Michael is a well-known psychotherapist in New York. He is 45 years old and recently divorced from his wife. As a psychologist, he understands the importance of thinking positively, which is why he says, «I’m on my way from one romance to the next.»
A rational man, but a romantic at heart, Michael wants to fall in love again. I ask him: How can what he has learned about men and women and their turbulent relationships help him in his choice? Why do we fall in love? “It’s very simple,” Michael replies. — To understand whether the person we are interested in can become the one we love can be based on three signs.
Of course, a mistake is not excluded, and these signs do not guarantee that we will grow old together. But they indicate that two, in all likelihood, will be able to live together a segment of life in which there will be both passion and tenderness … «
I had no idea that in this area you can be so confident in anything, but I respect Michael for his talent as a psychotherapist and a thoughtful attitude to human nature, so I listen further. “First of all,” he continues, “we should not delude ourselves about the attraction we feel for another. Does he really seem really attractive to us? Do we want to look at this person, touch him, be near him? Or does he have a flaw that hinders us, constantly hurts the eye? A smile that seems fake to us, an unpleasant manner of eating, harsh gestures.
Of course, attraction is not love, but it is a serious backlog. Then you need to put forward more significant requirements. Do we like the feel of his skin, the taste of his body, and most importantly, his smell? This is absolutely necessary because the smell will not change. You can try to deceive yourself, ignore your physiological reaction, but in love you always have to pay for everything!
Indeed, I recall one study that showed that in some varieties of ticks, which spend almost their entire lives in pairs, the sense of smell is so developed that they can smell a partner at a distance of several hundred kilometers … If something similar is inherent in us, if homo sapiens has retained even traces of this olfactory apparatus, I will readily believe that the smell of another cannot be taken lightly! “And, of course, such a thing as communication, emotional exchange, matters,” Michael concludes. “Like other primates, our emotional food is close contact with another creature.
Monkeys comb each other’s hair to show interest and express closeness. In humans, this impulse is expressed differently, but it is just as important. Having met a likely partner, you need to pay attention to two things. Does he/she ask questions about you? And when you answer, does he/she really listen to you? In other words, does your interlocutor enjoy understanding you?
I would like to believe that this last sign is most directly related to love. But I think that Michael is right and we should probably not neglect the deep reflexes of our «animal» brain …