a partner and you decided to commit to monogamy that's not very helpful because actually what we need you to do is to stop competing with all the other males stop with your eye on the horizon looking for another mate we need you to focus on your partner and so we do see a drop when people go into long-term relationships it's not a huge drop it's certainly not as significant as happens when you become a father that's a really a significant drop for the same reason because we need to focus on the family but yes it drops because it's not a helpful hormone to have if you want someone to commit are we losing then a piece of ourselves when we are in a long-term relationship because we our testosterone level is not how much you define yourself by your testosterone level i think i'd certainly i've had um men contact me when i've posted about this maybe you're less uh you're more risk adverse that no testosterone doesn't tend to affect things like that it has nothing to do with the amygdala or anything like that what testosterone is really about is mating people think for example that strength is associated with testosterone it's not actually um strength is associated with with lots of other things so it doesn't so i've had for example people contacting me who are very into gym work very into weights work and said i'm about to for example become a father and i'm really worried that this is going to affect you know my my strength and my ability and it's like well it doesn't and just look at all the athletes out there who have children who are incredibly successful male athletes it does not affect things like that uh what it will do is it will drop your aggression okay and aggression sometimes isn't very helpful and it will make you more empathetic um so it because testosterone at high levels it does make you aggressive and also it does block um some of the bonding hormones so like dopamine, oxytocin are blocked by high testosterone.

39:41So by dropping it, you get a better release of things like oxytocin and dopamine. And so while some men, I think, do panic, there are advantages to it dropping as well. And women don't change physiologically? No. So we're the only one interesting. Why is that? Why do we need to change and they don't have to change? It's mainly because in evolutionary history, males are the ones that have had to compete for partners. So what we usually have in most species is what we call female choice. And females pick partners. Males don't pick partners. And so men have high testosterone to enable them to compete.

40:17Now, it's actually a bit of a hangover for humans because actually human males do choose as well. We have what we call mutual mate choice. And that's because we have investing fathers. So if a man is going to give up his opportunity to mate for a lesser or greater period of time, he is actually also going to be choosy about the mate he picks. But in most mammals, males mate and leave. and therefore they have high testosterone all the time because it's for competition and that's why it has to drop in humans because we can't have you having this mega level of testosterone all the time.

40:51Let's talk about general relationships, particularly friendships. What brings women closer to each other in comparison to men? With women it tends to be women are much more emotionally intimate in their relationships than men are. So we did a big study at Oxford looking at the differences. And women actually tend to be more emotionally intimate with their female friends than they even are with their romantic partner. They are. And so they tend to form friendships more based upon shared life experiences and sort of shared emotional intimacies. So if they're going through a similar stage, for example, they're more likely to be friends.

41:24With men, men tend to not have particularly emotionally intimate relationships with their male friends. they tend to meet up more upon shared interests, shared activities, things like that. How would you define intimate relationships? So an emotionally intimate relationship is one where you share kind of very deep emotional vulnerabilities, for example, or very difficult, emotionally distressing moments. And women tend to build their relationships more on those. If you listen to the contents of a female friendship discussion, their conversations, and you compare it to a male, women tend to talk a lot about very personal things about relationships and that's the basis of all their all their discussions it tends to be very emotionally um there's a big emotional overtone to that whereas men tend not to do that as much they tend to talk about activities about sports they're interested in is it because we don't need it um we don't need the effects at a neurochemical level as much as maybe women do or is it because we've been conditioned it's There's a lot of conditioning.

42:25There's a lot of conditioning going on. Also, men tend to be more emotionally intimate with their romantic partner. So they will use their romantic partner as their emotionally vulnerable person. They won't use their friends. But actually, you know, I think men could do with being a little bit more emotionally vulnerable with their friends. There's a lot of culture going on there about, you know, men don't talk about these things. It's a bit wet. It's a bit weak. Talk about the intimate stuff. You said that women are more intimate and they perhaps open up more emotional layers with their best friends, female best friends, than with their male partner.

43:02Is this because the man cannot go to very deep levels of emotion? It tends not, that tends not to be the reason. And what we found is when we look at friendships are really special because friendships, whenever I talk to people like friendships or we do any any studies on friendships, what we find is they are kind of the source, whether you're a man or a woman, of unjudgmental, unconditional support. Basically, what we tend to find in romantic relationships is there's always an edge of however happy the relationship is. There's always a slightly competitive, combative edge in romantic partnerships.

43:40and it's partly because and i think it's unconscious but it's partly because particularly in heterosexual relationships you have two very different brains operating so the male and female brain do operate in a slightly different way and those are trying to communicate with others so there's always a slight edge of miscommunication whereas with your same sex best friend you've got two brains working in the same way and we tend to find them much easier to deal with so for both sexes your friendships are special because in a way a really good friendship asks nothing of you whereas in romantic relationships there's always that slight competitive i've got to keep this person interested you know they might go and look over there and find somebody else so there's always a little bit of an edge in a romantic relationship which just doesn't in a good friendship some friendships are toxic i'm not talking about those ones but in a good relationship it's kind of like you just bring yourself i'm bringing myself i can you know we can just muck about you're not going to judge me you're not going to it's not conditional upon anything i can just and men for example say that the number one thing they get from their friendships is absolutely unconditional relaxation humor you know just unjudgmental and women will say yes it's the same thing you know my female friends have seen me at my best time and at my worst time and they haven't judged and they love me just the same and so they're kind of this freedom relationship i feel and perhaps i'm wrong, but I feel like the main difference here in why perhaps we're more comfortable with relationships with someone that is in the same sex is because when it comes to romantic relationships, we try to feel the role.

