by Leil Lowndes
"Does Somebody Have to Be Pea-Brained to Fall in Love with Me?"
As a matter of fact, yes. Scientists tell us only -
brained people fall in love. At the core of PEA infatuation,theyspeculate,isachemicalcalledphenyleth ylamine,or .Itisachemicalcousinof
amphetamines and gives a similar "kick."
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PEA comes from secretions through the nervous system and bloodstream that create an emotional response equivalent to a high on drugs. This is the chemical which makes your heart palpitate, your hands sweat, and your insides go all funny. (It is rumored that can also make you want to rip PEA your Quarry's clothes off at the first available opportunity.)
Phenylethylamine, scientists say, along with dopamine and norepinephrine, is manufactured in the PEA
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body when we first feel the physical sensations of romantic love. It is as close to a natural high as the body can get. (Cole Porter obviously knew what he was singing about when he wrote "I get a kick out of you.")
The bad news is that the kick doesn't last forever, or even for very long. This adds to the quickly mounting scientific evidence that romantic love is relatively short-lived. That's why some people
become "love junkies." The good news is that idt oeslast long enough to kick-start great love affairs. Its average one-and-a-half to three-year duration is plenty of time to have a fantastic fling, get him or her to say "I do," and/or propagate the species.
Now, since you can't go around armed with a syringe filled with phenylethylamine, spot your Quarry, and inject thePEA -filled tube into his or her bloodstream, you do the next best thing. You develop techniques to trigger -brained responses in people and give them thesensation that PEA they are falling in love.
"Why Do We Fall in Love with One Person and Not Another?"
People don't just mysteriously wake up one morning with an overdose of in their brains and PEA then develop a crush on the next person they set eyes on. No, and its sister chemicals are PEA precipitated by emotional and visceral reactions to a specific stimulus.
Like what? It can be a whiff of her perfume, the boyish way he says hello, or the adorable way she wrinkles her nose when she laughs. It could even be an innocuous article of clothing you're wearing that drives your Quarry bonkers. For example, in 1924
Conrad Hilton, the founder of the Hilton hotel chain, flipped over a red hat that he spotted sitting five pews in front of him in church. After the services, he followed the
red hat down the street and eventually married the lady walking under it.
"How Can These Little Things Start Love?"
Why do these seemingly meaningless stimuli kick-start love? Where do they come from? Are they in our genes?
No, genes have nothing to do with falling in love.
The origin lies deeply buried in our psyche. The ammunition that gets fired off when we see (hear, smell, feel) something we like is lying dormant in our subconscious. It springs from that apparently bottomless well from which most of our personality rises—our childhood experiences or, most significantly, what happens to us between the tender ages of five and eight. When we are very young, a type of subconsciouismprinting takes place, similar to the phenomenon that occurs in certain species of the animal kingdom.
During the 1930s, an eminent Austrian ethologist, Dr.
Konrad Lorenz, induced a flock of baby ducks to become hopelessly attached to him. Observing how baby ducklings, shortly after hatching, begin to waddle along in single file behind their mother—and cont inue to do so into maturity—Dr. Lorenz decided to imprint the ducklings withimself.
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Lorenz hatched a clutch of duck eggs in an incubator.
At first sight of their little beaks breaking through eggshells, he squatted low as if he were a mother duck and waddled past the eggs. They promptly broke free and followed him across the laboratory.
Thereafter, despite the presence of real female ducks, these imprinted little ducklings continued to waddle after Dr. Lorenz on every possible occasion.
Researchers have shown that the phenomenon of imprinting is not limited to birds. Various forms of it exist among fish, guinea pigs, sheep, deer, buffalo, and other mammalian species. Are humans immune to imprinting? Well, unlike the duped ducklings queued up behind Dr. Lorenz, we don't continue to Page 20
crawl after the doctor who delivered us until we reach adulthood. But there is strong evidence that we fall prey to another kind of imprinting—an
earlsyexualimprinting.
Universally respected sexologist Dr. John Money coined the termLovemap to describe this imprinting.
Our Lovemaps are carvings of pain or pleasure axed in our brains in early responses to our family members, our childhood friends, and our chance encounters. The cuts are so deep that they fester forever in some nook or cranny of the human psyche, just waiting to bleed again when the proper stimulus strikes.
Dr. Money said, ' Lovemaps. They're as common as faces, bodies, and brains. Each of us has one. Without it there would be no falling in love, no mating, and no breeding of the specie7sY."our Quarry has a Lovemap. You have a Lovemap. We all have Lovemaps. They are indelibly etched into our egos, our ids, our psyches, our subconscious. They can be positive imprintings. For example, perhaps your mother wore a certain perfume, your beloved father had a boyish grin, or your favorite teacher scrunched up her nose when she laughed. Perhaps a beautiful lady in a red hat was kind to little Connie Hilton when he was growing up in San Antonio, New Mexico.
Lovemaps can be negative, too. Women, maybe you were molested as a child, so now you can never love a man with a leering smile. Men, maybe your cruel wicked aunt wore Joy perfume, so now any woman who gives you a whiff of Joy makes you want to flee like a bug blasted with insect repellent.
