The Dangerous Passion Quotes

“Sexual dissatisfaction is linked with marital unhappiness, which is a good predictor of divorce.”
― David M. Buss, The Dangerous Passion: Why Jealousy Is as Necessary as Love and Sex

“Unrequited love is the foundation for fatal attraction.”
― David M. Buss, The Dangerous Passion: Why Jealousy Is as Necessary as Love and Sex

“One key to the mystery of love is found in the psychology of commitment. If a partner chooses you for rational reasons, he or she might leave you for the same rational reasons: finding someone slightly more desirable on all of the “rational” criteria. But if the person is blinded by an uncontrollable love that cannot be helped and cannot be chosen, a love for only you and no other, then commitment will not waver when you are in sickness rather than in health, when you are poorer rather than richer. Love overrides rationality.”
― David M. Buss, The Dangerous Passion: Why Jealousy Is as Necessary as Love and Sex

“Men’s affairs are more likely to be purely sexual; women’s affairs are more often emotional.”
― David M. Buss, The Dangerous Passion: Why Jealousy Is as Necessary as Love and Sex

“Men’s value as a mate, more than women’s, is closely linked with the ability to secure resources as well as the qualities that tend to lead to resources such as status, ambition, industriousness, and maturity. Women universally desire men with good financial prospects. This preference does not diminish when women gain personal access to financial resources, nor when women achieve high socioeconomic status, nor even when women reside in cultures of relatively high economic equality between the sexes. Furthermore, since violence has been a recurrent problem women face at the hands of men, women place a greater premium on qualities that signal a man’s ability to protect her, such as physical strength and athletic prowess. The ability to secure economic resources and possess athletic prowess, in short, are more central to men’s than to women’s overall value on the mating market. Physical attractiveness in contrast is more central to women’s overall desirability on the mating market.”
― David M. Buss, The Dangerous Passion: Why Jealousy Is as Necessary as Love and Sex

“Given the tremendous investment women undertake to produce a single child, the nine months of costly internal fertilization and gestation, it is perfectly reasonable for women to want men who can invest in return. A woman’s children will survive and thrive better if she selects a resourceful man. Children suffer when their mothers choose “slackers.” Men, in contrast, place a greater premium on qualities linked with fertility, such as a woman’s youth, health, and physical appearance—clear skin, smooth skin, bright eyes, full lips, symmetrical features, and a slim waist.”
― David M. Buss, The Dangerous Passion: Why Jealousy Is as Necessary as Love and Sex

“In brief encounters, it seems, women demand sexy partners who are highly desirable to other women, perhaps because their sons stand a greater chance of being sexy themselves. Women, of course, do not think these thoughts; there is no conscious calculus of genetic effects. They just find some men sexy and that’s all they need to produce sons who will be sexually successful.”
― David M. Buss, The Dangerous Passion: Why Jealousy Is as Necessary as Love and Sex

“Wives judged as more physically attractive than their husbands stated that they would be more likely to divorce unfaithful husbands. Similarly, wives higher in mate value than their husbands declared that they would break from unfaithful husbands. Women who were lower than their husbands on attractiveness and mate value, in contrast, were more forgiving. These women indicated that they would probably remain with their husbands, even if these men had a one-night stand or a brief affair.”
― David M. Buss, The Dangerous Passion: Why Jealousy Is as Necessary as Love and Sex

“Worldwide, infidelity is the leading cause of divorce.”
― David M. Buss, The Dangerous Passion: Why Jealousy Is as Necessary as Love and Sex

“Both low conscientiousness and high psychoticism proved to be solid predictors of marital infidelity. Like those high on narcissism, these people flirted, kissed, and dated others more frequently than their more conscientious and less impulsive peers. And they more often leaped into bed with others without thinking of the consequences, both for one-night stands, brief flings, and even more serious affairs. These personality predictors showed remarkable consistency for men and women.”
― David M. Buss, The Dangerous Passion: Why Jealousy Is as Necessary as Love and Sex