45:22So you have a role in this relationship, in this partnership. I have a different one as a man, and perhaps that's defined by our culture, religion, economical status, various different factors. But then when you are in a relationship with, in my case, let's say, another friend, another male friend, there are no expectations. I'm just a friend, right? So I don't need to be the protector or the caregiver. Yeah, you're right. Exactly. And that's what a lot of men say and a lot of women say is there are no expectations. You can just rock up and be yourself and everyone will go, great, great, and just accept you for that.

45:58Whereas, yeah, as you say, in romantic relationships, there is more gameplay. there's more, yeah, competition, there's more, yes, this is your role, this is my role. And that makes it a more stressful environment. And what about homosexual relationships? Because then they get the best of both worlds, right? Well, I want to say, if you study gay relationships, the levels of conflict are less than they are in heterosexual relationships. And we don't know whether that is partly because you do have basically two same, the brains are operating in exactly the same way, the cognition is operating in exactly the same way.

46:34So they tend to be less conflictual. They tend to be less high stress than heterosexual. And do they cheat more? I don't think so, no. No? There's no evidence of that. But the other thing to say about gay relationships is, particularly in male gay relationships, there tends to be more openness anyway in terms of sexuality. Is it because they understand the biological nature of each other? Sometimes, yeah. They tend to be more open. They're more likely to be open than a heterosexual relationship. Interesting. And how long does it take us to fall out with a friend? Is there an average? No, there isn't, because it depends very much on the friendship.

47:09We have different levels. So basically, not all relationships are equal. If we think about your social network, so I worked with someone called Professor Robin Dunbar, who came up with Dunbar's number, which is 150. And that's the maximum size of an active human social network. It's an average number. but that's the maximum you can deal with 150 people 150 people but they're not all equal and they're actually arranged right so let's say you are ego in the middle you yeah if you think of a dartboard okay with concentric circles going out so the inner circle around you is five and that's known as your central support clique and those people are the five closest people to you are they usually family or these are friends really depends really depends we measure them in terms of emotional closeness and how often you see them and for some people that will be entirely family for some people it will be a mixture of family and friends if you've got children your children might be in there um so you know it depends five the next layer which is inclusive of this so we're going to add 10 people is 15 okay okay that's known as your sympathy group and your sympathy group are the people who if you are having a you know a rubbish day yeah you could go to the pub with them afterwards and go oh god that was awful and they would all sympathize and make you feel better um and that's your sympathy that's kind of like you're growing going out crowd the people who you so you're not as close as you are to a central support you probably you might be able to but you probably some of them you wouldn't be able to turn up on the doorstep and say can i crash on your sofa for a month whereas your central support cleek you should be able to turn up and say i'm going to crash on your sofa for a month and they go that's fine and then on top of that you then outside that you've got a 45 people um and those are the people they could be work colleagues they could be more distant family you're more distant friends maybe friends you might see maybe once or twice a year friends or friends that you happen to see at a particular party.

48:53And then the outer layer, the 150, which is the outer edge of the active network, that's, you know, really colleagues. Maybe there's like a news agent you say hi to every day and have a chat with. He might be in there. Some people have famous people in there, believe it or not. So even though they've never met them, but they feel like they have relationships with them. And that's your active network. So not all friendships are equal. And what's the purpose of that outer layer? the outer layer they are there really to sort of lubricate the cogs of your life simplify that yeah so so like they will be people like um they could be very distant family members who you might say so those people you tend to see maybe once a year you see them you know what their name is and you can recollect the last time you saw them but they're not people you're going to be going out to a restaurant with and on a weekly basis they are certainly not people who you could turn up on the doorstep and say can i stay on your sofa for a month they are people you come across in your life but they're not particularly emotionally close to you but you know their name and if you saw them why do we need them why are they because they are people like work colleagues yeah um they are people like maybe i don't know how often you go to your doctor but your doctor yeah um your dentist okay you know your very distant fourth cousin once removed um those kind of people sit in that outer layer but that you all you kind of know who they are and if you saw them in an airport at three o 'clock in the morning you'd know who they were and then outside that you've got like 500 1500 you know and throughout time how much do these different circles change so they do they move in and out so you might have somebody let's say at school yeah your central support clique has probably got like you know probably maybe your mom and dad are in it yeah but like you know three best friends at school are in it now obviously then you go to university and maybe you hold on to one of those best friends but the other two kind of drift because you go so they will drift outwards and they will be replaced maybe by some completely new people yeah you've just met at university so throughout your life people move in and out there might be some people who will always stay in the center um is it harder to move in and out if you are in that center because these people are the closest people to you so it takes longer for those relationships to decay okay whereas further out you have the emotional tie is much less and you don't see them as often so the way you maintain relationships is two ways through cognition so actually seeing them knowing who they are knowing about their life daydreaming about them when you're not with them and through time so a relationship can only be maintained by putting time in to it so the more regularly you see somebody the more likely that relationship is to endure if you don't see somebody for you know weeks months or let's say you try to maintain the relationship only on social media which will make it decay even faster they decay quite quickly they have to be maintained but in the center you can also get away with more with the people in the center so you can they will be more tolerant of you um maybe not ringing them every week or that kind of thing they they will take more bad behavior and is there a healthy variety of people that you need to have in that five no you just have to have people who you are emotionally close to The reason why I'm asking this, I'll just give you an example.

