That is a distinct possibility. I just thought that bit of info was interesting. Since there is no way to nail down an average for when couples get together.
It is, and not that surprising. Money is kinda a gestalt measure of lots of factors about a person. A person with lots of money is successful, and they are someone who can provide well and so forth. It's not quite as cold as saying "If you're broke they aren't interested" it's more that successful people are both attractive and wealthy.
It is a lay over from the ancient times when labor was exchanged for a chance to procreate, so instead of labor we use money. And so modern humans are exactly like the originals from a couple hundred thousand years ago, with the exception that they don't have to worry about all the problems that the first ones did. Evolution and what stays, means that we have largely not changed in that time in terms of our mating practices. Also I don't know many that find politicians to be all that attractive, so it has to be the money. (We all know how hard they work in terms of labor).
Oh actually it's not the money at all. It's power, the ultimate aphrodisiac. Power is about the only thing above money when you're looking for someone who's both attractive and successful. The powerful often don't have all that much money, but they have something even better than that. Did you know that Henry Kissinger was a sex symbol? Seriously, look it up. It's true. And it sure as hell wasn't because of the man's looks or his magnetic personality. The guy was literally a war criminal! But he was powerful. One of the most powerful men on the planet in fact. And, well, it's understandable why anyone would want a piece of that.
If you think the goings on of humans falling for each other is simple then maybe you should apply your talents to string theory
No, I agree. 99% of human behavior is pretty unremarkable. Very very little of the "romance" behavior is uniquely human, our closest relatives have a very similar emotional palette. It seems to be a case of convergent evolution, as apes are not the only animals that behave this way.
Wow, really? You think that apes sit around wondering if the one they like likes them back? We're the only species that can just ignore evolution; that has any concept of following your heart. That's a real thing. Do you go out with someone who excites you and understands you or someone who bores you to tears but who will always be able to provide for you? The fact this is even a discussion kinda proves that what's going on for people is way more complicated than that. We actually have a concept of being happy in a relationship, weighted as important as having kids and surviving. Women certainly don't exclusively go for the father/provider. Men certainly don't exclusively go for young and fertile. That there is even a discussion to be had says that we are much more complex than evolutionary pressures. It's only unremarkable to an outsider; to someone with no investment and no interest in what's going on. On the inside; not knowing how someone else feels is something excruciatingly complex. Almost everything about relationships is built on trust, you can never know for sure. Falling for someone makes you hugely emotionally vulnerable; you can feel your skin prickle when they talk to you, feel your heart rate speeding up. Love is visceral and scary and heartrending. And you think that's something facile? Something unremarkable? It's the most remarkable thing that humans do. It's what makes us more than animals. Love matters man.
Everything you said there can be applied to chimps, dogs, bears, whales, elephants, even some more distance relatives in the avian group. All of them stress over social pressures and norms and have other individuals they have a range of feelings towards. Evolutionary pressure applies to general overall behavior. Individual behavior can be easily attributed to chaos theory. There is a reason psychology works so well, humans all think remarkably alike, because how we think is dependent on the initial conditions of our brain and molded from there, but even chaos theory can put limits on how far you can stray from the seed. You are talking about love or feelings or things, but those are all emergent proprieties of the chaos. You don't really love your wife. You only love one thing: oxycodin.
We're not the only species that ignores evolution because we do not ignore evolution. Lots of other animals only take a single partner, and plenty of other animals operate on pheromones as we do. Love is just a mixture of chemicals in the brain saying "this person is good for you", even though they may not be.
I think two weeks is fine in fiction. The characters tend to be thrown together into very high-pressure situations, which plausibly creates strong and intense bonds in a short amount of time. But as @Iain Aschendale says, if readers find it too quick then it doesn't matter what happens in other books - it's an issue in yours. Have you had other readers? If one reader found it unbelievable but another nine think it's fine, I wouldn't change it. You can't please everybody. I don't believe in love at first sight and I roll my eyes at books with insta-love. Insta-attraction, fine. Love forged in an intense situation over a short period of time? Fine. But looking at someone and thinking, "They're the one"... nah. FWIW I write romance and favour realistic timescales. My better manuscripts have the couples falling in love over a period of several months. The one in which it happens within a few weeks was the only one I had negative comments about the romance itself: my agent said she didn't fall in love with the couple like she had with my others, and she's right. It's less believable.
