Word: partnerized
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Even with its intoxicating supply of dopamine, the ventral tegmental couldn't do the love job on its own. Most people eventually do leave the poker game or the dinner table, after all. Something has to turn the exhilaration of a new partner into what can approach an obsession, and that something is the brain's nucleus accumbens, located slightly higher and farther forward than the ventral tegmental. Thrill signals that start in the lower brain are processed in the nucleus accumbens via not just dopamine but also serotonin and, importantly, oxytocin. If ever there was a substance designed...
...asset in an activity that is ambiguous by design. Wayne State's Abbey, whose research has focused on the dark side of flirting--when it transmogrifies into harassment, stalking or acquaintance rape--warns that flirting can be treacherous. "Most of the time flirtation desists when one partner doesn't respond positively," she says. "But some people just don't get the message that is being sent, and some ignore it because it isn't what they want to hear...
...married only so they can make tabloid headlines with adulterous trysts. The frailty of marriage thus gives a few long-term unions--Dana and Christopher Reeve's, Nancy and Ronald Reagan's--the aura of heroism. They offer one final moral: even the famous can tend to an ailing partner with grace and devotion till death do they part...
Even kids without such emotional scarring can be pretty undiscriminating in their sexual choices. Two studies conducted by sociologist Wendy Manning in 2005 and 2006 showed that while 75% of kids have their first sexual experience with a partner they're dating--a figure that may bring at least some comfort to worried parents--more than 60% will eventually have sex with someone with whom they're not in any kind of meaningful dating relationship. Hooking up--very informal sex between two people with no intent of pursuing a deeper relationship--takes this casualness even further. A 2004 study Manning...
...these perils, the fact is, most people manage to shake off even such high-stakes behavior and find a satisfying life partner, and that says something about the resilience of humans as romantic creatures. In the U.S., by the time we're 18, about 80% of us have had at least one meaningful romantic relationship. As adults, up to 75% of us marry. Certainly, nature doesn't make things easy. From babyhood on, it equips us with the tools we'll need for the hardest social role we'll ever play--the role of romantic--and then chooses the moment...