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Dr. Anna Machin

lines on the record: 189
first: 2025-07-03
most recent: 2025-07-03
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

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“And narrows it down, that we don't know exactly whether, for example, a gay parent, two male parents, maybe there's a little bit missing because of a lack of female input, or whether with two female parents is a mac of because there's no male direct male input. The other thing to say is around these families, there are very few gay parenting families where there are no women involved at all.”
2025-07-03 · The Diary of a CEO · World Expert on Fatherhood & Love: The Truth About Monogamy, Breakups & The Science of Love! Dr. Anna Machin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It's not that you don't necessarily use font. I mean, the same argument you say you don't necessarily need a mother in a gay parenting relationship with the fathers. What it's saying is Heterosexual relationship, we get this complementarity. We can't get that in a gay relationship. So what we've got instead is this slighted adaptation. Unfortunately, the studies haven't been done sufficiently on gay parenting, which is a massive omission. Afraid science always starts with heterosexual”
2025-07-03 · The Diary of a CEO · World Expert on Fatherhood & Love: The Truth About Monogamy, Breakups & The Science of Love! Dr. Anna Machin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, where we've got one of the adults missing, mum or dad, it will adapt to say, okay, the remaining adult, or whether even if there's two dads or two mums, that primary caretaking one, their brain will alter to make sure that kid start gets one of its needs.”
2025-07-03 · The Diary of a CEO · World Expert on Fatherhood & Love: The Truth About Monogamy, Breakups & The Science of Love! Dr. Anna Machin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, arguably, neither is a man, because if we look to look in probably a gay woman's brain, we'd see the same thing. And it's not saying that they're not paying unique roles in a heterosexual relationship, they absolutely do. But what it's showing you, human children are incredibly difficult to raise. They are pretty much apart from maybe dolphins and a bit of an ape, the most intense kid to raise because they're born so helpless. And the only way a human baby can survive is if it gets enough input. So the human brain, the human parenting brain is astonishingly plastic. And it will adapt to make sure that that child gets what it needs.”
2025-07-03 · The Diary of a CEO · World Expert on Fatherhood & Love: The Truth About Monogamy, Breakups & The Science of Love! Dr. Anna Machin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Need it just to have a conversation, but you also need it to spot somebody who's going to maybe do your bad in some way, cheat, lie, whatever those sorts of things. Again, important in the social world. And his peaking activations are there. Again, mum does have some peaks, some activation here, but it's not as intense. And that underpins those two different roles. So dad's attachment is Neo, mum's attachment is very ancient and nurturing. If you have a gay primary caretaking father without a mother involved, what you see is you see both bits light up at the same intensity. So he gets the dad activation, obviously, being a man, but he also gets the mum's activation. And what's really absolutely fascinating is if we look at that brain, there is a new, a brand new neural connection between Bit of the brain here”
2025-07-03 · The Diary of a CEO · World Expert on Fatherhood & Love: The Truth About Monogamy, Breakups & The Science of Love! Dr. Anna Machin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“He does have some activation here. Obviously, he does. He's very capable of nurturing and protecting. But actually, the peak in activation is in the neocortex. This is this bit of the brain. This is the conscious brain. It's much younger. And that shows you that fathering is younger. It's about half a million years old. And we see activation here in the social part of the brain. Okay, so this is the prefrontal cortex, which is here, and the orbital frontal cortex, which is kind of above your eyes. And that's where all your social skills sit, your ability to do everything socially. And then at the back of the brain, we have two areas at the back of the brain which are linked to empathy, which is the basis of relationships and mentalizing. So that's that ability to know someone's intention.”
2025-07-03 · The Diary of a CEO · World Expert on Fatherhood & Love: The Truth About Monogamy, Breakups & The Science of Love! Dr. Anna Machin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We see a peak in activation at the core of the brain here. Very ancient. It's partly there because mothering is as old as time. So it's in the ancient unconscious part of the brain. But this is where nurture is, attachment, risk detection, all those things you need to be able to do. And we get that peak there. However, if we look at dad's activation,”
2025-07-03 · The Diary of a CEO · World Expert on Fatherhood & Love: The Truth About Monogamy, Breakups & The Science of Love! Dr. Anna Machin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“and the kid would go home my football coach or my maths teacher or my mate John's dad or they often recognize father figures they don't call them that but they recognize men in their lives who they look up to who support them who the parents or the mum doesn't even think about so that's the first thing to say secondly we know with gay fathers where a mum isn't in a caretaking role the brain adapts Okay, so what happens if we put heterosexual couple in a scanner? And we say look at this video of your child. We see different peaks in activation in the brain. So in mum.”
