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Love Stories

Confused man can't figure out why he's suddenly obsessed with his wife of 10 years and it's so wholesome

"Man discovers true love, freaks out."

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This is an adorable problem to have.

When we get married, we understand that we're signing up for a lifelong commitment. We understand that the love we have for our partner will change and grow and evolve over time. The frantic, can't-keep-our-hands-off-each-other passion we feel in the beginning is bound to fade into something more closely resembling compassionate love, which is a love of devotion and care and kindness. That's why we ideally choose someone we can see ourselves growing old with, someone we genuinely like, a best friend.

Except, it turns out, that isn't always the case! Not if you take some people's word for it, anyway. And when you're expecting a "cozy but bland" marriage and suddenly find yourself in the opposite, well, it can be alarming.

An unnamed social media user recently posted a frantic message asking for help: "Why am I too attracted to my wife?"

gif of a man counting on his fingers surrounded by floating calculationsIt it sounds weird, it is kinda weird. Giphy

"I know this sounds weird," the poster wrote. "But I have been with my wife for about 10 years, 8 years dating and almost 2 married. I have always found her beautiful and super hot, but lately these last few months I’m obsessing over her. I feel like she’s way too hot, I can’t stop staring at her when we’re in the same room.

"Is this normal? Do I need to do something? I tried looking online for help, but there isn’t anything out there. I have no friends or family to ask about this."

Poor guy probably thought he was going through a hormone imbalance or some kind of mental break, when the truth is much more wholesome: Dude is just really in love with his wife.

Comments poured in. Apparently, OP isn't the only one with this 'problem'

Users on r/mademesmile had a lot to say about the man's adorable obliviousness:

gif of woman saying, 'Who woulda thought?"The weird truth is also pretty wholesome.Giphy

"No need to worry. I’ve done the same thing over my 26 year marriage. Some years it’s there. Some years it’s normal attraction."

"You do need to do something. Count your blessings."

"You can't be TOO attracted to your wife. ... I've been married to mine for 21 years, and I still look at her in the way you have just described"

"I definitely haven't been with my wife as long, but I still do this. She is a goddess to me. I would die for her. I would kill for her. Either way, what bliss."

"I hope my partner looks at me the same way you look at your wife after 10 years. It's a big fear for a lot of young women my age, getting older and having age show. Give her a big ol' smooch and make it known you see her this way if you haven't already."

"My husband and I have been together 16 1/2 years. I still get butterflies in my stomach when he kisses me. Sometimes I catch him watching me with, what I call, 'googley eyes'"

"I feel the same way! We’re 18 years married, 20 years together. Sometimes I catch him looking a certain way, or in a certain light, and I’m like DAMN you SO FINE."

"You're just really in love with your wife and it's wholesome AF"

So, are all these couples just embellishing to make their relationships look good? Or can you really still get the 'butterflies' after decades together?

Studies show that it is possible, and even common, for married couples to be "madly in love" after decades of marriage. That should give us all hope.

A 2011 study out of Stony Brook University found that dopamine activity levels in the brains of newly-in-love couples were similar to couples who had been together for an average of 21 years. Dopamine, as a reminder, is the excitement neurotransmitter that signals reward and pleasure to your brain.

“A state-of-the-art investigation of love has confirmed for the very first time that people are not lying when they say that after 10 to 30 years of marriage they are still madly in love with their partners,” an expert told Harvard Medical School.

gif of Bug Bunny with heart eyesAh, love. Giphy

How does that work when the 'newness' and initial uncertainty has worn off? Fascinatingly, the things we learn and discover about our partners, even many years down the line, can influence our physical attraction to them. Leila Levison, a couples counselor, writes: "Discovering that someone is arrogant or intractable or selfish might greatly lessen our initial impression of their being handsome or beautiful. Conversely, as we come to know someone’s humility or quiet brilliance, what had seemed to be ordinary features become beautiful."

So, a sudden rush of love and physical attraction to your partner could mean many things, one of them being that you've reached new heights of connection and intimacy. It could mean that you're appreciating them as a human being more than ever. These feelings can be cyclical, coming in waves, ebbing and flowing in different years. That's all totally normal.

If you're not feeling those same sparks in your own relationship, experts recommend starting with more physical touch. Doubling the amount of time you spend kissing, hugging, or holding hands can encourage your body to release oxytocin, one of the main hormones that floods your brain when you're falling in love. In way, you can almost trick the sparks to come back.

Hey, all is fair in love and war!