Lovemaps sometimes contain very convoluted paths.
Early negative experiences can give them a strange twist. Women, maybe your father ran off with another woman, leaving you and your mother alone, so now, if your date so much as glances at a passing lady, you freak out. Gentlemen, perhaps your beautiful baby-sitter spanked you when you were five, but it stimulated your little genitals and felt good. So now, as an adult, you cannot fall in love with a woman unless she will give you love spankings.
Forgotten experiences, both positive and negative, are remembered by your sexual subconscious. If the timing is right
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and someone triggers one,BLAM!A shot of PEA shoots through your veins. It blasts your brain, blinding you to reason, and you begin to fall in love.
It's the necessary spark to kick-start love.
That's just for starters. The starter gets your car going, and then the battery takes over. Similarly, after your brain recuperates from its first shot of , a little reason (hopefully) starts to make its PEA way through the grey matter. As you and your get to know each other better, you begin PLP
exploring your similarities and your differences (we cover this in Part Two), and you both start asking yourselves, "What can I get from this relationship?"
(Part Three). We listen to our ego and see how much reinforcement it's getting (Part Four). Early love is very delicate, and often we inadvertently turn our Quarry off in the first few dates (Part Five). If we get beyond that, what goes on—or doesn't go on—
between the sheets plays a gigantic role (Part Six).
ThroughouHt ow to
Make Anyone Fall in Love with You , we will explore all these factors from a scientific point of view.
Let us now go back to the beginning. Where do you find a Potential Love Partner? How do you get that first shot of shooting through his/her veins over you? PEA
4
Women?
Looking for Love in All the Wrong Places Page 23
Single and divorced people, young and old, all across America are asking themselves as they brush their teeth in the morning, as they shave or put on makeup, as they touch up the grey in t
heir hair, "Where are all the good men? Where are all the good women?"
"One in five Americans is single and searchingA,"merican Demographics magazine tells us8. That means there are forty-nine million Americans aged twenty-five and older who are single, widowed, or divorced. And their number is growing.
"Good," you say, "but if there are so many Potential Love Partners around, where are they?" The answer is, "They are everywhere—looking for love—
just like you." are sitting in the park PLPS
munching a Blimpie, enjoying music at a concert, walking the dog, riding the commuter train, and going to restaurants all around you.
Today, even with jet travel, on-line romances, and a shrinking globe, most people marry pretty close to home. Studies on what social scientists calrlesidential propinquity show that Cupid's arrow does not travel far. In fact, one study tells us the median distance traveled by an unskilled worker to find his Page 24
spouse is just five blocks9. Unless you've pitched your tent in the middle of the Sahara, you don't have to venture far for your hunting expedition. You'll outfit yourself with some new knowledge and, armed with the techniques in this book, you can start tracking Quarry very close at hand.
You've heard the wail of unsuccessful lovers: "I'm looking for love in all the wrong places, looking for love in all the wrong faces." That's not the real problem. Most have been looking for love in all the wrongways.
Theatrical performers know they need a different set of skills to get cast from an audition than they need to sustain a role on stage. They must immediately knock producers out with their talent, sometimes in one minute or less. Likewise, you need different skills to make someone fall in love with you than you need to keep a relationship warm for a lifetime. You must knock your Quarry out—sometimes in the first minute or less. Without that strong first kick, he or she might never get to know you, let alone fall in love with you.
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5
Let's say you get lucky tomorrow and spot a Potential Love Partner. He or she is sitting on the steps reading a book. Or standing in a museum studying a painting.
Or getting on the bus. Or waiting in line at the bank cash machine.
You sneak a second peek. Something about the stranger revs up your internal factory, and a PEA little dollop goes squirting through your veins.
Maybe it's her looks, the way he moves, something she's wearing. Her aura? Is this love at first sight?
Does love at first sight even exist?
Well, that's a semantics question. Instant desire, or lust at first sight, definitely exists. However, the scientific world pretty well agrees that love at first sight is merely Monday-morning quarterbacking.
A successful love affair, perhaps one leading to marriage, is retrospectively declared to be true love; whereas if one is rebuffed, it is classified . . . as infatuation.'
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Semantics aside, one fact remains. Any small stimulus can kick-start love. Your first moves when you spot a Potential
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Love Partner are crucial. If, from that powerful stimulus, love grows, you have every right to call it love at first sight. Nobody will argue with you.
Love at first sight has survived because it is an integral part of the many popular beliefs about romantic love. Romantic love is an important cultural value to America1n1sI.n the same way that a Medical Aspects of Human Sexuality
voodoo curse causes death only in persons who believe in its power to kill them, love at first sight truly exists for those who believe in it.
PART ONE
NEVER GET A SECOND CHANCE AT
LOVE AT FIRST SIGHT
6
First Impressions Last Forever
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The first moment your Quarry lays eyes on you has awesome potency. The picture burns its way into his or her eyes and can stay emblazoned in your Quarry's memory forever.