I'm going to answer Hasilme because he was more concise, but this answer applies @newjerseyrunner too. I didn't mean ignoring evolution by having a single partner. I meant picking a specific partner who is less evolutionary fit but who makes you happy. That is counter to evolutionary pressures. And yet it makes people happy, and happiness matters more to us than having strong offspring. Consciousness is more than brain chemistry. Sorry, it is. There's reasons why we can't just medicate psychological problems out of existence. There's a reason why we sit and do talk therapy instead of testing brain function. If you are depressed you visit a psychiatrist, not a neurologist. And if love is just brain chemistry anyway; why do we talk about love? Why do we think about love? Why do we tell stories about love? Why do we obsess specifically about love instead of about reproduction? Why does it even matter to us if we are loved in return as long as we feel love ourselves? Love isn't just in your brain; it's a two way thing. It's a relationship. It's you and them. And that's what matters to us. We are not satisfied the same way to be in love with someone and not have them return that feeling. Why is that if this is just a function of brain chemistry? How does another person manage to influence our internal equilibrium to such an extreme degree if this is all just glands and has no basis in cognition? And if this is how you really see the world; do you care if you are loved? Why? Or indeed why not? When you do feel loved do you tell yourself "But it's just brain chemistry, it doesn't mean anything"? Do you see other people pairing off and scoff at them because their happiness is just the product of chemicals anyway? I mean, how could you not? This sort of biology-above-all argument is an argument for nihilism; that nothing means anything and there is no such thing as any emotion. And if you do believe that then try comforting a friend by telling them that they aren't really upset that their child died; it's just their glands playing up. See what they tell you about how real feelings are.
But that would assume that on average, happiness doesn't have evolutionary/survival value. I think that it does. I started to phrase that as "I would argue that it does", and rephrased it, because that suggests lines of logic and maybe evidence, and I'm not going there. So I'm just going to say that I think that it does.
Well that's a fair point, certainly; but that lends credence to the idea that humans are fundamentally different to everything else. Because animals don't have a sense of self-actualization or emotional well being. If they have food, water and can breed they'll be happy forever. Humans on the other hand can have everything they need to survive in comfort and still not be fulfilled. The fact that it's even possible for us to be unhappy while having our necessities catered for implies that we are not just animals.
I really didn't want to get involved in this derail but... Why do you think that? I have a degree in animal behaviour and would strongly disagree!
By all means tell us what else animals need to be happy; and I'll tell you that people can have all of those things and still be suicidal.
We need to sort out your premise first. You say animals have no sense of emotional well-being and then tell us what they need to be happy. Which is it?
I've been watching a lot of videos of Maru the cat, since someone posted a link to one here. Maru seems, arguably, to have a sense of self-actualization. His life ambition seems to be about inserting himself into small containers. This definitely feels like a drive that is far from the purely survival level. Am I making this as a serious argument? Probably not. But it is weird to see a non-human so focused on goals that seem far away from food, water, rest, and sex. It could be argued that this is a weirdly redirected version of the drive for safety and shelter, I suppose. Anyway.
Depends on the animal. A whale? It certainly needs a group to be happy, and they certainly commit suicide if they're depressed. You have to also realize that suicide is a very complex behavior. It both requires a brain powerful enough to recognize that it's it's own entity (self awareness) and that it's capable of killing itself (complex forwards thinking.) In China, they extract bile from bear's stomachs. It's very torturous for the bears. When one escaped it's cage, it killed it's cubs, then took it's own life. Bears are very intelligent animals, she knew exactly what she was doing.
What happened to behavior only being the result of chaos? It's either or. Either things are simply explicable by biology or they are complex and require intelligence.
*sighs* Fine then. No, I don't believe that animals have the same sense of well being as people. Happy?