2025-07-03 · The Diary of a CEO · World Expert on Fatherhood & Love: The Truth About Monogamy, Breakups & The Science of Love! Dr. Anna Machin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I haven't because I don't study mothers as a massive amount of work done on. And I'm kind of filling the gaps in terms of fathers. To be absolutely honest, the roles of a mom and a dad in a heterosexual relationship have evolved to kind of complement each other. So they don't mirror each other. They don't do the same thing. They complement each other. So what happens when we take one of those away for that child? There are two things to say to that. First of all, in most children's lives, we talk about single parent families and what we're talking about is a single parent raising that child. But actually, if we look outside that particular dyad, that particular couple, and we look at who else is inputting into that child's life. So quite often I study it obviously in relation to absent fathers. What we'll tend to find is that child has other people in their life who are men who input. Even if the mum hasn't recognized it, one of the most powerful studies I read wasn't saying to a mum, where are the father figures in your child's life, was saying to the kid, who are the important men in your life?”
2025-07-03 · The Diary of a CEO · World Expert on Fatherhood & Love: The Truth About Monogamy, Breakups & The Science of Love! Dr. Anna Machin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“They'll say while my mum does stuff for me, she makes sure I've got my favorite cereal. She makes sure that I get picked up from school and I can have my play dates. And she makes sure my sports kit is washed. I mean, it's all terribly gender specific. I do apologize, but this is the data. If you say to the kid, how do you know you're important to your dad? He spends time with me. And we think it's probably cultural because in our culture, dads are still more likely to be out at work. So the precious thing you have as a man is your time. And if I give my time to you as a child, particularly if I do something you're interested in and I accept you as an individual and say, yeah, let's be enthusiastic about what you want to do, then that is what underpins how you feel, how important that child feels. And that underpins their self-esteem.”
2025-07-03 · The Diary of a CEO · World Expert on Fatherhood & Love: The Truth About Monogamy, Breakups & The Science of Love! Dr. Anna Machin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yes, so because fathers underpin resilience through starting with Rough and Tumble Play but carrying on through that child's life and doing stimulatory activities with that kid, they're the ones that underpin mental resilience. And obviously mental resilience is particularly key for mental health. Also because they underpin scaffolding the child's ability to operate in the social world. A lot of the disorders we see in teenage young people are associated with social situations. So social anxiety, eating disorders, self-harm, depression, loneliness, they tend to all exist within the social sphere. And because of that, that's why it's actually the relationship you have with your dad, particularly the attachment relationship you have. So if it's a nice secure attachment relationship, you are much less likely to suffer from those disorders. And also particularly how much time your dad spends with.”
2025-07-03 · The Diary of a CEO · World Expert on Fatherhood & Love: The Truth About Monogamy, Breakups & The Science of Love! Dr. Anna Machin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I will say to Dads because they do worry about it, and I understand why they worry about it because they believe very much the testosterone is the male hormone. It is and it isn't. You know, women have testosterone and it's one of the sex hormones. It really isn't associated with things like stress. You might find things like your... You have a tendency to aggression, you might find that drops a little bit. And as I say, you become more empathetic and you become more emotionally vulnerable. But it's really, it's not going to impact a huge amount physiologically in you. So really don't worry about it. And also, you get the most amazing rewarding bonds with your kid in return. So you drop the testosterone, but you get this astonishing bond. So it swings and roundabouts.”
2025-07-03 · The Diary of a CEO · World Expert on Fatherhood & Love: The Truth About Monogamy, Breakups & The Science of Love! Dr. Anna Machin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Only if you don't have contact with your child. So, if you don't have contact with your child, you don't have to co reside with your child. These studies have been done across cultures, including cultures where co-residence doesn't occur. As long as you are in contact with your child, no, they won't because you are still maintained in looking after that child. If you lose contact with your child, yes, they will go back up because the evolutionary drive is to then reproduce again.”
2025-07-03 · The Diary of a CEO · World Expert on Fatherhood & Love: The Truth About Monogamy, Breakups & The Science of Love! Dr. Anna Machin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Contact by a lot of men saying, but I love weight training. Is going to ruin my? No, it's not. It doesn't do anything like that. Think of the number of Olympic athletes who have kids, you're fine. What it does do is it increases your emotional vulnerability. So quite often with fathers, you will hear they're more empathetic after birth. And also they find it harder to deal with emotionally difficult things, particularly like on the news. Suddenly things on the news will make them cry when they never cried before.”