“The more committed partner is generally less desirable. Studies show that the less desirable partner becomes more jealous.”
― David M. Buss, The Dangerous Passion: Why Jealousy Is as Necessary as Love and Sex

“Men’s and women’s mating strategies differ profoundly. Women place a premium on commitment and all of the cues to commitment, most centrally emotional involvement and love. Men have evolved a greater desire for sexual variety, which produces tremendous conflict between the sexes, for it violates women’s desire for intimate involvement. Because youth and beauty are so strongly correlated with fertility in women, men have evolved a strong desire for women who embody these qualities. Finally, men value sexual fidelity in a partner, for any infidelity on a woman’s part puts her mate’s paternity at risk. Men’s and women’s sexual strategies provide the foundation for the psychological design of jealousy.”
― David M. Buss, The Dangerous Passion: Why Jealousy Is as Necessary as Love and Sex

“Absence of jealousy signals lack of love.”
― David M. Buss, The Dangerous Passion: Why Jealousy Is as Necessary as Love and Sex

“Fears are like physical pain. Although they feel unpleasant, they help us to avoid the events that interfere with our strategies of survival.”
― David M. Buss, The Dangerous Passion: Why Jealousy Is as Necessary as Love and Sex

“Given the prevalence of snake fears among humans and our closest genetic relatives, chimpanzees, it is reasonable to believe that those who were indifferent to dangerous snakes were more likely to die and less likely to become our ancestors.”
― David M. Buss, The Dangerous Passion: Why Jealousy Is as Necessary as Love and Sex

“In humans, guarding a bond must last more than days, months, or even years because love can last a lifetime. The dangerous emotion of jealousy evolved to fill this void. Love and jealousy are intertwined passions. They depend on each other and feed on each other.”
― David M. Buss, The Dangerous Passion: Why Jealousy Is as Necessary as Love and Sex

“Excessive jealousy can be extraordinarily destructive. But moderate jealousy, not an excess or an absence, signals commitment.”
― David M. Buss, The Dangerous Passion: Why Jealousy Is as Necessary as Love and Sex

“Since an inability to satisfy a partner sexually causes marital unhappiness, and marital unhappiness causes divorce, it is reasonable to conclude that sexual dissatisfaction raises the likelihood of breaking up. Sexual jealousy, triggered by a perceived inability to please a partner sexually, may be a coping device designed to fend off this impending threat—an evolved product of error management, helping to prevent a permanent defection. By getting jealous when a partner is perceived to be sexually dissatisfied, a man effectively steps up his mate guarding tactics in an attempt to ward off the threat of losing her.”
― David M. Buss, The Dangerous Passion: Why Jealousy Is as Necessary as Love and Sex

“Another circumstance that might evoke a man’s jealousy is his inability to sexually satisfy his partner. Over evolutionary time, women mated to men they found sexually wanting sometimes sought satisfaction in another man’s arms, either temporarily through an affair or permanently through divorce and remarriage. This ancestral condition may have sculpted a psychological sensitivity in men to their ability to sexually satisfy their wives. A man’s concern over his wife’s sexual orgasm is sometimes attributed to “masculine insecurity.” But it may instead reflect an accurate perception that her lack of satisfaction may lead her to leave. The phenomenon of women “faking orgasm” may symbolically assure the husband of sexual fidelity. The psychiatric record is filled with cases depicting men’s insecurity about their ability to satisfy their wives.”
― David M. Buss, The Dangerous Passion: Why Jealousy Is as Necessary as Love and Sex

“Evolution refers to change over time in organic design. Characteristics, or “design features,” that help an organism to survive and reproduce, relative to other organisms with different design features, get represented in future generations more than characteristics that are neutral or that impede survival and reproduction.”
― David M. Buss, The Dangerous Passion: Why Jealousy Is as Necessary as Love and Sex

“Cultures in tropical paradises that are entirely free of jealousy exist only in the romantic minds of optimistic anthropologists, and in fact have never been found.”
― David M. Buss, The Dangerous Passion: Why Jealousy Is as Necessary as Love and Sex