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Family

Scientists launched a robot-judged beauty contest. What could go wrong? A lot.

"Computer computer, on my screen — what's the fairest face you've ever seen?"

Presumably, that's what the folks at Youth Laboratories were thinking when they launched Beauty.AI, the world's first international beauty contest judged entirely by an advanced artificial intelligence system.

More than 600,000 people from across the world entered the contest, which was open to anyone willing to submit a selfie taken in neutral lighting without any makeup.

According to the scientists, their system would use algorithms based on facial symmetry, wrinkles, and perceived age to define "objective beauty" — whatever that means.

This murderous robot understands my feelings. GIF via CNBC/YouTube.

It's a pretty cool idea, right?

Removing all the personal taste and prejudice from physical judgment and allowing an algorithm to become the sole arbiter and beholder of beauty would be awesome.

What could possibly go wrong?

"Did I do that?" — These researchers, probably. GIF from "Family Matters."

Of the 44 "winners" the computer selected, seven of them were Asian, and one was black. The rest were white.

This is obviously proof that white people are the most objectively attractive race, right? Hahaha. NO.

Instead, it proves (once again) that human beings have unconscious biases, and that it's possible to pass those same biases on to machines.

Basically, if your algorithm is based mostly on white faces and 75% of the people who enter your contest are white Europeans, the white faces are going to win based on probability, even if the computer is told to ignore skin tone.

Plus, most cameras are literally optimized for light skin, so that probably didn't help the problem, either. In fact, the AI actually discarded some entries that it deemed to be "too dim."

So, because of shoddy recruitment, a non-diverse team, internal biases, and a whole slew of other reasons, these results were ... more than a little skewed.

Thankfully, Youth Laboratories acknowledged this oversight in a press release. They're delaying the next stage in their robotic beauty pageant until they iron out the kinks in the system.

Ironically, Alex Zhavoronkov, their chief science officer, told The Guardian, "The algorithm ... chose people who I may not have selected myself."

Basically, their accidentally racist and not-actually-objective robot also had lousy taste.Whoops.

Ooooh baby, racist robots! Yeah! GIF from Ruptly TV/YouTube.

This begs an important question: As cool as it would be to create an "objective" robot or algorithm, is it really even possible?

The short answer is: probably not. But that's because people aren't actually working on it yet — at least, not in the way they claim to be.

As cool and revelatory as these cold computer calculations could potentially be, getting people to acknowledge and compensate for their unconscious biases when they build the machines could be the biggest hurdle. Because what you put in determines what you get out.

"While many AI safety activists are concerned about machines wiping us out, there are very few initiatives focused on ensuring diversity, balance, and equal opportunity for humans in the eyes of AI," said Youth Laboratories Chief Technology Officer Konstantin Kiselev.

Of course you like that one. GIF from "Ex Machina."

This is the same issue we've seen with predictive policing, too.

If you tell a computer that blacks and Hispanics are more likely to be criminals, for example, it's going to provide you with an excuse for profiling that appears on the surface to be objective.

But in actuality, it just perpetuates the same racist system that already exists — except now, the police can blame the computer instead of not taking responsibility for themselves.

"There is no justice. There is ... just us." GIF from "Justice League."

Of course, even if the Beauty.AI programmers did find a way to compensate for their unconscious biases, they'd still have to deal with the fact that, well, there's just no clear definition for "beauty."

People have been trying to unlock that "ultimate secret key" to attractiveness since the beginning of time. And all kinds of theories abound: Is attractiveness all about the baby-makin', or is it some other evolutionary advantage? Is it like Youth Laboratories suggests, that "healthy people look more attractive despite their age and nationality"?

Also, how much of beauty is strictly physical, as opposed to physiological? Is it all just some icky and inescapable Freudian slip? How much is our taste influenced by what we're told is attractive, as opposed to our own unbiased feelings?

Simply put: Attractiveness serves as many different purposes as there are factors that define it. Even if this algorithm somehow managed to unlock every possible component of beauty, the project was flawed from the start. Humans can't even unanimously pick a single attractive quality that matters most to all of us.

GIF from "Gilligan's Island."

The takeaway here? Even our technology starts with our humanity.

Rather than creating algorithms to justify our prejudices or preferences, we should focus our energies on making institutional changes that bring in more diverse voices to help make decisions. Embracing more perspectives gives us a wider range of beauty — and that's better for everyone.

If your research team or board room or city council actually looks like the world it's supposed to represent, chances are they're going to produce results that look the same way, too.

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