52:07Let's say that I'm married, so my wife is one of them, and then I have four children. So my inner circle of trust and intimacy are very similar one to another, because it's just my immediate family. But they might not be in there. It depends how emotionally close you are to them. Okay. Okay? So people, it's not done by cultural rules that, oh, my five must be my family. and you know because you might actually not be as emotionally close to all those people in the same way so they might so you might have i mean as a mom this sounds quite awful but you might have yeah your wife and one of your kids in there but actually the other two are out here or you know so so and that's okay it doesn't make yours of a father or a mother it's just it's just how you make your network um you know i mean yeah parents try not to have favorites but there are some kids who you might chime more with than others for example is this reciprocal so if you're in my five inner circle am i usually in yours too no not necessarily oh that sounds bad yeah and sometimes that is a problem because then you get unbalanced relationships yeah and then you'll get somebody who feels like i'm your best friend no you're my best friend and they're like well you're not mine and then that causes conflict because it's it's it feels it's very insecure it's very risky so no it's not necessarily good to be like like let's say yeah you've got your mate in the five layer and and he's got you in like the 15 or the 45 layer that's that's not that'd be terrible because what you say yeah well it is it's terrible and then you're gonna appear at the first time can they stay awake so that's about us being able to interpret relationships how good are you interpreting relationships how good are you understanding the nature of this relationship yeah and how does you mentioned social media yeah obviously right now we were discussing this previous to this conversation, but technology is a big experiment that we're all going through right now.

53:55And social media is probably one of the biggest factors contributing to it. How is social media affecting our relationships? Not in a good way, mostly. There are some advantages for it from those more distant relationships. So like 150 layer, it's quite good because, you know, particularly if you've got family in Australia or something and you want to communicate with them, fine. You know, it's good for that kind of thing. It is not good for maintaining your very intimate relationship. So let's say you're particularly you're five and you're 15. It's not good at that because relationships are based upon shared intimacy.

54:29It's not very easy to be intimate on a public platform in that way. Even if you let's say you try and maintain a relationship by just WhatsAppping or just Instagram messaging or something like that. It will decay much quicker than if you were talking in real life. And that's that's mainly because you don't actually get the release of neurochemicals that underpin relationships. so when we're talking now even though we don't know each other very well you and i are getting some oxytocin and dopamine from talking to each other okay um if i tried to just message you on social media you might get a tiny bit of dopamine let's say if you know you said something nice and i said something nice we might both get a little hit of dopamine that's all you're gonna get and things like oxytocin and dopamine are important because they underpin your mental health and they underpin your physical health they underpin your immune system so on social media you don't get that um also you don't get like the psychological feeling of being special of being important to that person and that's quite important you can't base attachment relationships on that much distance so social media is good if you want to talk to a whole group at once in a very efficient way say hi guys i'm having a party on saturday night great that's fine but if you want to have like an intimate discussion or even a one-to-one discussion with somebody it's nowhere near as effective doing it in a digital way than it is in person because we we have evolved to do this in person you know our evolution never even thought about the screen oh my god um has no concept and in fact your brain doesn't recognize the screen so it finds it very confusing that you're kind of having this social moment but there's nobody there and the brain finds that very confusing to deal with so it's it's quite a stressful way to maintain relationships and as i said earlier relationships are supposed to be effortful you're supposed to invest in them and pinging off a quick whatsapp or something is not investing in a relationship you need to be in person i also feel like the communication especially for deep conversations are absolutely terrible with social media particularly with whatsapp so if you want to have a conversation with a friend that is quite delicate might be intimate there are several different forms of communicating right so we have verbal communication but also body language and that allows for the counterparty to understand you better and get the message across in the most accurate way possible but i mean there i can i remember so many times in which i've had these conversations over whatsapp with friends in which we both go like you know let's just discuss this face-to-face because i'm not understanding you're not understanding me and we're just going to create a problem when there isn't one and we are highly socially intelligent beings the vast majority of your brain is given over to social cognition um are we really because i met a lot of people that are from an emotionally socially perspective very what's it limited yeah but compared to others creatures they're not oh okay within our within our within our species they may be but within you know the whole so basically i did meet people that i believe my dog has more of an emotional well no but your dog has a large emotional brain as well so but we have a massive prefrontal cortex that's you know our brains are six times bigger than they should be for a mammal of our size and most of that is social yeah okay um so we are really good at this but we're not good at it at a distance so yeah you need to have those conversations in person because even though you don't know you're doing it you're reading all those slight tiny tiny facial muscle changes and you're picking up on emotion and you're using empathy you can't use empathy over whatsapp it doesn't work and so there's lots of lots of miscommunication whereas we are we can't use empathy over no you can't whereas whereas in person you are engaging this amazing social brain and you're picking up so much information um and we're yeah that's why you know i think social media i think we will come to a point where we understand how to use it as a tool but we're quite a long way from that yeah

58:21A separate study, related but relatively separate, study that you follow is the role of the father in family. yeah fatherhood why did you choose to focus on fatherhood especially if you're a woman actually it came from a really personal place um I had my first daughter 18 years ago okay and um it was a really difficult birth and I was very ill and my baby was very ill and my husband was quite deeply traumatized by what he saw because he basically nearly lost both of us and afterwards I was offered lots of counseling and debriefing and all this kind of thing and I I was actually like, no, because I passed out.

