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  All links at: news.yahoo.com/fc/Science/Brain_Research

Sadie Hawkins Day, February 29, 1972, a day when women propose and men accept their proposals or pay the consequences; a day when women approach men, girls chase boys. Our 2nd grade teacher Mrs Katherine explained the strange day, leap day, then walked over to Peter's desk, knelt beside the shy boy, and asked him to marry her. Recess came and we ran outside to play. I found myself being chased by Tammy over and around the piles of snow a plow had pushed against the school. And as she was about to catch me, and kiss me, I called time-out. What a coward! And although I realized my mistake instantly, and called time-in, preparing to let her catch me, I didn't count on Olivia crossing our path. She appeared out of nowhere and I was not going to let Olivia kiss me so I dashed across the parking lot and she followed and fell on a spot of ice and cut her head and that was the end of our game -- forever, and the start of a mating disorder on my part, alas.

A Google search of the term "mating disorder" reveals nothing, or nearly so (two pornographic sites). Neither the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM) nor the International Classification of Diseases (ICD) list Mating Disorders on any axis. How can we exclude such important behavior from our roll of dysfunctions? What, do we believe everyone is successful at mating and all attempts are performed effortlessly and without conflict? Given its importance I suspect it is done properly and trauma-free by only a select few. Maybe so, but some of us must be doing it worse than others, clinically so, and need help, need assistance, need therapy along these lines. The first step in treatment is knowing what we are treating, so delineation and diagnoses of mating disorders are necessary.

Sexual selection is why we survive. Life requires consumption but continuance requires selection. To paraphrase Darwin in two of his later works, sexual selection is about a billion times more powerful than natural selection. Nature only acts as a grim reaper in those cases where sexual selection has created a near-species-wide mating disorder, where there are too many resources spent on the chase and fending off rivals and too little thought and response given to predators and the ever-changing environment.

DSM-IV and ICD-10 list the end points of rare mating disorders -- sexual dysfunction and paraphilias -- but both manuals fail to incorporate the range of behaviors and cognitions involved in mating or dismating, to make up a term for it. The most important decision a child makes in his or her short life is to what degree to invest in him- or herself. The most important decision an adult makes in the years after being a child is who will be his or her partner and to what degree will they invest in him or her. Mating underlies both significant decisions.

Popular culture and mating disorders are nearly synonymous. From celebrities to politicians, we witness full circle the cacophony of disorders: from short-term mating, serial monogamy, partner swapping, polygamy, extravagent lifestyles, bountiful waste, jealousy crimes, martyrdom and related forms of homicide, as well as a dozen different forms of histrionics.

Childhood mating disorders include early maturation, early exposure, late maturation, late exposure, as well as insufficient interactions with opposite and same sex members to ensure competent approaches to intersexual and intrasexual competition and adaptive responses to failures on both fronts. It is well known that late maturing boys and early maturing girls often undergo social isolation and most mating disorder emerge from some form of social or familial deprivation. To give an example, consider a woman who was always the prettiest around in both junior and senior high school, but without the confidence to respond to the girls who successfully isolated her. This lack of acceptance by the same sex compelled her to seek acceptance from the opposite sex, unwavering acceptance. You may guess how her life progressed from there.

Did she have a personality disorder? No. A sexual dysfunction, no. An emotional disturbance, not exactly. She developed a mating disorder, stemming from low confidence and gender isolation, which led directly to behaviors inappropriate to her level of maturity. In high school she was abused by a series of boyfriends because she bonded out of the family group too early and trusted adolescent boys without familial investment in her when the boys were still bonded to their families and unprepared for couplehood. Again and again.

David Buss, professor of Psychology at UT Austin, is well known for his research of human mating behaviors. There were considerable adaptations during human evolution for our complex system of mating to arise, and for every adaptation, there is an opportunity for malfunction and disorder. Here is his list of obstacles which must be overcome (by all creatures) for successful mating (Buss, 2002):