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As I sit here on Valentine's Day Eve, I find myself reflecting back on why I wanted to write Decoding Love in the first place. Although I hope, of course, that the book reaches a broad audience, my goal was never to become a love guru. Both my temperament and my research have taught me to be skeptical of gurus. For good or for ill, any final answers about love must come from ourselves.

I also did not set out to write a book of dating advice tips. Don't get me wrong. I am not trying to disparage the idea of practical dating advice. I think there are some helpful pointers in the book, and I will be thrilled if readers find any of them useful in their quest for love. In fact, some of my favorite parts of the book are in the tips section. Who knew, for example, that a spicy-floral fragrance could make a woman appear twelve pounds lighter? If they could just discover the scent that would make me look like George Clooney or Brad Pitt, I would be a happy man.

But ultimately I was drawn to this subject by something deeper and more fundamental-the sense that our romantic lives could tell us something profound about our humanity.

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Although anyone stuck in dating hell probably finds it difficult to think about their situation as a boon to humanity, I want to take a few moments to praise dating as one of the key activities that shaped who we are as human beings. That's right-lowly dating turns out to be essential to our humanity.

To understand why, we need to look at how the size of our social groups plays such an important role in shaping who we are. One of the leading theories for why human beings developed large brains is called the social brain hypothesis. The idea is that the size of our social groups has played the essential role in pushing humans to develop larger brains. Many primates, such as chimpanzees, live in reasonably large troops, usually between twenty to fifty members. But no animal is more social and lives in larger groups than man. There are many advantages to larger groups, but there is one serious disadvantage: negotiating relationships with all the members of the group. Rewarding friends, seeking allies, and avoiding enemies all require more brain power as the group gets larger. Researchers have found that the larger an animals' group size, the larger the percentage of the brain devoted to the neocortex (the outer layer of the brain, which accounts for most cognitive abilities). For most mammals, the neocortex makes up 30 to 40% of the brain. For highly social primates, such as chimpanzees, the percentage rises to 50 to 65%. For humans, the neocortex takes up a staggering 80% of the brain (and our brains are seven times larger than you would expect for a mammal of our size).

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Internet dating can be hazardous to your love life!

Don't get me wrong. I know lots of people who have found love on the Internet, but I have also come across enough disaster stories to feel that a few words of caution are in order. Let me offer three reasons why anyone should be a little leery of dating web sites.

1. Deception is rampant. I should add that deception is fairly prevalent in dating as a whole, so this is not just an Internet problem. But the ease with which people can lie on the Internet makes this a much bigger problem for dating web sites.

2. Too much choice is not always a good thing. Research shows that when people are faced with too much choice, a variety of things start to happen. First, it becomes much more difficult to make any choice. Second, the criteria you use to make a choice become increasingly arbitrary. Third, you end up more dissatisfied with whatever choice you do eventually make. I talked to a number of Internet daters who experienced various levels of this, and many of them swore off Internet dating because of it.

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I'm embarrassed to say how many dating books I've read during my lifetime. But it's not entirely my fault. In the first place, I had many of them foisted on me by my sisters and my female friends. I also had to read a whole slew of them when I was researching my book, Decoding Love. What have I discovered after all this reading? In the words of Georgia O'Keefe, there's no there there. The vast majority of books are little more than a series of random anecdotes strung together.

For the best example of this, let's take a huge hit from a few years ago, He's Just Not That Into You. As Sex and the City fans know, this book emerged from Miranda's sudden epiphany that all of male relationship misbehavior can be explained with one simple statement: He's just not that into you. And the book goes on to illustrate this point in endless ways. It's the first book I have ever read which you could judge not just by its cover but by its title alone. I can see the appeal of the book. It's funny and entertaining. As relationship advice, though, it is, to say the least, a little thin. If I could pose one simple question, why is he just not that into you? I don't think that is too much to ask. I'm not looking for heavy number crunching or statistical modeling. But I think it's not unreasonable to offer something to readers beyond a one-sentence thesis.

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The divorce rate is stuck near 50%, and it is pretty clear that our current romantic situation is far from ideal. So, with Valentine's Day fast approaching, I have a radical solution-we need to start relying less on romance and more on science. I know that this sounds somewhat bizarre, but the simple truth is that while we have continued to bumble along romantically in much the same fashion as always, science has made great strides in understanding the secret springs of attraction.

Once you open yourself to the possibility of science as your guide, you will quickly find that there are a slew of studies that can help you in a variety of unexpected ways. Let me give you a few examples. During my interviews, I discovered that many people found the modern world of dating so bewildering that they no longer even had a clear sense of what they should be looking for in a partner. If you have ever experienced this feeling, there is a quick and easy way to cut through the clutter: we most value those qualities about our partners that we value about ourselves, according to research. So, all you really need to figure out is what you like about yourself. If your favorite personal quality is kindness, then that is what you should seek in another (in fact, according to one study, we want a partner who is better than we are, so ideally you would find someone who is even more kind than you are).

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Andrew Trees is our guest blogger during the week of February 9th. If you have any questions for Andrew Trees, add a comment to any of his posts. Here is some more information about Decoding Love: Why It Takes Twelve Frogs to Find a Prince, and Other Revelations from the Science of Attraction-

A smart, entertaining, and eye-opening look at the science of love.

Relationships should be so simple. You meet someone. You fall in love. If all goes well, that person falls in love with you. You live happily every after.

As Andrew Trees reveals in Decoding Love, this “romantic storyline” has shaped our thinking about relationships for centuries. But the fairy tale is deeply flawed. Researchers today are making shocking discoveries about how and why we choose the people we love.