2025-07-03 · The Diary of a CEO · World Expert on Fatherhood & Love: The Truth About Monogamy, Breakups & The Science of Love! Dr. Anna Machin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, this is so shamogamy. We also see changes in oxytocin rises. If you live with your pregnant partner, it will start to rise in pregnancy as well your partners. And that's there to make sure, first of all, that your bond to your partner titans because you're about to introduce somebody new into your relationship and it's not going to be easy. So we need that to be tight. But it's also to start preparing you for afterbirth. We know that vasopressin also rises, vasopressin is a sort of form of oxytocin, but in non-human mammals it's associated with defense of the nest. And we think in male humans it's to do with protection and motivation to protect that child. And finally, we see an increase in a parenting hormone known as prolactin. And prolactin is only seen in males in species that have investing fathers. And prolactin again is a parenting hormone that motivates you to care. So you go through this massive change in hormones. A lot of men say they don't notice the drop in testosterone in terms of things like strength. So I get.”
2025-07-03 · The Diary of a CEO · World Expert on Fatherhood & Love: The Truth About Monogamy, Breakups & The Science of Love! Dr. Anna Machin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We think that people were probably socially monogamous for a period of time which matched the period of time they needed to ensure that our child's going to survive. So whilst in our, you know, in our culture, it's like, no, you will marry till you will be monogamous till you die. In evolutionary history, that probably wasn't the case. Fathers might have stuck around for probably at least until childhood, which is between about 5 and 10, they might have stayed on into the teenage years depending upon how difficult the environment was. And also this doesn't mean they weren't having sex somewhere else.”
2025-07-03 · The Diary of a CEO · World Expert on Fatherhood & Love: The Truth About Monogamy, Breakups & The Science of Love! Dr. Anna Machin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I will explain why that is as well in a minute. So that's oxytocin dopamine. We also know just generally from studies where the men of fathers or not, men with lower testosterone tend to be more motivated to care for children. So even if you're not a father, if we present you with a crying baby, men with very high testosterone, the reaction to that is mainly aversive like, okay, just take it away from me. And also they get quite frustrated. They find it quite difficult to deal with this a noise. Men with low testosterone tend to be more motivated to pick the baby up, try and soothe the baby and deal with it. And whilst it's a difficult noise to hear, they tend not to experience negative emotions in relation to it. So that dropping testosterone is really, really important. Over evolutionary time.”
2025-07-03 · The Diary of a CEO · World Expert on Fatherhood & Love: The Truth About Monogamy, Breakups & The Science of Love! Dr. Anna Machin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Talk about it in a minute. Okay, so this is so you focus in on that child. Testosterone is also, when it's very high, it blocks the bonding hormones. So dopamine and oxytocin in particular have less of an effect. So the chestal strain drops also to enable you to start bonding with that child because you are behind in terms of bonding with that child because mum's gone through pregnancy in most cases and given birth. So she's had a head start. She's had a load of oxytocin dopamine and beta endorphin during the birth process. You haven't. So we need to release those hormones as soon as we can. One of the ways we do that is testosterone drops so that oxytocin and dopamine are more effective. Which explains why.”
2025-07-03 · The Diary of a CEO · World Expert on Fatherhood & Love: The Truth About Monogamy, Breakups & The Science of Love! Dr. Anna Machin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yes, you have so when a man enters a long-term relationship for the first time, he will experience a drop in testosterone. Because testosterone is a really great chemical. If you're dating because it makes you more competitive and it makes you more attractive if you're in a heterosexual relationship. So it makes you more attractive. But when you start living with someone or being in a long-term relationship, we kind of need you to shift your focus from the horizon and looking for another date. And we need you to focus on that one person because from an evolutionary point of view, that person is going to be the person you have kids with. And we quite like you to stick around and look after those kids. So that happens. When you become a father for the first time, it drops again. And it can be up to 30%. So you lose a third of your testosterone. And the reason for that, again, is we need you to focus in on the family. We can't have you looking to the horizon for another mate. We need to focus on because we know that children need input from more than just mum to survive.”
2025-07-03 · The Diary of a CEO · World Expert on Fatherhood & Love: The Truth About Monogamy, Breakups & The Science of Love! Dr. Anna Machin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It would change in two ways. There's the biological changes you were done to go. So this is something that we didn't know about 20 years ago. And I and other colleagues around the world have looked into this. And the reason why we looked into it is because, as I said, very rare to have human fathering, really rare. 5% of mammals. And the way evolution works is it generally doesn't cause a whole new behavior to evolve without giving you some sort of head start in being able to do it. And so over time in the last half a million years as fatherhood evolved, men's brains change, their psychology changes, their hormones change when they become fathers. To give you that prep to be a parent. So first of all, we see hormonal changes. The most studied, and I think probably the most significant is the drop in testosterone that occurs when you become a father. So you will have already experienced a drop in testosterone because you're in a long-term relationship. No, no, I haven't.”