59:03I have no idea. And he was offered nothing. And for like two years afterwards, he would get very emotional talking about the birth. He was worried about having any other children. It was very difficult. And as an anthropologist, obviously I study human society and human behavior. And the father is a big role in society and in the family. So when I went back to university, my job at Oxford, I decided to just have a quick look and see what we knew about the role of human fathers. Because I'd seen my husband, for example, would develop a beautiful relationship with our daughter really lovely and he was a great father and I found lots of literature on absent fathers and the impact that they can have which is you know very real and a little bit on teenage fathers which was quite stereotypical and then nothing on the vast majority of men who actually stick around and look after their kids and that's a massive oversight to not understand who somebody is in your society who has such a big role as the father so I began I was one of the first people to do it there's maybe two other people in the world at the time doing it and we started from basic questions so um what happens to a man when he becomes a father from a biological psychological point of view how does he build his relationship with his child because there was a it was a myth but there was a myth at the time that fathers did not form attachment relationships to their children only mothers did and did he have any particular role in child development because again it was always like well mum brings the kids up so mum is the one that influences all their development dad is like the secondary parent bag carrier guy um so we asked those questions and we recruited at the time tiny study 20 first-time fathers you know did lots of blood tests and various things on them did lots and lots of psychological testing did lots of questionnaires asking about their practical day-to-day life about how they build their relationships and out of that came sort of 20 years of study to truly understand who this person is and in that time we've busted so many myths which are cultural they're just cultural myths about fathers um because we know from an evolutionary point of view human fathers are very very special things only five percent of mammals have dads who stick around most mammals mate and male male mammals mate and leave human fathers don't and as an evolutionary scientist you go well why what is the reason for that why do they stick around and the reason they stick around is that absolutely vital to the survival of the children.

1:01:20And evolution doesn't cause something as very rare like that to evolve unless it's absolutely vital in some way. It also doesn't cause that to happen without prepping dad in some way. We have to give him a bit of a leg up. And that's what the brain changes are. That's what the hormone changes are that happen to men when they become fathers because they're actually priming them to be able to do this job. What makes a good father? That's a really good question. I get asked that question a lot. And I can't give you a straight answer because it depends very much on the environment and i kind of suppose the the story i tell is like in the west we think a good father is one who's very hands-on very involved very empathetic to his children meets their emotional practical educational needs so it's you know they're changing the nappies carrying the baby feeding the baby doing all these things that's a good father the reason why that's a good father in our society is because we are not living in a very marginalized dangerous environment yeah okay if you live in a war-torn country a good father in that country is a dad who can recognize the risk pick the kid up put it under his arm and leg it okay that is a good father and that's why i say it this way because it's these questions about what's a good dad what's a good mom it's very environmentally dependent and so sometimes you might look at somebody parenting and go well they're not very good but you do not know the circumstances of what what situation that parent is in so i think we need to be very careful about labeling good parents because it depends there are obviously some things that in any environment we don't want to happen but it's a broad spectrum and it really does depend on where you live how can a father know that he's done a good job i think a father can know he's done a good job if he has a secure attachment to his child um if he really thinks he knows who his child is okay if he allows his child to be who they are acceptance it's really interesting children put more weight on being accepted by their father than they do by their mother we don't really know why but for a child to be accepted as you are by your father what your personality is what your interests are what your sexuality is what your identity is whatever it is for some reason dad has a lot of power there so we know that fathers who accept particularly their teenagers as they are are the ones who are doing a good job and their kids will keep coming back to them and their kids will see them as a secure base.

1:03:37I was told by a psychologist, and this is more general towards parenting, not just fathers, but that a good key performance indicator to a good education is once your kid is an adult, how independent is this person? Yeah, that's absolutely right. Because really your sole job as a parent is to raise an independent adult, somebody who can go out into the world to do that but what's really interesting is fathers are the key parent for that as well so we we kind of we studied fatherhood around the world because obviously culturally it can be quite different in terms of how fathers are prescribed in a particular culture but what we see they all share regardless of where they live is this one thing and it is they are the parent that we say scaffolds the child's entry into the world beyond the family they are the parent that supports that kid as they grow and becomes an adult and goes out into the world and that's because of the nature of their attachment so their attachment is slightly different to mums it's just as powerful whereas mums is based on nurture dance is also based on nurture but it has this element of it which we call challenge or stimulation and dads are the parent who whatever they do with the kids it's very stimulatory developmentally stimulatory it's very challenging it's like i'm just going to push you a little bit further and a little bit further and what they're doing is they're building mental and physical resilience they're helping the child see you will have challenge you will have risk you need to you need to be able to understand those you need to be able to assess them you need to be able to fail and pick yourself up and be fine and we know that that is dad who does that when you're a very little kid he does that by playing with you so a lot of dads do a thing called rough and tumble play which is very vigorous wrestling throwing you in the air being silly it's all you know and that it starts there because actually it's quite a risky way of playing and so they're saying to the kids i'm just going to push you yeah are you going to cope with this it's fun but are you going to cope with this and they start doing that in in teenagehood they carry on doing that but in slightly different ways and they are the ones who's going to give that really secure foundation to that independent being and that's what we found around the world is that dad seems to be the guy who does that and we think actually that's why dad evolved because dad evolved at about the same time that adolescence evolved interesting so okay um so the role of the father is to challenge the kid to to equip this kid to be independent and resilient yeah okay can you simplify what's the role of the mom roles mom's slightly different i don't study mothers so um i but what we see in mothers is mothers are more about and it's not that fathers don't care they do care they do nurture they do caretake but what we say is we see the difference in the attachment style so as i said dad's not Dads are nurture, but also challenge.

1:06:25And what I say is dads have this secure base. So I've got a really secure attachment with this kid. But what I'm going to use that for is I'm going to turn the kid to the world and go, right, here's the world. You are going to go into it and you're going to take those risks and you're going to confront those challenges. But no, I'm here. I'm here. You can come back and I will give you a hug. It will be OK. Whereas mum, we say that's more of an exclusive attachment. So hers is more inward looking, clutching the child to her and being like, right, we are this, I'm this protective arm around you.

