[Women] tend to collect more pieces of data when they think, put them into more complex patterns, see more options and outcomes. They tend to be contextual, holistic thinkers.
Men want to think women don't cheat, and women want men to think they don't cheat, and therefore the sexes have been playing a little psychological game with each other.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote highlights the mutual desire between men and women to maintain trust in their relationships while engaging in deceptive behaviors.
In this quote, Helen Fisher discusses the psychological dynamics between men and women regarding infidelity. She points out that both sexes wish to uphold the illusion of fidelity to each other, resulting in a complex interplay of deception and trust that can undermine genuine emotional connections. This dance of psychological games suggests deep-seated fears and societal pressures about cheating, making honesty and transparency challenging in romantic relationships.
Themes
In practice
Example use cases
This quote can be used in a relationship counseling session to illustrate the dynamics of trust.
More from Helen Fisher
All quotes βPeople live for love. They kill for love. They die for love. They have songs, poems, novels, sculptures, paintings, myths, legends. It's one of the most powerful brain systems on Earth for both great joy and great sorrow.
Your sweetheart calls you by another's name. His eyes linger too long on your best friend. He talks with excitement about a girl at work. And the fire catches. Jealousy - that sickening combination of possessiveness, suspicion, rage, and humiliation - can overtake your mind and threaten your very core as you contemplate your rival.
Any kind of novelty or excitement drives up dopamine in the brain, and dopamine is associated with romantic love.
Most of us make up our minds in the first three minutes of meeting someone whether there's a potential for a relationship.
People have often asked me whether what I know about love has spoiled it for me. And I just simply say, 'Hardly.' You can know every single ingredient in a piece of chocolate cake, and then when you sit down and eat that cake, you can still feel that joy.
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He insists on a version of you that is funnier, stranger, more eccentric and prfound thatn you suspect yourself to be--capable of doing more good and more harm in the world than you've ever imagined--it is all but impossible not to believe, at least in his presence and a while after you've left him, that he alone sees through your essence, weighs your true qualities . . . and appreciates you more fully than anyone else ever has.
All young women begin by believing they can change and reform the men they marry. They can't.
Most of the time in married life is taken up by talk.
The most creative social strategy we have to offer is the church. Here we show the world a manner of life the world can never achieve through social coercion or governmental action. We serve the world by showing it something that it is not, namely, a place where God is forming a family out of strangers.