2025-07-03 · The Diary of a CEO · World Expert on Fatherhood & Love: The Truth About Monogamy, Breakups & The Science of Love! Dr. Anna Machin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yes. So women get their peaking activate of oxytocin release from nurturing their children, particularly from hugging them. And kids get their peaking oxytocin when they interact with mum from mum's cuddles, not from playing with mum. So naturally, kids kind of gravitate towards dads when they want to have fun. And that's the kind of thing he will choose to do with his child. Something that's physical, something that's stimulatory. And that's what's really interesting. And that's in a way why dad's kind of got the moniker of, oh, you're the fun parent, you do all the fun stuff. But actually, play is.”
2025-07-03 · The Diary of a CEO · World Expert on Fatherhood & Love: The Truth About Monogamy, Breakups & The Science of Love! Dr. Anna Machin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Okay, so when you're a parent, you will get a peakin oxytocin from certain behaviors you do with your child. You'll always get a bit of oxytocin because anything you do with them is probably very nice apart from maybe the tantrums. But if you're a dad, that peak in oxytocin comes from playing with your kid. And then when we look at kids, the peak oxytocin release, they get when they're playing with their dads. Again, isn't when daddy gives me a cuddle, which is nice, but I don't get a big release. It's when I play with daddy.”
2025-07-03 · The Diary of a CEO · World Expert on Fatherhood & Love: The Truth About Monogamy, Breakups & The Science of Love! Dr. Anna Machin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Starting to underpin some teaching about social skills because the basis of all social behavior is reciprocity is give and take. And when we play with someone, it only remains fun if that reciprocity is reasonably balanced. You learn empathy because you've got to work out, is this still fun for the other person or are they no longer enjoying this? Have I gone too far? You learn to deal with challenge. Rough and tumble play can be pretty extreme. It can be a little bit painful. It can be a little bit risky. And so you're saying to the kid, assess the risk, assess the risk. Here's the challenge. Can you deal with the challenge? And all of that underpins that child's neural development, first of all, but also you're showing by example social skills. I'm saying reciprocity. But what's really interesting, and I love this piece of research, and this came out from a group in Israel headed by Ruth Feldman, who is a pioneer of neuroscience in terms of children and their parents. She found that dads and children have co-evolved to prefer to play with each other.”
2025-07-03 · The Diary of a CEO · World Expert on Fatherhood & Love: The Truth About Monogamy, Breakups & The Science of Love! Dr. Anna Machin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And men seem to be drawn to it. Not all men do it, and we'll talk about the people who don't find it comfortable, but most men, when we just tell them to go and do something with their kid, they're not going to do some colouring. They're going to take the kid outside. They're going to throw it in the air. They're going to chase it around the garden. They're going to aeroplane it over their head. They're going to come in. They're going to bounce on the sofa. They're going to do a little wrestling. There's lots of shrieking. There's lots of energy. And we see pretty much all Western fathers do that. And the reason for it is twofold. First of all, it's a very quick way of bonding with your child. Dads have to bond through interaction. They don't have the head start of childbirth, which is a whole tsunami of bonding all mates. So they do it through interaction. And rough and double players are really time efficient way to do it. You get a massive tidal weight of bonding hormones because it's so physical. So you get beta endorphin because there's lots of touch. There's lots of giggling. So all of these things release dopamine, beta endorphin oxytocin. They bond you tightly to the charge you're playing with and the child gets them as well. But also it's...”
2025-07-03 · The Diary of a CEO · World Expert on Fatherhood & Love: The Truth About Monogamy, Breakups & The Science of Love! Dr. Anna Machin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It's several things. It's partly chemical. So we know that one of the earliest behaviors you will see a father do with a chart from about six months on is a thing called rough and tumble play.”
2025-07-03 · The Diary of a CEO · World Expert on Fatherhood & Love: The Truth About Monogamy, Breakups & The Science of Love! Dr. Anna Machin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“instilling appropriate learning behavior. Being in the classroom, taking in what's going on, cooperating with other people, cooperating with the teacher, not disturbing everybody else, that kind of thing. They are the ones that underpin that.”