1:06:55I'm this nurturing arm around you. And that's kind of what the difference is in terms of attachment. So mums, it's slightly different. And, you know, motherhood is incredibly ancient. Millions and millions and millions of years old. Human fatherhood is half a million years old. So from an evolutionary point of view, it's really young. So it's achieved in a different place. Should we be discussing with our partner, with our wife, with our husband, what our roles need to be when it comes to education? So perhaps, as you're mentioning, mom needs to be the person that will develop the emotional spectrum of the child.

1:07:32But then the father would be the one that will build that resilience, that... Yeah, I wouldn't say necessarily emotional development. I think mums are, they're kind of like the ones who make the child feel safe through, yes, that really protective boundary. Both parents are involved in emotional development, particularly fathers are important in what we call emotional regulation. Emotional regulation is knowing how to keep your emotions in check, particularly in public. So, you know, you can't just start screaming if something goes wrong. You can't start hitting if something goes wrong. You learn those things.

1:08:05And again, that's part of his social role. So what we see in terms of education is both parents actually input into academic achievement. But what dads do is they actually underpin the behavior, the learning behavior in the classroom. Because, again, because they are the ones who've said, here's the world, they are the ones that underpin social behavior development, social language development, pro-social behaviors, which are things like sharing, caring, helping, emotional regulation. They are. So therefore, they are the ones that underpin appropriate learning behavior. so kids who have a secure attachment to their dads are much more likely to be the ones who will sit in class and who will listen and who won't shout out and who won't disrupt the rest of the class and that's important so both parents have a role in education but fathers that behavior element is kind of seems to be unique to them and the influence of the father over a son or a daughter is the same it's the same in terms of how important they are the influence they have is slightly different because of the different challenges uh whether you're a boy or girl has okay so um yeah so the methodology is the same the methodology is the same but they have different outcomes so for a girl what seems to be really important for a girl um is fathers have a really powerful role in underpinning girls self-esteem um they have a really powerful role in underpinning their ability to navigate relationships, have, you know, a very serious role in terms of things like, you know, having sort of safe sexual behavior, for example.

1:09:34They seem to have a really big role in academic achievement. And we think the reason for that is because, two reasons. First of all, because fathers are the social parent in terms of underpinning the social thing, most girls in terms of, particularly in their teenage years, the thing they really struggle with is relationships with other girls at school and they can that can really affect their mental health so girls who have quite difficult relationships at school are more likely to have mental health difficulties eating disorders self-harm things like that so but we know that girls who have secure attachments with their dads are much less likely to suffer those things because dad is kind of underpinning their ability to navigate this really quite tricky complex social world that girls go into boys relationships tend to be much more straightforward so that that's not really the same issue for them during their teenage years what is an issue for them is masculinity so actually fathers have and you know we know this is a big current topic right now fathers have a big role in modeling positive masculinity to boys to counteract particularly in this environment the very negative images that they can get on social media so positive masculinity is really really important they also have a how does negative masculinity look like so Negative masculinity is about accepting that aggression is correct.

1:10:53It's accepting that men dominate women. It's accepting that, you know, yeah, violence is an answer. So it's these ideas about supremacy. The male is supreme and I can achieve my end point by physically or mentally suppressing others. Similar to what Andrew Tate is. Yeah, basically Andrew Tate. Yeah, is a negative masculinity. Positive masculinity is about understanding emotional intelligence, empathy, being nurturing, understanding, you know, that your role is that you get the best out of people by nurturing them and being empathetic and all that kind of thing. and being you know using communication using you know positive physical communication positive verbal communication that is positive and and you know there's more and more work coming out now about how important modeling that as a father is and we know that if you get so if you as a son are raised by an involved father who has a models positive positive masculinity well obviously that will cross the generation and you will also be that person um so it's about that cross generational transmission of positive masculinity so if you yourself have a son you will also model that and some of the work that has to happen is actually helping dads who maybe through no fault of their own because this is what they saw as a child break the cycle and how do children learn better from their father so by the father directly educating them and telling them do this don't do that or by through leading by example it's leading by example absolutely yeah you have to live what you teach for a father and or a mother yeah yeah you have to live what you teach you it's very because children are observing you from practically the year dot yeah um you know so people always sit you know a three-month-old baby is completely incapable of observing actually they are taking it all in.

1:12:54So even when they're very tiny, they understand social relationships, they understand what is going on around them. They'll be able to verbalise it, but they understand it. So it's absolutely what you do, not what you say. Is there a period in a child's development that we need to be more worried on how we act in front of them? Arguably the first two years. Okay. And that's because the brain isn't fully formed at that point. So humans are born far too early. most mammals are born with their brain fully formed but because ours is so big and because we're bipedal so we have a very narrow birth canal we birth our babies a good probably six to nine months before they should pop out and so after after birth we have this extended accelerated period of brain growth and the bit that's really not grown when you're born is the social cognitive bit the relationships bit the i'm going to get on in the big wide world bit and so actually the environment they're in for those first two years fundamentally underpins that architecture if you have a good secure nurturing environment you've got parents who are modeling you know modeling good behaviors they're meeting your particularly your emotional needs they're very empathetic all that kind of thing you you get a brain which is flooded in oxytocin dopamine beta endorphin serotonin which are all really lovely healthy neurochemicals you get a very small amygdala we don't want an enlargement because that shows stress in terms of fear you get really good dense gray and white matter in the areas of your brain associated with social cognition and relationships and emotional intelligence great if you are brought up in an environment where that isn't available particularly quite you know a neglectful environment we can see it on a scanner screen we can see that the gray and white matter is not as dense neuronal death has occurred so neurons might have developed but because they are living in this very stressful environment they are not being enforced by positive behaviors they will die so this kid already does not have the brain architecture adequate to deal with the complex world you will see an over large amygdala and you will see it constantly on it's constantly scanning the horizon for risk and you will get a brain that's flooded with cortisol and as you probably talked about cortisol lots of times cortisol is not good in for long periods of time and it blocks all those other lovely healthy neurochemicals so that kid has been offered it's already in a state where it's going to find it harder to deal with life because its brain architecture is not there now what i will say because i i this always scares people and they go oh my god you know i had an awful childhood or whatever there are periods as we go through childhood and into adolescence where we have what we call periods of sensitivity where the brain itself becomes more sensitive again because the human brain is quite plastic yeah it can change through experience uh and so there's what it's about five years throughout our entire lives yeah but there's times when it's really plastic and five years old is one so when kids are sort of entering school in this in the uk system um and one during puberty obviously in puberty the brain completely rewires itself and at those points if a child has had a poor start in life you can intervene and you can help them build those skills and that will change the brain architecture but obviously you've got to identify that child is this underpinned by hormonal changes the puberty changes yeah the puberty rewiring and dewiring all that is is all to do with hormone changes at five we're not entirely sure what is going on there we don't know whether it's the five is kind of it's not the entrance of childhood because most kids have kind of entered childhood already but it's it seems to be an important developmental point what should fathers avoid doing with their children when it comes to education?

