Love. The word is but a pale shadow of the ecstasy it brings us. We spend years, sometimes a lifetime longing for it. If we’re lucky, we find it—and pray it lasts. But if it doesn’t, we seek it again and again. Face it—we’re hooked!
Cupid’s quiver contains chemicals that bathe the brain and compel us to act in ways we can’t fathom. When you have finished reading How to Create Chemistry with Anyone, though, you will. You’ll know about love in a way that very few people currently do. And to the extent it is possible, you will be able to Spark romantic Chemistry with the man or woman of your choice.
You will also discover how and why nature injects you with different chemicals at various phases in your relationship and throughout your life. Finally, you will learn how to work with the changing Chemistry and create bonding chemicals so you both can “live happily ever after”—not just “until divorce do us part.” Your new knowledge will not banish Cupid to the greeting card aisle, but it will help keep him in your life forever.
You’ve felt it. Your heart pounds like a jackhammer, your tongue feels like sandpaper, your palms turn into a waterfall, and your words mysteriously start missing syllables. “Hello” becomes the hardest word in the English language.
But as your vital signs return to normal and a semblance of rationality sets in, you anxiously ask yourself if this person you just met felt the same Chemistry for you. If not, unrequited potential lovers used to think nothing could be done except sulk, swear, cry, or kick the cat. They were wrong, as you’ll soon learn.
Why does this particular person blow you away like a tornado through a trailer camp, whereas with others, it’s ennui at first sight? Because, unbeknownst to you, buried deeply in your brain, you have the ability to size someone up instantly.1 This skill has strong evolutionary roots, dating from when an instantaneous “fight or flight” decision was a matter of life or death.
Throughout the centuries our crystal-ball capabilities have evolved with us. Just as DNA experts can tell a lot about a person from a sliver of his toenail, human beings have developed an incredible subconscious capability to sense whether someone will be fun to be with, fulfill their needs, and match a million other qualities on a very subjective laundry list of longings.
You’ve been setting the stage for love all through your life, just waiting for the star of the show to walk on the set. Your experiences from birth to the second you picked up this book draw a chart of the type of person you would—or even could—fall in love with. This map—your “LoveMap” as it is called—bears the mark of your unique individuality and can be specific down to details of physiognomy, personality, intellect, ambition, sense of humor, and hundreds of etceteras.2 A very new field called “interpersonal neurobiology” also shows how your brain constantly rewires itself through your relationships.3 Even a brief dalliance with someone you’d never want to see again could tweak your LoveMap forever.
By far the largest part of this map was charted in childhood before you were age five.4 If you were fortunate, you were surrounded by people you loved and who loved you, primarily your relatives. Their proximity programmed a tendency in you to feel Chemistry with someone who looks like she could be from the same gene pool or the type of man who was around when you were a child. Have you ever noticed how many couples look alike?5
The influences on this diagram of who you could love ranges from milliseconds ago to millions of years before.6 To complicate matters further, your memories get rewritten every time they are invoked. Is it any wonder that Chemistry is confusing?
How much time does it take to feel Chemistry? Compare the speed to a big ruckus in movie theaters back in the 1950s concerning subliminal advertising. Clever Madison Avenue types flashed words like “Hungry?” “Get popcorn!” and product names like “Lipton Tea” on the screen for less than a thousandth of a second during a movie. The messages flickered too fast for the audience to read. In fact, moviegoers reported they hadn’t seen anything. But theaters sold a lot more popcorn on those particular days!
Unbeknownst to the audience, the “unseen” flashes on the screen not only made them hungry or thirsty; it also told them specifically what brands they wanted. Previously, moviegoers who used to order just tea now requested it by brand—Lipton, of course. Is it any surprise that neuroimaging shows you feel that Spark in a fifth of a second?7
Unquestionably. It could have a lot to do with other events happening in life when you meet. Perhaps he is in love with someone else or maybe she just suffered a tragic loss. You might find yourself in conversation with a smart, sensitive, stunning, sensuous single someone who would be the perfect partner for you. This spectacular specimen of humanity blows you away instantly, but she is stifling a yawn. Or he is glancing over your shoulder for someone he’d rather talk to.
“What’s wrong with me?” you scream at yourself between frantic heartbeats. Nothing. It’s simply that thousands of other current emotional, physical, personal, or professional issues could close off his or her receptivity to you. Another time, another place, you might meet, and the magnetic field would make the two of you want to fall into each other’s arms and bond together forever. Not only that, but for women it depends on the time of the month you meet!8 (More about that later.) Yes, timing counts.
Before you spotted this special person the one hundred billion nerve cells in your head were, relatively speaking, in what Cognitive Science calls “resting potential.” But of course, they weren’t really resting. The comparatively lethargic neurons were tediously neurotransmitting (we’ll call it “texting”) messages to each other about the weather, the boring party, the tasteless snacks, the whatever.
Then KA-POW! When your eyes spot this special someone across the crowded room, bar, bus station, McDonald’s, or wherever, it’s neurons gone wild! They hysterically contact their colleague neurons who live in other neighborhoods of the brain across tiny rivers called synapses to tell them the electrifying news. That’s what neurologists call action potential—and what we call Wow!