2025-07-03 · The Diary of a CEO · World Expert on Fatherhood & Love: The Truth About Monogamy, Breakups & The Science of Love! Dr. Anna Machin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And you're going to go out into the world, and you're going to see what the world is like. And I'm going to be the person who gives you the resilience and gives you the social skills and gives you what you need to be able to do that. And you can always come back to me when it goes wrong. So what we say with a father's attachment is it's based on nurture and challenge. Mum is very nurturing, dad is stimulation. I'm going to stimulate you and you're going to go and do something amazing. And that is why you need fathers because those outcomes we have for kids who don't have an input from a father figure. The reason why they struggle with antisocial behavior is it's because dads are the ones that underpin social behavior pro-social behavior like helping, sharing, caring, emotional regulation and inhibition. You need to learn to regulate your emotions and inhibit them appropriately to get on in this world. You can't go into school and you cannot go into the workplace screaming your head off when you get angry. That's not how it works. We know that fathers when it comes to education, both mums and dads have a pretty equal input in terms of academic success, but fathers have a greater role.”
2025-07-03 · The Diary of a CEO · World Expert on Fatherhood & Love: The Truth About Monogamy, Breakups & The Science of Love! Dr. Anna Machin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The neural connections, the biology, the physiology that enables you to leave your family and go out into the world and be successful to thrive and survive. And it starts when a baby is born. So the attachments that a dad and a mum build to that baby are just as powerful as each other, but they are different. So a mum's attachment is based upon nurture. And what we tend to say with a mum and child attachment is it's quite exclusive. So if you imagine a mother, her major role with that child is to nurture and protect. And so when she's with that child, she will hold that child to her. It's very inward-looking. With dads, they do nurture. Absolutely. They nurture, they do all that kind of thing. But they use that nurturing to build confidence in that child as a secure base, which is what attachment's about. And what they actually do is they turn the child to the world and they go, okay, you're safe with me. I am always here, but I'm going to give you a push.”
2025-07-03 · The Diary of a CEO · World Expert on Fatherhood & Love: The Truth About Monogamy, Breakups & The Science of Love! Dr. Anna Machin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Where survival is reasonably secure, but economic survival is very on edge. Then in those environments, we tend to see fathers again not particularly hands-on in terms of caretaking or nurturing. They are the person in that kid's life who's going to teach them the skills they need to go forward and be economically successful. So if you live in a pastoral environment, then they will be taken into the field and they will be taught how to do that role and then they will be taken to the markets and they will be taught how to negotiate and build the social networks they need. And then in our environment where economics is reasonably secure comparatively survival is reasonably secure comparatively then we are social survival is important. In our world it really is who you know but what I found regardless of how you were doing it was all fathers have one major major role and it's a bit of a technical term and I'll explain what it is. They scaffold the child's entry into the world beyond the family. And what that means is they are the parent when it comes to developing the skills.”
2025-07-03 · The Diary of a CEO · World Expert on Fatherhood & Love: The Truth About Monogamy, Breakups & The Science of Love! Dr. Anna Machin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“a reason for that so Men have a very specific role in child development, and I wasn't expecting to find this when I first started, but I've looked at farthering around the world in many, many different cultures and how men arrive at that role is very different. The fathering role is much more diverse than the mothering role. It's partly because the mother's role is very tied by biology, by pregnancy, childbirth, etc. Whereas men, we call it a facultative role. And what that means is it's much more flexible. It's much more open to responding to changes in the environment and adapting to them to help the family survive. And we see that all the way around the world. So dads do it lots of different ways. It really depends in your environment what the major risk is. So in our environment, we don't really have survival risks in our environment, not to the extent that they do in some cultures. So as a dad in societies where survival, day-to-day survival is a problem, whether it's a war zone or whether there are major, major disease issues, then a dad's role there is to keep that kid alive. If we look at other environmental...”
2025-07-03 · The Diary of a CEO · World Expert on Fatherhood & Love: The Truth About Monogamy, Breakups & The Science of Love! Dr. Anna Machin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Okay, first of all, no, it's not true. It's absolutely fundamental, I think, for a child to get some input from a father. I'm going to define father. In the West, we were a bit obsessed with the term biological father, and we always describe that as the real father. Even if he's not around, even if that child has been bought up by a stepfather, an adoptive father, what we call a social father, which is a grandfather and uncle, a best friend and older brother, when I say father, people assume I mean Biological father. I don't. I mean the man or men who have stepped in and done the job. That is the father. So I want to make that very clear, first of all. We know that young people who grow up without that input The risks of having negative outcomes is much higher without having a male role model or some male role models in your life. We know that they are much more likely to display antisocial behavior. They are much more likely to turn to crime. They are much more likely to have addiction issues. They are much more likely to have mental health issues. And their outcomes in terms of relationships going through their life in other aspects of their lives are much more negative.”
