March 02--The "Bachelor"-watching public was scandalized when Ben Higgins professed his love for not one, but two (!) women on Monday's episode.
"Are you allowed to say that?" Joelle "JoJo" Fletcher, a 25-year-old real estate developer, responded when Higgins dropped the L-bomb on her. And that was before she knew he said "I love you" to Lauren Bushnell, a 25-year-old flight attendant, on an earlier date.
Some fans are theorizing that producers at ABC told Higgins to tell both women he loves them to increase the suspense. Higgins claims otherwise in his weekly People magazine blog.
"Believe me, I am just as surprised as you all are and was even more so when it was all starting to happen," he writes. "Especially considering that going into this, I still had a fear that I may be unlovable, and now here I am with not just one woman that I can see a real and wonderful future with, but TWO. I'm still not sure how it happened but it did."
All of which got me wondering: Is it possible to feel genuine, intimate love for more than one person at a time? Sure, it goes against conventional relationship norms. But is it legit?
Fortunately, University of Washington evolutionary biologist David P. Barash has a new book out Thursday that addresses, in part, this very topic.
"Human beings have several deeply evolved predispositions, which don't always coexist comfortably," Barash writes in "Out of Eden: The Surprising Consequences of Polygamy" (Oxford). "We are almost certainly endowed with a strong inclination for pair-bonding, piled on top or alongside or incorporated within and sometimes without another, contradictory inclination for multiple sex partners."
So, yes?
Sort of, he told me.
