17: Dr. Lisle on Polyamory, Pair Bonds, and Love | Live Caller

A listener named Nigel calls in convinced he's found a third option between monogamy and casual sex: deep, meaningful romantic connection with more than one person at the same time. Dr. Lisle tells him it's not a strategy that flies, and he explains exactly why your female partner's brain cannot register "deep meaning" and "shared with others" in the same breath. What follows is one of the clearest explanations of human mating psychology in the entire archive. In this extended caller episode, Dr. Lisle walks through the two mating strategies that live inside every human, why the egalitarian tribe described in books like Sex at Dawn never existed, how women calibrate male gene quality through looks and smell, why homosexuality persists in the gene pool, and why the "love chip" running in your brain was only engineered to last about five years. He also addresses hybrid vigor myths, calibration in the mating market, and why long-term marriage is a modern social invention the Stone Age brain was never built for. Key question covered: Can you really have deep, meaningful romantic relationships with more than one person at the same time, and is polyamory a valid evolutionary strategy? Beat Your Genes is co-hosted by evolutionary psychologist Dr. Doug Lisle, PhD and Dr. Nathan Gershfeld, DC. New episodes every other week. YouTube: youtube.com/@BeatYourGenes beatyourgenes.org Doug Lisle: esteemdynamics.com Nathan Gershfeld: fastingescape.com X: @BeatYourGenes Intro and outro: City of Happy Ones. Ferenc Hegedus. Licensed for use. Copyright Beat Your Genes Podcast