2025-07-03 · The Diary of a CEO · World Expert on Fatherhood & Love: The Truth About Monogamy, Breakups & The Science of Love! Dr. Anna Machin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Because we've done studies on it. We've asked, we use the same satisfaction scales about how satisfied are you in your relationship with various aspects of that relationship? And they come out as being absolutely no different.”
2025-07-03 · The Diary of a CEO · World Expert on Fatherhood & Love: The Truth About Monogamy, Breakups & The Science of Love! Dr. Anna Machin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It really depends. Do you know something that one of the major misnomers in love research is that there is much difference, that there's this major difference between men and women? There really isn't. There really isn't. It's more about who you are at your core, more about attachment style, personality, your life experience, your genetics, all these sorts of things are much more of a factor in whether or not you will be comfortable monogamy or any of those aspects than whether or not you're male or female.”
2025-07-03 · The Diary of a CEO · World Expert on Fatherhood & Love: The Truth About Monogamy, Breakups & The Science of Love! Dr. Anna Machin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think some people are. Happier with monogamy. We know that partly from a genetic point of view. So there are some people, no, I don't think struggle with it. But I do think a reasonably significant number of people probably do.”
2025-07-03 · The Diary of a CEO · World Expert on Fatherhood & Love: The Truth About Monogamy, Breakups & The Science of Love! Dr. Anna Machin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The boundaries are. Has anybody upset anybody else? So it's very, very open. And they also believe that, and in some ways the support from this, you know, we are able to love many friends at once. We're able to love many children at once. They say, actually, they don't split their heart. It's not a zero-sum game that you get 50% and you get 50%. Actually, that each time they take somebody into their lives, their heart just gets bigger.”
2025-07-03 · The Diary of a CEO · World Expert on Fatherhood & Love: The Truth About Monogamy, Breakups & The Science of Love! Dr. Anna Machin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“For the polyamorous people I've interviewed, particularly for my book, that was the major thing. Is that they were very happy in the relationship. The relationships were going really, really well. But what was difficult was being open about it, particularly with, for example, talking to one woman who was like older members of the family. So she was going to a family wedding. And when she went to these occasions with this family, she could only ever take one of her partners. It always had to be the same partner because they had no idea the other partner existed. Because that would be very difficult for them to take. Also, we know from studies that have been done looking at people's attitudes to polyamorous people, they are seen as immoral. They are seen as unloving. They're seen as cold because they have this ability to love lots of money. So they can't truly love anybody because they're splitting their heart between all these different people. Polyamorous people look at it the other way. As I've said, they actually think it's very moral because they're being truthful. Polyamorous relationships tend to be based on very open communication. That's one of the rules is that is everybody still happy? Is everybody still happy with it?”
2025-07-03 · The Diary of a CEO · World Expert on Fatherhood & Love: The Truth About Monogamy, Breakups & The Science of Love! Dr. Anna Machin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Non monogamy, that's just based on sex. So you're not spreading your love relationship, that emotional investment, that emotional intimacy amongst more than one person. Polyamory is being open and having several sexual partners and also having several emotionally intimate relationships at the same time. And I think people struggle more with that because of the issues of jealousy and the fact that that goes quite strongly against even our social ideas about monogamy where we all sort of live in pairs.”
2025-07-03 · The Diary of a CEO · World Expert on Fatherhood & Love: The Truth About Monogamy, Breakups & The Science of Love! Dr. Anna Machin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, absolutely. And that's why we have a reasonably high rate of people who have extramarital affairs. It's also why people who are polyamorous, or indeed have open relationships, say, actually, it's the more truthful way of being human. Because all they're doing is following their drives. And they actually believe that it's more moral. Because if you put forward a monogamous front and you have an affair, you are lying to people. You are keeping a secret from people you profess to love. Whereas if you're polyamorous or you're in an open relationship, you're actually openly saying, this is my drive, this is the reality, and being truthful with everybody about it. So you can enter a relationship with me or not, on the basis of truth. And that's what a lot of polyamorous people particularly will argue, is that they're really representing what is, for most people, an ancestral state. Polyamory is difficult because unlike open relationships, open relationships such as swinging or being open, we call them concerns.”
