There's a lot we don't understand - and a lot that's idiosyncratic to individual people and couples.
That's why a lot of research into why we mate is bizarre to the point of incoherence - cultural norms as well as oddities in research methods can create a lot of noise.
Yet it turns out that there is a lot of
Keep in mind that no one study is enough to draw definite, broad conclusions. That's especially true because this research tends to focus on the specific behaviors of heterosexual undergraduate students at the universities where researchers work.
Still, there's a lot of fascinating knowledge out there about our habits of love and attraction.
Here are nine of the most interesting findings: