And your untouchable face

Despite the somewhat off-putting title and the blurry pinkish color (it's the love!  Slipping away!) I recently read, and appreciated, The Love They Lost: Living with the Legacy of Our Parents' Divorce.  Without going too much into what I got from it personally, I will say that I think any adult child of divorce will benefit from reading the book.  Whether your parents stayed friends (like mine) or had a rough relationship post-divorce this book doesn't attempt to break new ground or propose huge ideas, but instead listens to the stories of various interviewees and provides comfort by normalizing a variety of responses to divorce.  The general gist of the book is that while many of us dealt with our parents divorces as children, new issues and realizations about the divorce can surface when we ourselves are facing decisions about marriage and children.  Worth a look.

On a not unrelated note, I also have been reading Anatomy of Love: A Natural History of Mating, Marriage, and Why We Stray by Helen Fisher. Dr. Fisher is an anthropologist at the American Museum of Natural History and allegedly "explains it all in this four-million-year history of the human species. She demystifies much about romance and pairing that we tend to believe is willful or just plain careless. She offers new explanations for why men and women fall in love, marry, and divorce, and discusses the future of sex in a way that will surprise you." Unfortunately, I was disappointed, and often annoyed, by this book.

I'm obviously no scientist but something about the approach of the book rubbed me the wrong way and constantly left me feeling like it wasn't a legitimate approach. Fisher of just tosses things together - there isn't much of a narrative of flow, it's just "hey, here's a collection of different animals that like bright colors - that's why humans like makeup!" She seems not to talk about culture at all and instead only circles around this vague idea of an evolutionary impulse. For instance when talking about the fact that many species find partners attractive who are able to support them, she says that American women like guys who have nice cars, etc. OK, I get what she's saying, but that's a really broad statement...and a pretty surface one. Does this vary amongst cultural groups? Has it always been true, or have there been times in American history where it is truer than others? It's this sort of sweeping generalization that continually rubbed me the wrong way.

In addition, it's completely heterocentric.  There is a discussion later in the book about homosexuality, but why couldn't it be part of the first general few chapters about flirting and attraction?  Why are all the examples from those chapters "man and woman" and "him and her"?  Totally unnecessary and not reflective of the scope of sexuality seen in nature - both human and otherwise.