2025-07-03 · The Diary of a CEO · World Expert on Fatherhood & Love: The Truth About Monogamy, Breakups & The Science of Love! Dr. Anna Machin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, you tend to get, for example, in certain religions, so in certain forms of Islam, for example, men can have many wives, there are certain tribes which exist within sort of South American and certain areas of Africa where you can have many wives. For example, there are some groups in Nepal, in the Himalayas, where we have what's known as polyandry. So one woman has many husbands. Usually The reason why these different groupings evolved, like monogamy, is it something to do with economics generally. So for example, in Nepal, in these areas, because they still have male inheritance of land, if let's say we've got a family farm and there's five brothers, if all of those five brothers split the inheritance, then that farm would become uneconomic. You wouldn't be able to farm it and make money. So over time, what's evolved is one woman will marry all the brothers so that when they inherit the farm, they will all get, it will carry on passing down, essentially.”
2025-07-03 · The Diary of a CEO · World Expert on Fatherhood & Love: The Truth About Monogamy, Breakups & The Science of Love! Dr. Anna Machin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, monogamy is simply a social construct. It's not something that we've biologically evolved to do. And we know that part, you know, there are many countries in the world where monogamy isn't what is prescribed.”
2025-07-03 · The Diary of a CEO · World Expert on Fatherhood & Love: The Truth About Monogamy, Breakups & The Science of Love! Dr. Anna Machin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You know, mating with another female is not particularly costly to me, so I'll just go and do that over there. And let's hope she can raise them on her own, or maybe her partner will raise them for me. There are very few. So we have monogamy mainly in the West because it's a socially prescribed form of organization. And it was imposed because it is a form of control. It mainly sits in terms of rules, particularly in religion, but also there are many legal rules, for example, in Britain, you can't have two marriages, you can't be a bigamist. And it's about making everybody control. Because if we all just gave in constantly to precisely what our drives were saying, there'd be kind of chaos.”
2025-07-03 · The Diary of a CEO · World Expert on Fatherhood & Love: The Truth About Monogamy, Breakups & The Science of Love! Dr. Anna Machin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Mostly with humans is social monogamy. They live together. But we know that the infidelity rate sits generally at around 50%, so 50% of those households are not sexually monogamous. And in fact, from an evolutionary point of view, being sexually monogamous is a really quite bad idea because you are limiting yourself to a very narrow gene pool. And that's why there are very few creatures in the world that are truly sexually monogamous. When I was doing my master's, my professor studied Gibbons. Gibbons at the time were known to be the monogamous ape. And he studied, he did a really longitudinal study, and he was the first to realize that no, they weren't. They were all sneaking off and doing it behind the rock with somebody else. But they were living together. But the female was going to find some better genes somewhere else. This guy, brilliant parent, not great genes. I'm going to go behind a rock and mate with this really good looking gibbon over here because I'm going to get some good jeans and then he's going to raise the kid. And the guy is like, well, you know, I'm obviously going to have offspring here. But actually.”
2025-07-03 · The Diary of a CEO · World Expert on Fatherhood & Love: The Truth About Monogamy, Breakups & The Science of Love! Dr. Anna Machin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Okay, we have to find two sorts of monogamy. There's sexual monogamy. That is you are exclusive to that other person. Sexually, you have sex with nobody else. And there is social monogamy. And that is you live with that person exclusively. So within the UK, most people, let's say if they have children, are socially monogamous. They live in a house or with their children with two people in it. Whereas sexual monogamy, you can be socially monogamous and not sexually monogamous. So they're two different things. But monogamy, if we talk about it in sort of lay terms, is two people who are exclusive to each other in terms of love, in terms of sex, and in terms of possibly living together. Monogamy itself is a social construct mostly. We are not a monogamous species. They're in fact very few monogamous species in the world. Maybe, I think I read a book the other day that said something like 0.002% of the animals on this planet are monogamous. Because what you will see in the wild and what you see”
2025-07-03 · The Diary of a CEO · World Expert on Fatherhood & Love: The Truth About Monogamy, Breakups & The Science of Love! Dr. Anna Machin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Up with anybody because they haven't had that opportunity to filter monogamy and polyamory. Yes. So can you define both of those words? And the thing that I found really striking is, I think I heard you say that satisfaction in either dynamic there, polyamory or monogamy, is roughly the same because I thought people in monogamous relationships were supposed to be way more happy than people that are in polyamorous relationships. No. At all. So monogamy is a relationship state where there are two people who are”
2025-07-03 · The Diary of a CEO · World Expert on Fatherhood & Love: The Truth About Monogamy, Breakups & The Science of Love! Dr. Anna Machin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“There's like a smorgasbord of people out there that you can carry on flipping or you can make a choice and it's our brains are not set up for that. A hundred years ago when we were trying to find a partner, you would maybe have the people in your village who you grew up with to choose from. If you had a horse, you could maybe have the people in the next village or even a town. Wow. And that was who you chose from. And it was a very small pool. Now you can go anywhere in the world. Turn on your dating app and possibly have, you know, hundreds of people to meet and your brain can't do that. I mean, we can all think about it as well in the context of restaurants. If you go to Thailand, they give you like a catalog. The menu is a catalogue. They're like, we will make anything. Yeah, 45 minutes thinking, do I want fish, chicken, eggs? But then you go to like a London fancy restaurant and there's like, we do this. This is it. So that's why you end up with people who, yes, go on 100 dates and don't actually.”
