The Mask of Love and Sexual Gullibility

Many people describe the time of being newly in love as one of life’s peak experiences. Years later, almost half of them people divorce after thinking they were to be married for life. How did they make such a grievous mistake? Traditional theory assumes that lovers are biased in judgments about their partners. This chapter suggests that evolution has shaped people to form lasting alliances, not just by overvaluing their partners, but also in becoming more lovable themselves. During passionate love, people tend to overestimate their partner’s positive qualities, and they themselves change so as to match those positive impressions. The combination of enhanced positive qualities and partners’ illusions is a largely unintentional process that evolution has shaped because it improves pair bonding, which in turn improves reproductive success. Recent data indicate that female sexual desire during courtship and newlywed phases is often followed by a loss of sexual desire that undermines both spouses’ marital satisfaction (McNulty, Maxwell, Meltzer, & Baumeister, under review). Men may therefore be gullible in terms of entering into a long-term commitment based on false assumptions about the amount of sex involved. This may serve as a useful model for the hypothesis that people become more lovable when in love. This chapter considers forms of gullibility that help people make long-term commitments to romantic partners. It explores the more radical idea that love has a second way of increasing mating among imperfect people. Love may temporarily make someone actually become a better person – a temporary change that will increase one’s appeal to the potential partner. The chapter discusses what sorts of gullibility would enhance reproductive success by making men and women enter into committed parenting partnerships. A gullibility explanation suggests that concealed ovulation makes women more willing to engage in sex even when they do not want to get pregnant. Male gullibility may thus be reflected in remaining emotionally attached to a woman beyond the point that is good for the man. Male gullibility leads to believing that the sexuality enjoyed during the passionate love phase will be permanent.