Editing Love (section)

===Adaptive benefit===
Interpersonal love between a man and woman provides an evolutionary adaptive benefit since it facilitates mating and [[sexual reproduction]].<ref name = Michod1989>{{cite journal|last=Michod|first=Richard E.|title=What's love got to do with it? The solution to one of evolution's greatest riddles|journal=The Sciences|year=1989|pages=22–27|doi=10.1002/j.2326-1951.1989.tb02156.x}}</ref> However, some organisms can reproduce [[asexual reproduction|asexually]] without mating. Understanding the adaptive benefit of interpersonal love depends on understanding the adaptive benefit of sexual reproduction as opposed to asexual reproduction. Richard Michod reviewed evidence that love, and consequently sexual reproduction, provides two major adaptive advantages.{{r|Michod1989}} First, sexual reproduction facilitates [[DNA repair|repair of damages in the DNA]] that is passed from parent to progeny (during [[origin and function of meiosis|meiosis]], a key stage of the sexual process). Second, a gene in either parent may contain a harmful [[mutation]], but in the progeny produced by sexual reproduction, expression of a harmful mutation introduced by one parent is likely to be masked by expression of the unaffected homologous gene from the other parent.{{r|Michod1989}}