2025-07-03 · The Diary of a CEO · World Expert on Fatherhood & Love: The Truth About Monogamy, Breakups & The Science of Love! Dr. Anna Machin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“If you were doing it in person, your brain would filter out, let's say there were 100 people in the room, your brain would quite quickly filter out most of them as, no, no, no, no, no, no, maybe one or two might. Because you can't filter in that way on an app, you kind of take the punt on all these dates because you're like, otherwise, how else am I going to actually meet this person? You can't just have a casual chat by the coffee machine at work or, you know, meet them through some friends in the pub, where you would do that assessment without really making that much effort. Whereas because on a dating app, the only way you can meet that person is to actually go on a date with them and do all that, you will end up going on 100 to do that filtering process. So it's partly that as well. And the last thing is the paradox of choice. So we are really, really bad at making choices when there's a lot of options. And the paradox of choice is very powerful in relation to dating apps. Because literally, particularly if you're good looking and you get a lot of matches,”
2025-07-03 · The Diary of a CEO · World Expert on Fatherhood & Love: The Truth About Monogamy, Breakups & The Science of Love! Dr. Anna Machin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Whole process of getting ready to go to the cinema and thinking about my outfit for three days and then going there and being nervous and I didn't have much money so this was like a big thing and then how much you know I almost felt like I fell in love with the person really irrespective just because of the effort I put in I feel like I fell in love with them so so yeah so that's so so it's partly the low cost thing it's partly because all those people that”
2025-07-03 · The Diary of a CEO · World Expert on Fatherhood & Love: The Truth About Monogamy, Breakups & The Science of Love! Dr. Anna Machin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Unless you were serious, to be honest, because otherwise I'll stay at home, I'll do something else. I'll go to the pub with my friends. Whereas now, because we can do it, we can literally go on a dating app anywhere on the tube while we're cooking dinner, while we're watching Netflix anytime you want. It's low cost, low investment. I read a study that showed it was in a different context, but it essentially showed that the amount you invest in something correlates to the amount that you appreciate the thing. Absolutely. They did this study where they let people into a boring forum without having to pass any entry test and then they ask them how much they appreciated the boring forum. And people said it's boring. Yes. And then they got another group of people. They made them go through this sort of rigorous test to get into this boring forum. And then they asked them, how much do you appreciate the forum? They said it's great. I'm obviously paraphrasing there, but it just showed this link between the amount you invest in a process is the more you appreciate it. And I think back to being, I don't know, 14 years old going on my first day and the”
2025-07-03 · The Diary of a CEO · World Expert on Fatherhood & Love: The Truth About Monogamy, Breakups & The Science of Love! Dr. Anna Machin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You very little information to go into that algorithm. You said something really interesting there which kind of dovetails into what I was saying about my friend who's never dated but is struggling in dating. I know a growing number of people that are going on like 100 dates a year and having no luck. And just like mathematically, I go, surely there must have been someone suitable in that pool of 100 people a year that you've met. What is going on here? It's two things, I think. First of all, as I've said, it's the low cost of dating apps. So in the old days when I was dating, going on a date was a real investment of time and energy. So you would probably meet someone at work, you'd meet someone at bar, you'd meet someone through a friend, which was a real blind date, and you'd spend your time thinking, what am I going to wear? And I've got to go somewhere with this person and spend some time with this person, probably some financial investment as well, get myself all ready, spend an evening with them. And that was how you were going to meet somebody. So you invested time and you weren't going to do that.”
2025-07-03 · The Diary of a CEO · World Expert on Fatherhood & Love: The Truth About Monogamy, Breakups & The Science of Love! Dr. Anna Machin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Can get in the room with them, and you can let your brain do what it's really good at half a million years of evolution. That's what you should do because they handicap your brain.”
2025-07-03 · The Diary of a CEO · World Expert on Fatherhood & Love: The Truth About Monogamy, Breakups & The Science of Love! Dr. Anna Machin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT