pair-bonding
Usage examples of "pair-bonding".
In fact, she stood outside the more or less formal pair-bonding relationships structuring the habiline band.
But as early humans evolved a greater degree of monogamy-at least, compared to their immediate ancestors-the whole cluster of mental processes involved in pair-bonding would have become entangled.
If the brain needs to grant us an exaggerated sense of our capacity for knowing each other-to make pair-bonding compatible with self-awareness-it will lie, shamelessly, as much as it has to, in order to make the strategy succeed.
You’ll be thinking about permanent pair-bonding soon, and you’ll want your mate to be proud of you in the human community we all have to live in, like it or not.