Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-dh8gc Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-02T19:05:22.372Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Chapter 10 - Slow Love: Courtship in the Digital Age

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 December 2018

By
Helen E. Fisher  and
Justin R. Garcia
Edited by
Robert J. Sternberg  and
Karin Sternberg
Robert J. Sternberg
Affiliation:
Cornell University, New York
Karin Sternberg
Affiliation:
Cornell University, New York
Get access

Summary

Today, some 66% of single Americans have had a one-night-stand at some point in their dating life; 34% have had sex with a potential partner before their first date; 54% have had a friends-with-benefits relationship (in which the couple meet for uncommitted, socially hidden sexual activity); and 56% of singles have lived together before their wedding.

Type
Chapter
Information
The New Psychology of Love , pp. 208 - 222
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2018

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Acevedo, B., Aron, A., Fisher, H. E., & Brown, L. L. (2011). Neural correlates of long-term intense romantic love. Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, doi: 10.1093/scan/nsq092.Google ScholarPubMed
Acevedo, B., Aron, A., Fisher, H. E., & Brown, L. L. (2012). Neural correlates of marital satisfaction and well-being: Reward, empathy, and affect. Clinical Neuropsychiatry, 9(1), 20–31.Google Scholar
Aron, A., Fisher, H. E., Mashek, D. J., Strong, G., Li, H. F., & Brown, L. L. (2005). Reward, motivation and emotion systems associated with early-stage intense romantic love: An fMRI study. Journal of Neurophysiology, 94, 327–337.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cacioppo, J. T., Cacioppo, S., Gonzaga, G. C., Ogburn, E. L., & VanderWeele, T. J. (2013). Marital satisfaction and break-ups differ across on-line and off-line meeting venues. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 110(25), 10135–10140.Google Scholar
Carter, C. S. (1992). Oxytocin and sexual behavior. Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews, 1, 131–144.Google Scholar
Carter, C. S. (1998). Neuroendocrine perspectives on social attachment and love. Psychoneuroendocrinology, 23, 779–818.Google Scholar
Chayko, M. (2014). Techno‐social life: The internet, digital technology, and social connectedness. Sociology Compass, 8(7), 976–991.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
The Economist. (2017). A looser knot: Special report on marriage. November 25.Google Scholar
Fisher, H. E. (1992). Anatomy of love (1st ed.). New York: W.W. Norton.Google Scholar
Fisher, H. E. (1998). Lust, attraction, and attachment in mammalian reproduction. Human Nature, 9, 23–52.Google Scholar
Fisher, H. E. (1999). The first sex: The natural talents of women and how they are changing the world. New York: Random House.Google Scholar
Fisher, H. E. (2004). Why we love: The nature and chemistry of romantic love. New York: Henry Holt.Google Scholar
Fisher, H. E. (2011). Serial monogamy and clandestine adultery: Evolution and consequences of the dual human reproductive strategy. In Roberts, S. C. (Ed.), Applied evolutionary psychology (pp 96–111). New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Fisher, H. E. (2014). The tyranny of love: Love addiction – An anthropologist’s view. In Rosenberg, K. P. & Feder, L. C. (Eds.), Behavioral Addictions: Criteria, evidence and treatment (pp 237–260). London: Elsevier Press/Academic Press.Google Scholar
Fisher, H. E. (2015). Slow love: How casual sex may be improving marriage. Nautilus, online March 5.Google Scholar
Fisher, H. E. (2016). Anatomy of love: The natural history of monogamy, adultery, and divorce (2nd ed.). New York: Norton.Google Scholar
Fisher, H. E., Aron, A., & Brown, L. L. (2006). Romantic love: A mammalian brain system for mate choice. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society: Biological Sciences, 361, 2173–2186.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fisher, H., Aron, , A., Mashek, D., Strong, G., Li, H., & Brown, L. L. (2003). Early stage intense romantic love activates cortical-basal-ganglia reward/motivation, emotion and attention systems: An fMRI study of a dynamic network that varies with relationship length, passion intensity and gender. Poster presented at the Annual Meeting of the Society for Neuroscience, New Orleans, November 11.Google Scholar
Fisher, H. E., Brown, L. L., Aron, A., Strong, G., & Mashek, D. (2010). Reward, addiction, and emotion regulation systems associated with rejection in love. Journal of Neurophysiology, 104, 51–60.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Fisher, H. E., Xu, X., Aron, A., & Brown, L. L. (2016). Intense, passionate romantic love: A natural addiction? How the fields that investigate romance and substance abuse can inform each other. Frontiers in Psychology. Retrieved from https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2016.00687.Google Scholar
