Think for yourself. Subscribe to The Free Press today: https://thefp.pub/3DmLpLi Every January, people resolve to change something about their love lives. Some want to date more intentionally. Others want to stop repeating the same mistakes. Many feel overwhelmed by the rules, language, and advice that now surround modern relationships. Dr. Anna Machin is an evolutionary anthropologist at the University of Oxford who studies the neuroscience and psychology of love. Her research examines how humans form attachments and why certain relationship patterns feel so powerful and so difficult to escape. In our conversation, Machin helps separate solid science from popular myth. We talk about dating apps and why they may undermine attraction rather than facilitate it, what attachment styles actually measure, and why ideas like love at first sight and human pheromones persist despite weak evidence. We also discuss polyamory, love languages, and the growing tendency to medicalize relationship struggles as “addiction.” Rather than offering hacks or formulas, Machin challenges the assumption that modern love can be optimized without understanding human nature. The result is a thoughtful discussion about why so many people feel lost in dating today, and what it would mean to pursue love more realistically in the year ahead.