Nicholson on falling in love

Jack Nicholson has finally figured out the mating game, says Bill Zehme in Men’s Journal. Love, says the 70-year-old actor and legendary womanizer, “is a distinct and divine state of being. But life will make you suspicious of love, there’s no doubt about that.” What he discovered the hard way, science has now proved, he says: The human animal was programmed to fall in love—but not for long. “One thing hasn’t changed since the chimpanzees, and this is what they call the infatuation cycle. Every human being has it. You can bet that divine design did not rely on the psychology of the human being to marry, procreate, and continue the species. Therefore, it’s the glands—very much a part of the human that’s been in there forever, and for a purpose.” Much of the discord between the sexes, he says, is caused by the fact that women and men simply fall in and out of love at different rates. “We know the woman’s actual cycle of infatuation is nine months. This is not psychological, but in her genetic makeup. And [a man’s] corresponding cycle, or sexual cycle, whatever you want to call it, is 20 minutes? An hour? We have more in common with a male dog than we do with a woman in this department. This may be male chauvinism in a certain social context, but, baby, it’s also science.”

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