1:16:32Again, I think, and I think it goes for mothers as well, I think the risk is to be too prescriptive. Can you give me examples? So particularly in our culture, there is a lot of emphasis on very high achievement. Okay. And some kids will be fine in that environment, and they will thrive in it. And that's fine. But And it's about, I think, really understanding who your kid is, how they learn, what their strengths are. Because particularly if you have very high achieving parents. When can you paint a realistic picture? Of who your child is? Yes. You can start really understanding who they are at preschool.

1:17:15You will really start to understand who they are. And it's about tuning into that and what their strengths are. Because some kids will learn by being told, by competition. competition so okay you're not quite top of the class okay i need to be top of the class fine if that's your kid's way of doing it that's absolutely fine some kids that will break them and they will that their mental health will fall apart and then they're not going to learn anything so you have to work out who your kid is tune into who your kid is and you have to adapt your parenting appropriately kids are you know kids are not blank slates this idea that they come out and they're blank slates they're not they are formed to a certain extent in terms of what their personality is how they're going to learn and you have to know who your child is and the best way and a good teacher will know that a good teacher knows how can I make this child reach their goals and there will be different ways of doing that but we do particularly I think and I think there's a study that came out recently looking at high achieving parents about how high achieving parents then try and instill that in their children and you have to be a little bit careful because while something might have worked for you it doesn't necessarily work for your child because your child is an individual they're not you and did you look into what divorces to to a children so divorce is interesting um it's very much how you divorce actually so the idea that divorce will damage children completely whatever it is not true but the problem we have i think particularly in the uk and america is we have a very combative divorce system so the whole idea is you fight you need to win yes and and obviously in any divorce the losers are the kids they always are um so actually we need a system that's more based upon um what's best for the children but that's very hard for parents to do because you go into a system that's actually telling you your ex-partner is the opponent and therefore you have to fight them for whatever access you want or whatever money you want and that's in a way the wrong way around for the children i've actually just started working with um an organization known as parents promise and it's really interesting but most people who get married will have lots of discussions about you know shared finances they might even have a prenup about the finances people never talk about if we split up what happens with the children what can we agree now and parents promise is about saying we will agree to mediate we will agree to do it in a non-combative way and to do what is best for the children and we will remember that we are parents first and it's and it's about trying to instill that idea of actually you do have something that you will share forever and that's your children and therefore you need to do it in a good you need to co-parent after divorce and there are people who are pioneering it and are doing really really well it's hard it's really hard particularly because we have a combative and very litigious divorce system and we also have a divorce system unfortunately that penalizes men particularly in fatherhood terms so that needs to be more equal so what are the typical um consequences side effects that a kid that has been has gone through this well if you think if you if you go through the conflictual thing so so first of all if you don't have an assumption of 50 50 custody you are basically saying that where you've been growing up with both parents in your life suddenly you know maybe one of them usually dad you might only see 10 5 percent of the times and you see mum the rest of the time you are so that's first of all saying well dad's not as important and that's difficult for children because they're half dad and that's sometimes what what i think people find forget and particularly if you have a parent who maybe bad mouths the other parent that kid is 50 of that person yeah okay so you're actually bad mouthing that kid yeah um and so so you get those sorts of behaviors yeah you get the idea that the kid will shuttle from home to home so actually in one sense the parents get nice secure bases and the kid who's actually the one who needs a secure base is constantly moving i know people who've pioneered actually having a house where the kids live and the parents move in when it's their turn and that seems i mean unfortunately that takes money but it works very well because the kid stays put in their territory in their comfort rather than moving about um conflict is bad i I mean, conflict, arguments, tugging of children, using children is bad psychologically for children.

1:21:35You will get children who were once securely attached to their parents who are no longer securely attached to their parents. They're insecurely attached. So it's a really, you know, up until your teenage years, your parents are your primary attachment figures. If that becomes destabilized, that has fundamental psychological developmental effects. So until the teenage years. Some people, when they are considering to get a divorce, they look at their family situation and they might decide to postpone it until the kids reach a certain age. At what age is the worst age in which you should not get a divorce?

1:22:14It really depends on the kids. There is no rule. Because your kids are individual and some kids are more resilient than other kids. It depends on the nature of the divorce. It depends upon what you're going to do afterwards. because the thing is at adolescence your attachment figure as a as a teenager does change from your parents to your peers but you still need the stability of your parents it's not like it disappears uh but you will go to you will go to your peers first for comfort you will go to your peers first for advice yeah but you still need the stability of your of your parents because teenagers are still kids and they're actually going through possibly the hardest stage of growing up which is the de-wiring and re-wiring of the brain which leaves them with some bits of the brain that don't work for a bit and that can be very vulnerable so we do need that a lot of both of our parents during our teenage years oh my god absolutely so what about boarding schools oh well i don't want to get into boarding schools um i'm not a massive fan of them as somebody studies child development but people take their choices interesting yeah okay the role of the father, I feel like it has evolved a lot throughout at least even my lifetime.

1:23:21And let's say I take three different generations. So I look at my grandfather, my father and myself, they are defined within the family in a very different way. So I think that transition is right now to a father that is very emotionally available, more vulnerable, not necessarily the financially contributor of the family. Do you think this is going towards the right direction? Yeah, definitely. It's going towards the right direction for several reasons. It's definitely going the right direction in terms of children, in terms of child development. Particularly as we know, for example, we have a mental health crisis in adolescence.

1:23:59We know that fathers are the ones that underpin the development of good mental health. So they're important. We know from a societal point of view that it's a good thing because children who grow up either with not great relationships with their father or without a father figure unfortunately are more likely to have issues growing up they're more likely to uh experience anti you know exhibit antisocial behavior they're more likely to have addiction they're more likely to turn to criminality because they don't have that figure when they grow up within what the first 18 years of their life without a father okay yes after that carries on okay most if you look at the populations of prisons and you talk to those prisoners about their childhoods yeah the vast majority of them had very difficult childhoods.

1:24:41And a lot of them did not have a father present. So it's really important that we support fathers. Fathers do not have to live with their children. This idea that you have to be co-resident, you don't, but you have to be in your kid's life. So even after divorce, it's very important. How would you define present? Is it like 40 % of my kid's life, 30 %? It's just be around, be there when they need you, see them every week, that kind of thing. It's just, you don't have to live with them, but you have to have that input. They have to know that they can turn to you and talk to you. And you are there.

1:25:13You are just there. But you don't have to live with them. Sometimes because we don't live in an ideal world, a father perhaps doesn't cover that role. Can mom compensate? What's really interesting is where I maybe should have defined fathers when we started talking. I don't necessarily... Fathers, in terms of how I study them, are necessarily the biological father. And that's because I study fatherhood around the world. And whilst we privilege the biological father in the West, there are many cultures where they're not actually privileged. And we have what we call social fathers. And a social father is somebody sometimes is still related.

1:25:47They could be an uncle, a grandfather, an elder brother, or they aren't related at all, but they're somebody within the community. There are some societies, for example, there are some kids in South Africa. And this is generally because their fathers have to go a long way away to work, their biological father, who are raised by their grandfathers. And in fact, when their grandfathers were younger and went away to work, their father then raised the kids. It's just how it happens. So the grandfather is the father. Is that good? Is that beneficial? It's good. It's beneficial. A kid doesn't need, a kid needs a father figure.

1:26:16Not the biological father. Just being involved in conception doesn't make you a father. But does the kid need the biological mother more than the biological father? No. Okay. So you just need the roles, the figures. You need the roles filled. Okay. So when we look at adoptive families, you just need the roles filled and you need them to be secure attachments. Yeah. And then, you know, human babies are amazing. Human babies are so focused on survival, they will literally attach to anyone who cares for them. So it's weird. We are the only species in the world that has adoption and we will adopt babies and we will bond to them as if they were our biological children.

1:26:51No other species does that. So it's important that kids have these figures. They don't have to be involved in conception at all. and that's what was really surprising about studying fathering around the world is because we're so indoctrinated here about we talk about the real dad and the real dad's the one who was involved in conception he might never have seen the kid again but people will still refer to him as the real dad and it's like rather than actually there's this really great stepdad here who's actually brought the kid up actually they're the dad because um you know dad is dad is actually a verb it's not a noun it's a doing job if you do the job you get the title i very much can can correlate to this because I've had a very complex relationship with my father and I'm 29 in a couple of days but for the last probably 10-11 years I don't have a relationship whatsoever with my father since I was 18 and this had a lot of benefits on one hand it allowed me to build a level of resilience of understanding at an emotional but also logical level of life that I don't think I would have ever been able to understand if I didn't go through this very intense situation.

1:28:02But also during that period when I was 18 years old, my grandfather from my mother's side, he sort of like took over. So I believe that I got the best of both worlds because he did represent that stability. But also I didn't feel like I was missing any love or affection or approval from my father because I did get it from definitely my mother, but also my grandfather. and yeah, that was a very revealing moment in which I understood that these so-called important, vital, irreplaceable roles, like the role of a, not the role, but like your biological mother, your biological father. In Spain, we usually say that you only have one in life.

1:28:42You only have one mother. You only have one father. I realized that that is not entirely true. No. Like my grandfather, it is way more my father in my heart and my brain than what my father ever was. And that's how it works in most areas of the world. We just have this weird thing about the biological father, and it is strange, and it takes studying other cultures to realize how unusual that is. Also, what I don't like is that, particularly in religious countries like Spain, and my family is not very religious, but obviously when you live in Spain, you do have some group friends that they are religious.

1:29:15This notion of a family is quite binary. So if you are raised with your family or one of your family members is not present and so on, they tend to think that your life is going to move towards a specific direction. But if you look at my life right now, when I'm 29 years old, I'm about to get engaged. Hopefully this episode will come out after. Otherwise you've just blown it. I've been in a relationship in a long-term beta endorphin-based relationship with my girlfriend for now almost seven, eight years. Great relationship with my mom. I'd like to think that I'm blessed because I'm a successful entrepreneur for my age, as I told you before, employing hundreds of people.