Francis‐Tan, A., & Mialon, H. M. (2015). “A diamond is forever” and other fairy tales: The relationship between wedding expenses and marriage duration. Economic Inquiry, 53(4), 1919–1930.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Frascella, J., Potenza, M. N., Brown, L. L., & Childress, A. R. (2010). Shared brain vulnerabilities open the way for non-substance addictions: Carving addiction at a new joint? Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 1187(1), 294–315.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Garcia, J. R., & Fisher, H. E. (2015). Why we hook up: Searching for sex or looking for love? In Tarrant, S. (Ed.), Gender, sex, and politics: In the streets and between the sheets in the 21st century (pp. 238–250). New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Garcia, J. R., Gesselman, A. N., Siliman, S. A., Perry, B. L., Coe, K., & Fisher, H. E. (2016). Sexting among singles in the USA: Prevalence of sending, receiving, and sharing sexual messages and images. Sexual Health, 13(5), 428–435.Google Scholar
Garcia, J. R., & Reiber, C. (2008). Hook-up behavior: A biopsychosocial perspective. Journal of Social, Evolutionary, and Cultural Psychology, 2(4), 192–208.Google Scholar
Gesselman, A. G., Ta, V. P., & Garcia, J. R. (in review). Worth a thousand words: Emojis as affective signals for relationship-oriented communication.Google Scholar
Gray, P. B., & Garcia, J. R. (2013). Evolution and human sexual behavior. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Hampton, W. H., Unger, A., Von Der Heide, R. J., & Olson, I. R. (2016). Neural connections foster social connections: A diffusion-weighted imaging study of social networks. Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, 11(5), 721–727.Google Scholar
Heussner, K. M. (2010). Is technology taking its toll on our relationships? Technology Review. Retrieved from abcnews.go.com.Google Scholar
Ipsos. (2014).Valentine’s Day: Correlations between relationship status and happiness, financial situation. Ipsos: A Global Independent Market Research Company. February 12. Retrieved from www.ipsos.com/en-us/valentines-day-correlations-between-relationship-status-and-happiness-financial-situation.Google Scholar
Iyengar, S. S. & Lepper, M. R. (2000). When choice is demotivating: Can one desire too much of a good thing? Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 79(6), 995–1006.Google Scholar
Jankowiak, W. R., & Fischer, E. F. (1992). A cross-cultural perspective on romantic love. Ethnology, 31(2), 149–155.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jankowiak, W. R., & Paladino, T. (2008). Desiring sex, longing for love: A tripartite conundrum. In Jankowiak, W. R. (Ed.), Intimacies: Love and sex across cultures (pp. 1–36). New York: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
Lloyd, E. A. (2005). The case of the female orgasm: Bias in the science of evolution. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Miller, A. M., Sassler, S., & Kusi-Appouh, D. (2011). The specter of divorce: Views from working- and middle-class cohabitors. Family Relations, 60, 602–616.Google Scholar
Miller, G. A. (1955). The magical number seven, plus or minus two: Some limits on our capacity for processing information. Psychological Review, 101(2), 343–352.Google Scholar
Ortega, J., & Hergovich, P. (2017). The strength of absent ties: Social integration via online dating. arXiv preprint arXiv:1709.10478.Google Scholar
Pew Research Center. (2008). Social and demographic trends. “The decline of marriage and rise of new families.” November 18. Retrieved from http://pewsocialtrends.org/2010/11/18.Google Scholar
Schwartz, B. (2016). The paradox of choice: Why more is less (rev. ed.). New York: Harper Perennial.Google Scholar
Ta, V. P., Gesselman, A. N., Perry, B. L., Fisher, H. E., & Garcia, J. R. (2017). Stress of Singlehood: Marital status, domain-specific stress, and anxiety in a national US sample. Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology, 36(6), 461–485.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tsapelas, I., Fisher, H. E., & Aron, A. (2010). Infidelity: Who, when, why. In Cupach, W. R. & Spitzberg, B. H. (Eds.), The dark side of close relationships II, (pp. 175–196). New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Xu, X., Brown, L. L., Aron, A., Cao, G., Feng, T., Acevedo, B., & Weng, X. (2012). Regional brain activity during early-stage intense romantic love predicted relationship outcomes after 40 months: An fMRI assessment. Neuroscience Letters, 526(1), 33–38.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Xu, X., Aron, A., Brown, L. L., Cao, G., Feng, T., & Weng, X. (2011). Reward and motivation systems: A brain mapping study of early-stage intense romantic love in Chinese participants. Human Brain Mapping, 32(2), 249–257.Google Scholar

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×