"Verbal courtship can be quantified. Conception of a baby is the evolutionarily relevant threshold for success in courtship. Without contraception, it takes an average couple about three months of regular sex before a pregnancy occurs. If we assume two hours of talk per day in the early stages of sexual relationship, and three words spoken per second (an average rate), each member of a couple would have uttered about a million words before they conceived any offspring. Each would have talked enough to fill six books the length of this one [The Mating Mind, 433 pages]. In modern societies, the surprising thing is not that couples run out of things to say to each other, but that they do not run out much sooner."
Geoffrey Miller
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