1:29:58So the question, there's not a particular question or recipe that leads to a type of so-called socially acceptable success, right? at the personal and professional level. So I had zero relationship with my father throughout my entire adult life since I was 18 years old. And I think I was never more in touch with my emotions than what I am right now. And it also forced me to not take things for granted, that I would take things for granted, not only materially, but also at the fundamental basic level in life. We are brought up in a society that tells us that your mom and your dad are going to be there forever.

1:30:39And just the fact that you take a few things in life for granted, I think in some aspects it can build a level of confidence and it's good. But also on the other hand, just removes a little bit of curiosity of the what if. And that what if can open an immense world of different ideas and possibilities and barriers that don't exist. And if you're able to find a sweet spot in between both, And I think that that was my grandfather's exposure to my life, that I think he was able to bring me to that sweet spot. It's a great place to be in. It is. And I mean, that's why I love the job I do as an anthropologist is because I study humanity around the world.

1:31:20And we have particular ways of doing things in the West. But it opens your eyes as to how there's so many different definitions of family, definitions of father, definitions of mother. There are so many different ways of being human. and we get a bit restricted I think in in the west in terms of this is how you should do it yeah this is what a family is and this is what a father is and this is what a mother is and actually there are so many one of the joys of being human yeah is actually you can be so flexible and you can be so creative you know because actually the fundamental thing is you need good loving relationships where you find them doesn't really matter yeah it you just need them Yeah.

1:31:58Particularly when you're a child. Yeah. I was reading something very interesting, which is that 96 % of men in this day and age attend their child's birth. It seems like almost every father is attending their child's birth. Is this a good thing for the father, the mother, their relationship or the newborn? It's good for everybody. It's good for everybody. So if you speak to most parents today, they see very much the parenthood journey as being as being something that they both do. So in the past, I think, you know, if we went back 30, 40 years, it was seen as something mums do. Mums have babies.

1:32:35Mums go into hospital, have babies, bring babies home, look after babies. Whereas now, you know, couples tend to decide together they're going to have a kid. They will do the pregnancy test together. They will go to the antenatal things together and they will go into hospital together and have that baby because it's their baby. it's not her baby um and so i think that's why you get such a high number of dads in there um and we know in terms of child and mother outcomes having the father there is a positive thing for child and mother health outcomes and psychological outcomes so we know that if a father is present at birth you know the baby's outcomes in terms of health after birth are much improved if he's there during pregnancy we have you know we have less risk of prenatal i'm sorry of early birth or premature birth we have greater birth weights for example we have uh better health for mum we have better better adherence to a healthy regime for mum better adherence to going to antenatal classes and and appointments so actually doing it as the family that it's going to be is really really important we also know that obviously fathers are at a slight distance from their baby during pregnancy because they're not going through that whole stage so actually being in the room and particularly having the skin-to-skin contact after birth, is so important in terms of really allowing that father to acknowledge, okay, here is the baby, because he's not felt the baby.

1:33:52He's not carried it around. He's maybe held his hands on the bump and made some efforts that way, which is really important, but he's not physically held that baby. And that baby hasn't smelled him or felt his heartbeat or anything like that. So being in the room, doing the skin-to-skin contact, being there from the moment your child is born is really important in terms of the transition psychologically to the identity of being a father, but also starting that bond as quickly as you can. Is that the moment, the first moment in which our testosterone levels drop? No, we think, you have to do very longitudinal studies on this, and there's a great guy in America who's in the middle of it.

1:34:28We think it doesn't just drop immediately, it tails. So probably in the first six weeks, we don't think it drops during pregnancy. We think it is something to do with that interaction, that physical interaction with baby. And we think it probably tails and takes about six weeks. And it can drop by up to a third. It depends on, it varies between men. So interesting. Anna, if you had to compress all your knowledge into one essential advice that we must implement in our daily lives, just one advice, what would it be? Identify the love in your life. Okay. Find where it is. Don't just look for a romantic love.

1:35:14People say to me, I've got no love in my life. And I go, what do you mean? You mean you've got no romantic? And they go, yes. And I go, right, okay, let's just talk about your relationships. Who's out there? Because love, your relationships are the most important thing in your life in terms of health, happiness, survival, longevity, success. They just are. Whether they're working relationships, whether anything, so just find the love. I feel like a big contributor or ingredient to success sorry to happiness is purpose having purpose in life and I feel like probably one of the biggest contributors to purpose is love yeah love is the most amazing motivating force it is I mean again I wrote a whole chapter on the idea because love isn't an emotion it's very complex it's not an emotion the best thing you can say about love is it's a motivator and it motivates you to do things.

1:36:07And so, yes, your relationships are the foundation of your confidence, of your success, of really everything you achieve, basically. So, yeah, that's the only thing I would say is identify the love in your life and invest in it. Thank you. Thank you for coming this morning. It has been a profound privilege to learn with you. And I also thank you on behalf of everyone that didn't have or get the chance to go through or learn any of these things during their upbringing. Because we were also discussing this earlier. Our school systems, our education system teaches very important things, but they sometimes miss the most fundamental aspects in life.

1:36:53So we learn maths, geography, literature. but nobody's really teaching us how to cope with our relationships. How should we deal with love? How should we define it? How does it feel? Should we act on it? Should we not act on it? And these are probably more important than learning on how to be good at math or geography because these two will definitely impact everything else. So I thank you on behalf of everyone that is listening because you are the teacher that we all wish we had, but we never got to have. So I thank you and my team thanks you. And I very much hope that we can do this again because I have so many other questions and probably the episode would be 10 hours long.

1:37:43But yeah, thank you very much. Thank you. It's been great.

1:37:55Amen.