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Overview

Helen Fisher’s book, Why We Love, is not only a report on her research but also an exploration of the infinite facets of love. She examines why and who we love and how they affect our lives.

We’re surrounded by people who think that the traditional family is dead and gone. However, it’s a very recent concept. For example, love was not always part of marriage in the past. The history of marriage is quite interesting and should be known by more people.

The key points that you will discover in this article include why cavemen invented marriage, how many people wanted more family members and how marrying for love caused hysteria.

Big Idea #1: Marriage was initially a way to establish family ties.

Imagine marrying someone you don’t truly love. That would be scary, right? Most people think that a couple should only get married if they’re in love with each other, so it’s natural to assume that love must exist before marriage can take place.

Marriage has been around for thousands of years. However, love and marriage were actually two separate things until recently.

In medieval Europe, love had a different meaning than it does today. People believed that they should only feel love for their family or friends and not romantic partners.

In India, falling in love was once considered dangerous. It was viewed as antisocial because it could lead people to make irrational decisions and challenge the authority of the family.

So, if marriage wasn’t about the mutual love between two individuals, what was it for? What purpose did it serve? The answer may sound strange to modern ears: marriage was a means of establishing kinship. However, why would people want to do this in the first place?

Well, our ancestors were nomadic travelers who constantly searched for food. In this search, they would sometimes stumble upon strange and potentially hostile groups and a fight would break out. One way to avoid such fights was to marry someone from one group with someone from the other so that they could establish peace instead of threatening each other.

Through intermarriage, complete strangers could become relatives. This helped ensure peace because it established kinships and bonds that prevented war.

Big Idea #2: In order to extend their political and economic power, people would enter into marriage.

For some people, the many benefits of marriage come with a serious drawback: in-laws. However, for our ancient ancestors, new in-laws were worth celebrating. In fact, growing the family through in-laws essentially gave rise to the institution of marriage. Since more in-laws mean more people to trade with and prosper economically, groups with family ties were more likely to survive and thrive.

We can see how this principle works by an odd practice of the Bella Coola and Kwakiutl societies, both located in the Pacific Northwest. If these two groups wanted to trade with each other but couldn’t find a good match for a son or daughter, they would simply establish a marriage contract between someone from one group and something belonging to the other group – like a dog, for instance. This way, they could acquire new in-laws (as in business partners) even if there wasn’t anyone to marry off.

When we look at our own culture today through this lens of exchange relationships rather than kinship relationships it becomes clear that many of our institutions are based on exchanges.

Up until the Middle Ages, marriage served a political purpose. Like in prehistory, it was used to make peace and alliances. It also helped extend power.