I have a dear friend, an older gentleman named Gerald, who is very sought after in the social scene of his hometown. He is a charming escort for several elderly ladies who long ago lost their husbands.
Gerald met these women when they were all in high school together back in the late 1940OS. His women friends are inwardly beautiful; however, physically, several have gained weight and have long since lost their youthful attractiveness.
Once, at a party, I overheard a rude man tease Gerald about his taste in women. My friend was genuinely confused at the tactless remark.
"But they are allbeautifull!" Gerald exclaimed. He reached into his wallet and pulled out an old, dog-eared black-and-white photograph of his high school homecoming queen and her court.
"See?" Gerald said to the man. Two of the three ladies he was currently escorting were in the photo.
One of them was
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the homecoming queen. To this day, Gerald sees his lady friends as beautiful as they were back in 1948.
Such is the power of first impressions.
Image consultants are paid thousands of dollars to pontificate in boardrooms across America, "You never get a second chance to make a first impression." The adage has been given the exalted status
of a proverb: "First impressions are most lasting." So what else is new?
What's new is this: Even as we enter the 21st century, we don't really comprehend the unbelievable compass and consequence of first impressions. Or on what lilliputian details they are sometimes based.
Gentlemen, one backward baseball cap or gold chain flashing through the hair on your chest can make or break a budding relationship with the lady before you even say "hi." Ladies, one quarter of a turn away when he ventures "hello," can turn the handsome prince back into a frightened frog.
Be Ready for Love—Always!
If first impressions are so crucial and a Potential Love Partner makes the "go/no go" decision within seconds of spotting you, here's the big question: Why do people looking for love spend so much time making themselves attractive when they go out on a date but so little when they take the dog to the vet?
By the time you have the date, your Quarry's first impression of you has already been set. How you look on the date is, of course, important. But it's not nearly as decisive as his or her first glimpse of you.
You don't realize it, but here's the sad truth: You have probably let dozens of get away in PLPS
recent months just because your trap wasn't set—you weren't fixed up for the kill. Hunters, that means you weren't dressed for the part. Huntresses, that means you weren't groomed properly.
Research shows that for men, clothes are more crucial to first impressions. For women, it's her body and face.
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Huntresses, you may well ask, "Is makeup all that important?" Let's go to the studies. Researchers asked men to talk with six different women who sometimes wore makeup, sometimes didn't. Their study,
"Lipstick as a Determiner of First Impressions of Personality," revealed that the male opinion of each woman was very different when she wore lipstick.12
Women, how many times, sauntering down the street without your makeup, have you spotted Handsome Stranger, who doesn't even look your way? If he's a typical male attracted by rosy lips and nice big eyes, what do you expect? Men, how many times, in your grungy clothes, have you tried to talk to Lovely Lady on the bus who gives you a cursory answer and looks away? If she's a typical woman attracted by an air of competence and success, what do you expect?
TECHNIQUE #1:
EVERYWHERE
Men, this does not mean you have to don your three-piece suit to buy the newspaper. Women, it does not mean you need to slap on three coats of mascara to walk the dog. What it does mean is whenever you step out the door, step out dressed to killl. . . your Quarry.
out the door, step out dressed to killl. . . your Quarry.
We get lazy about first impressions due to the reinforcement theory. Say you fix yourself up for the kill. You go out to walk the dog th
ree times, four times, looking like a traffic stopper, and nothing happens.
So you say, "Hey, this doesn't work."
In my sales seminars, I tell participants that the average sale is not made until after the fifth sales call.
Give it some time. Can't you wait five more dog-walks for your future beloved to say, "Nice doggy.
What's his name? And, by the way, what's yours?"
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Stay Psychologically ' Fit to Kill"
Not only should you be physically ready, you must keep youmr ental doors open to let love walk in . . .
wherever you are. PLPS don't just enter your life from parties and singles' clubs.
Cindy is an attractive young manicurist who has been doing my nails for several years. (There must be some drug in nail polish remover that dissolves women's inhibitions and induces them to spill every detail of their lives as they hold hands across the manicure table.) For months Cindy had been griping to me that, in her line of work, all she meets is women.
I had a late appointment with Cindy one evening about six o'clock. She was telling me how, after a long day of clipping, filing, and painting, she's too tired to go out to singles' bars to try to meet someone.
At about 6:45 P.M. , the door opened behind Cindy's back. We heard a deep male voice say, "Excuse me, I know it's terribly late. But is it possible to get a manicure?" I looked up over Cindy's shoulder and beheld a Greek god. (I had no idea such deities needed manicures!) Before I could pull my jaw back up, Cindy, not even turning around, said, "Nope, we close in ten minutes."
"How do ya like that?" she grumbled, keeping her gaze fixed on my hangnail as he walked out. "Who does he think he is to march in here at this hour and expect a manicure?"
Then, Cindy's ears, finely tuned to such trappings as expensive sports cars, heard a Jaguar revving up outside her window. She jumped up to look, and there was her Adonis careening out of the parking lot, and out of her life, forever in his sleek chariot. She didn't stop kicking herself long enough for me to respectfully suggest that one should keep one's eyes open all the time for such opportunities.
