brain scanThe future is here, my friends. I know all of us were waiting for flying cars and robot maids that have one wheel as a foot, but I have better news. There's now new technology out there that can detect whether or not a person is apt to be a faithful partner. It's some fancy-shmancy brain scanner and it reads the vasopressin receptor, which indicates if a man or a woman is genetically pre-disposed to wanna sleep around on the sly, racking up as many partners as he or she can, or if they're a loyal individual who prefers only one lover. Obviously, it gets way more complicated than that, but the gist is, dot dot dot, that we may be able to screen future lovers to see how their vaso-whatever receptors measure up to our expectations.

Point is, would you want to do that?

Let's see. We could set up these brain scanners in high schools across the country to literally read kids' minds to determine whether or not they're built for promiscuity or monogamy. It'll be like the new scoliosis test, but instead of lifting the back of your shirt and bending over in front of your gym teacher, you'll slide into an MRI tube and lay still while your future love life is determined.

Then we could divide the kids into two groups. Group A would make good marriage material; Group B would, more or less, not. Everyone's on sort of a more equal playing field then. You know what you're getting into. Hey, you never know, it could be helpful in the most science-fictiony, segregationist way possible. Kids of the future could move through life with either an A or a B sticker on their shirts, only mingling with their kind when it came time to selecting a partner.

But more realistically, say you were able to scan your current partner or spouse using this new technology. Would you? I think I would, but I don't think it'd necessarily change anything. If it turned out he was predisposed to be some Don Juan, I don't think I'd end it. Because love, after all, is a leap of faith anyway. There's no guarantee no matter what their vasopressin receptors say.

And besides, experiencing a heartbreak is almost as important as experiencing love. It's how we grow, learn more about ourselves in an extremely intimate way, and become more empathetic. I don't know, maybe I've watched ten too many rom-coms, but I just don't think any sort of weeding out process is beneficial when it comes to matters of the heart. Even though I understand that this is more a matter of the brain, I still believe that, wait for it, true love conquers all, even science.

That said, a goddamn A or B sticker would be kind of amazing.

Would you test your partner to find out what their predisposition is when it comes to staying faithful?

 

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