Helen Fisher
Appearances
Freakonomics Radio
How to Succeed at Failing, Part 1: The Chain of Events (Update)
I ended up finding that romantic love is an addiction.
Freakonomics Radio
How to Succeed at Failing, Part 1: The Chain of Events (Update)
Well, nobody gets out of love alive. We all know that. But we go on. That is Helen Fisher. I'm a biological anthropologist at the Kinsey Institute, and I write books on love.
Freakonomics Radio
How to Succeed at Failing, Part 1: The Chain of Events (Update)
People are going to break up for very different kinds of reasons, but the brain just knows that you've been abandoned. And, of course, there's all kinds of cultural issues when you've been abandoned. I mean, you've lost some social ties.
Freakonomics Radio
How to Succeed at Failing, Part 1: The Chain of Events (Update)
You might have lost the cat, the dog, even children, or your home, or economic stability, or your bicycle, or your car, or what you do on Christmas or Hanukkah, etc. I mean, your daily rituals are disrupted. A lot of people will regard it as a failure, and indeed, it is a failure for them.
Freakonomics Radio
How to Succeed at Failing, Part 1: The Chain of Events (Update)
There was a wonderful study of teenagers in college, and Roy Baumeister and others, a psychologist, asked these kids, have you ever dumped somebody who really loved you? And 95% said yes. And then they asked, have you ever been dumped by somebody who you really loved? And 93% said yes. Now, these kids are in college. They got another 50 years of this roller coaster.
Freakonomics Radio
How to Succeed at Failing, Part 1: The Chain of Events (Update)
Well, I actually don't think that they're a failure, but that's for different Darwinian reasons.
Freakonomics Radio
How to Succeed at Failing, Part 3: Grit vs. Quit (Update)
Yeah, he dumped me when I was 70.
Freakonomics Radio
How to Succeed at Failing, Part 3: Grit vs. Quit (Update)
Nobody gets out of love alive. Nobody. We all know that, but we go on.
Freakonomics Radio
How to Succeed at Failing, Part 3: Grit vs. Quit (Update)
I have been extremely lucky during most of my life. I've lived with men long-term, two men long-term, one for 15 years, another for 18 years. Oddly enough, I've studied marriage for 50 years, but I wasn't interested in marrying. I finally met the man of my dreams. I was just nuts about him. He's a very well-known journalist, and he had interviewed me for years, and I really liked him.
Freakonomics Radio
How to Succeed at Failing, Part 3: Grit vs. Quit (Update)
And we went... We went out for about six months, and then he dumped me. Yeah, he dumped me when I was 70. I was never angry at him. The reason I wasn't angry at him is he was a single father going through a horrible divorce. He just came to me one day, and he said, Helen, I just can't take on anymore. I remember he did it in Grand Central Station, and I was standing there, and I said, okay.
Freakonomics Radio
How to Succeed at Failing, Part 3: Grit vs. Quit (Update)
And I remember I walked home, and I just sat at the edge of my bed for six weeks playing music to kill yourself by. and crying. I mean, what else do you do? And, you know, overloading my friends with my sorrow and all that, which, by the way, after a while isn't a good idea. You're just raising the ghost. But anyway, what I did, though, is I never contacted him.
Freakonomics Radio
How to Succeed at Failing, Part 3: Grit vs. Quit (Update)
I never wrote him at Christmas to wish him well. I never contacted him again. I think it allowed him to realize that he was a free agent, that he could start this relationship and explore where it was going to go without having a tightrope around his neck. So he wrote to me a letter and said to me that he thought he'd made a terrible mistake. And we fell in love.
Freakonomics Radio
How to Succeed at Failing, Part 3: Grit vs. Quit (Update)
And I got married to him at age 75. When he asked me to marry him, I said, I'll marry you, but I'm not moving in. Because I have a little nice apartment in New York. He's got a beautiful apartment in the Bronx. But I mean, I'm there five nights a week. The other nights I like to go to the theater with my girlfriends, etc.