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of today’s groom is thirty-four; the average age of a bride is thirty-two. (Add three years to both ages for second marriages.)
The average age of first-time mothers in 2008 was thirty. One in six couples now use IVF for conception because of low fertility rates.
The average age of divorce has risen from 37.6 years in 1988 to 44.2 years in 2007 for men and from 34.8 years to 41.3 years for women.
Around 40% of children are now conceived outside marriage.
Only 36% of couples choose a church ceremony when they marry.
Around 80% of couples in which one partner snores sleep apart.
    Results like these have never been seen in past generations of humans, and they highlight a huge swing in our attitudes to relationships.

How Humans Are Now Studied
     
    Humans are increasingly being studied within the evolutionary framework used by animal behavior researchers. The labels for this work include evolutionary psychology, evolutionary biology, human behavioral ecology, and human sociobiology. Collectively, we call these areas “human evolutionary psychology” (HEP) because their shared objective is an evolutionary understanding of why we are the way we are, based on where we have come from. Many HEP researchers began their scientific careers in animal behavior, and consequently HEP research is very similar to other animal behavior research, being based on the principle that human behaviors evolved in the same way behaviors of all animals evolved. In HEP, the researched animal can of course talk, which has both advantages and pitfalls for researchers. Understanding HEP means we can better predict how humans will react or respond.
    For example, the peacock evolved with brilliant plumage because peahens have always preferred males with bright, colorful, flashy tails. The peahens rejected peacocks with dull plumage because unfit male peacocks cannot grow spectacular tails. This has had the evolutionary effect of breeding out dull-looking males because females would not mate with them.
    Just like peahens and peacocks, human sexual strategies for finding a mate operate on an unconscious level. As in other animal species, human mating is always strategic, never indiscriminate—despite what we may like to think. Simply put, women have always wanted men who could provide resources—food, shelter, and protection—and men who failed to gather resources have fewer opportunities to pass on their genes to the next generation.

     

Why Being Loved and Being in Love Are So Important
     
    Since the beginning of formalized medicine in the eighteenth century, doctors have been loath to accept any ideas about human longevity that couldn’t be measured or quantified. Research now reveals that being loved and being in love allow you to live significantly longer and that no other single thing—be it genes, diet, lifestyle, or drugs—can equal love’s effects. Dr. Dean Ornish, author of the Groundbreaking
Stress, Diet and Your Heart
, is a pioneer in research on human longevity and was the first medical scientist to prove conclusively that ailments such as heart disease could be caused or reversed by lifestyle and by having positive, loving relationships in yourlife. He reported on the Harvard “Mastery of Stress” study, conducted in the early 1950s at Harvard University, in which researchers gave questionnaires to 156 healthy males to evaluate how they felt about each of their parents, rating their relationship with a parent from “close and warm” to “strained and cold.” Thirty-five years later, it was found that 91% of participants who did not perceive themselves as having a warm relationship with their mothers had been diagnosed with serious diseases in mid-life. Only 45% of participants who perceived themselves as having a warm relationship with their mothers had any major illness. When it came to rating participants’ closeness to their fathers, 82% with low warmth and closeness ratings had developed serious disease, compared with 50%