Dawn Maslar - Men Chase, Women Choose: The Neuroscience of Meeting, Dating, Losing Your Mind, and Finding True Love

Men Chase,

Women Choose

The Neuroscience of Meeting, Dating,
Losing Your Mind, and Finding True Love

DAWN MASLAR, MS

Health Communications, Inc.
Deerfield Beach, Florida

www.hcibooks.com

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
is available through the Library of Congress

2016 Dawn Maslar, MS

ISBN-13: 978-07573-1925-9 (Paperback)
ISBN-10: 07573-1925-4 (Paperback)
ISBN-13: 978-07573-1926-6 (ePub)
ISBN-10: 07573-1926-2 (ePub)

All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the written permission of the publisher.

HCI, its logos, and marks are trademarks of Health Communications, Inc.

Publisher: Health Communications, Inc.
3201 S.W. 15th Street
Deerfield Beach, FL 334428190

Cover photo by Rafael A. Acosta
Cover design by Larissa Hise Henoch
Interior design and formatting by Lawna Patterson Oldfield

ePub created by Dawn Von Strolley Grove

CONTENTS

What am I doing wrong?

I looked up to see a beautiful blond woman with familiar green eyes. Her voice cracked as she held back her tears. I thought I did everything right, but here I am again, she said.

Her name was Jessica, and wed originally met when she came to me for relationship coaching two years earlier. She had a frustrating and almost predictable relationship pattern. She would meet an amazing man, and the relationship would start out with wonderful promise. But when she dated, she would get crazy. Her anxiety level would increase and she would either jump into a sexual relationship where she fell in love but he didnt, or she would pull away, finding some flaw or perceived mistrust in him. The details of each relationship were different, but eventually a glaring problem would arise. She told me the first man had lied, the second worked too much, and the third chatted with women online. Now she was here again, looking for help.

I had worked with her in the past to break her pattern of picking men that were wrong for her, but now another problem had arisen. She was picking better men, but she still couldnt seem to find love. Her problem this time wasnt with men but with herself and the dating process.

Love isnt just one thing that you luckily fall into. Finding and maintaining lifelong love is a process with several stages that are biologically different from one another. Because the stages are different, you can feel different emotions during each phase. Most people, particularly women, have trouble with anxiety. As you move along the path to lifelong love, your level of anxiety fluctuates, sometimes to the point of panic. At other times, your anxiety is gone, and you feel euphoric. This euphoric phase is the one that most people associate with love.

My goal in writing this book is to explain what happens on the path to lifelong love. Ill point out the twists and turns as well as the potholes, the places that can cause trouble and hurt you. When you understand the science of love, it will help you easily and effortlessly find nourishing and passionate, long-lasting love.

Y ou know the feeling. You cant wait for the day to end so you can be together. You look at the picture of you two and your heart fills with joy as a big smile spreads across your face. You feel so light you almost glide, with just your toes barely glancing the floor. You feel giddy, even euphoric. At any moment small woodland creatures are going to hop out to greet you. Birds will twirl around your head. Any minute now Pharrell Williams is going to walk out singing Happy as you dance with the animals. Clap along if you feel like happiness is the truth. Its a magical, special time. You know you have hit the jackpot of lifeyou have fallen in love.

This is the feeling everyone is looking for, that sensation that youre special to someone else, that youve found that other person, that better half, your soul mate, to experience life with. You have a partner and a friend who loves you with every fiber of their being, and you feel the same way about them. You wonder how you couldve ever lived without them. You are loved!

A study from the University of Iowa confirms this universal search for love. When researchers looked at the number one thing men and woman wanted in their lives, they discovered it was exactly the same for bothmutual attraction and love. Love is what this book is about. Ill explain where love comes from, how to find it, how long each phase is (yes, there are phases), and how you can make love last. In these pages, I explain the biological processes that create that sensation of being in love. Ill show you what steps are needed to reach it and how those steps are different for men than for women. Ill explain why dating can be so nerve-wracking. You naturally desire love, but getting love requires you to be vulnerable. You have an innate fear of being vulnerable. The process of becoming vulnerable goes against your other natural desire for self-preservation.

One of the biggest fears is that youll fall in love and become vulnerable while the other person wont. The pain of unrequited love for some people can be so great that they give up looking for love altogether. But you dont have to. When you understand how love works, you will be able to make educated decisions that make finding and keeping it almost effortless.

Did you know that love is a chemical reaction that affects your brain? That falling in love is only one phase of a multiphase process? That falling in love changes the way your brain functions? That the actions you take at the beginning of a relationship can either cause the other person to leave or to fall in love with you? That the feeling of falling in love lasts for a predictable amount of time? That falling in love and being in love are very different things? Not only that, but you dont have control of the neurological changes associated with falling in love, but you do have control of being in love. But the most important thing to know is that love is a biological process, and once you understand the science behind the way love works, it makes finding and keeping love easy.

Over the course of this book, I will walk you through the different brain states of love and their biochemical and physiological differences, and how those differences make you feel at each stage. Ill explain what you can do if you want love in your life, whether new love, to keep a love youve found, or to rekindle the spark that you two once had. Understanding the science of love gives you the power to make informed decisions about the most important choice youll ever maketo love.

Im Dawn Maslar, and Im known as the Love Biologist. Before I share what Ive learned while researching the science of love, maybe I should explain how this all started.

It was an accidenta real, screeching-tires type of accident.

I had recently relocated to southern Florida after a divorce, and my life finally felt like it was coming back together in a better way. I had just landed a coveted, full-time temporary biology professorship at Broward Community College, in warm, sunny, subtropical Davie, Florida.

Only a month before, I had purchased a Yamaha V Star 850 motorcycle. The 850 was fast enough to get me around but not so heavy that it would knock me over if I tried to walk it. A motorcycle is not the most practical or safest form of transportation, especially in a heavily populated area. But when I rode the bike, I felt an exciting sense of freedom. Even more important than the exhilaration of the ride, it provided me with a means to get closer to my bad-boy biker crush.