Love is blind... but science isn't!

Shakespeare said that love is blind. He was right. Research shows that people in love pay much less visual attention to attractive people than singles.

Jon Maner and colleagues, based at Florida State University, have been testing the theory on students. He said, "We found that when people just thought about being in love with their current partner, their visual attention got repelled, rather than grabbed, by an attractive member of the opposite sex,"

It's true. I'm in love, and I only have eyes for my lover. Everyone else pales into insignificance... even Jonny Depp, and that's going some! The last thing on my mind is looking for someone else.

Maner and his team believe this phenomenum might help explain why people who are in love don't tend to wander off in search of other mates. Joseph Forgas at the University of New South Wales commented, "Psychologists have long had a problem explaining the functions of romantic love: a very strong emotion that sometimes seems to take over our lives and lead to what appear to be irrational feelings and actions. What these studies suggest is that romantic love serves a very important function, tempering our natural desire to pay attention to, and to continuously seek out, the best available mate."

In other words, we've probably evolved this subconscious visual rejection of attractive potential partners because committed relationships give our children a big evolutionary advantage. As humans evolved over the millennia, long term monogamous relationships improved the chances that children would make it to adulthood. The strong - the children of monogamous parents - survived and carried on a tradition that eventually became hard wired into our subconscious.

Love is blind... but science certainly isn't!