Practically all of the techniques in the first sections of this book tell you how to create a neuronal response in someone to get feelgood chemicals, primarily one called dopamine. gushing into a brain region that Cognitive Science calls your pleasure or reward center. This response is so incredible that your target person gets a high, chemically similar to cocaine.9
As you are reading this, neuroscientists are breaking new ground tracking the galaxy of nerve cells in your brain that are wired together with a million billion connections. Obviously, romance was not their motivation. These pioneering professionals’ goal was far more significant, saving lives and preserving human physical and mental health. However, seekers of love benefit greatly by grasping their extraordinary contributions. We can now understand—and, to a certain extent, manipulate—the chemicals that marinate his brain or flow through her body when you meet. Let’s call this person your “Quarry.” And you are the “Hunter” or “Huntress” of hearts.
It is not only the cognitive community we must thank for unraveling the mysteries of romantic Chemistry; let’s also tip our hats to evolutionary biologists and psychologists who further explore why we make such sudden and sometimes puzzling choices in relationships. These fields hold the key to why our neurons go berserk spotting one person and, comparatively speaking, hardly lift their sleepy heads for another.
Most people would agree with you. There are, of course, certain elements that, no matter what you say or do, can’t change a thing when it comes to creating Chemistry. For instance, you can’t change your or your potential partner’s face, body, genotype, phenotype, or DNA. Additionally, by the time you are ready for love and sex, scillions of unconscious associations to pain or pleasure are etched in both your brains: How his stepdad dealt with him. How kindergarten schoolmates treated her. Who he previously loved. Who she hated. The instant you come into sight, all of the “whos,” “whats,” and “whys” of your potential partner’s previous relationships resurrect neuronal activity from the past.
“Whew, if it’s so complicated,” you’re thinking, “I can’t possibly make my Quarry feel Chemistry for me.” Sure, and people once thought, “The world is flat,” “Heavier objects fall faster than light,” and “All planets revolve around the earth.” Scientists have tossed those three myths into the trash like dirty Kleenex. And the first just landed on top of them. Chemistry responds to very specific stimuli, many of which you can affect.
I do want to make one thing perfectly clear before we start, however: You can never have 100 percent control over a person’s chemical reaction to you due to your Quarry’s previous experiences, brain structure, and other factors listed above. But that’s only part of the story. Mother Nature plays an equally large if not even bigger role in romance. You’re going to learn how to be her coconspirator at the beginning of a relationship to capture your Quarry. Then you’ll learn how to break away from the common forces that can demolish Chemistry between couples and destroy lasting love.
You are fortunate to be the first generation to benefit from fresh insights of Cognitive Science and the relatively new field called Developmental Evolution. Understanding what’s in your Quarry’s brain and how it develops will permit you to be more than just a pawn in nature’s game. To a certain extent you can create specific chemically based emotions in the man or woman of your choice. The slight peek into neuroscience and new discoveries in evolutionary psychology in this book will give you further understanding of why and how you can create Chemistry and turn it into lasting love.
They say “Love makes the world go ’round.” But just as accurate is “Chemistry makes the world go ’round.” Why? Because feeling Chemistry with someone is the precursor to passion, which leads to love, which leads to commitment. And that can lead to contentment, children, companionship, and many of life’s greatest joys.
What do you think? Is feeling Chemistry and then falling in love a decision? A destiny? A choice? Some say you decide to fall in love. Sure, that’s as easy as deciding to stop breathing or cherishing your children. Others say it’s destiny. Well, move to an archipelago in Antarctica and wait for your destined one to come along. Many people think it’s a choice. Of course, just like choosing not to eat, drink, or sleep.
Neurologists have proven that it is something else entirely. It is a condition that involves neurons, neurotransmitters, hormones, receptors, and circuits in your brain.10 They define “being in love” as—get ready for a long sentence—an “elevated activity in the brain pathways which cause feelings of euphoria, strong motivation, and heightened energy which can induce sleeplessness, loss of appetite, and obsessive thinking about the beloved.”11
That doesn’t sound like much fun! And how crass to reduce it all to a rush of chemicals gushing through three pounds of gray slimy sponge under your scalp. Nobody wants to hear that, least of all me.
When humans first began to explore the sun, some people worried that God would be pushed aside. Likewise, some now fear discovering that love is simply a “condition” will make it less magic. Not at all! Understanding what love is just makes us a lot smarter in our choice of partner and teaches us how to keep that love alive.
Besides, who says a condition has to be crass or that a motivation system can’t feel like magic? We know what it is. It’s love, the greatest happiness known to humankind, and it has no parallel in human experience. Skeptics aside, love truly can last a lifetime and get better and better.12 But only if you recognize the powerful neurological, chemical, and evolutionary forces controlling it.
Does it really matter? The two of you fell in love, and life will never be the same. You have found “the one”—the one you always knew would come along. Early love is the most exhilarating, extraordinary, ecstatic, and unforgettable part of the relationship. Your brain is brimming over with the intoxicating chemicals we’ll soon meet called dopamine, serotonin, and incipient oxytocin and vasopressin. Hormones are at their highest levels ever. Testosterone and estrogen can hardly contain themselves. You and your lover want to cling tightly together and never part. “It’s delightful, it’s delicious, it’s delectable, it’s delirious,” Mother Nature is urging. “Let yourself go!” This period is the best part—at least until the beauty of long-lasting lifetime love sets in.
So you cast off in the Love Boat with carefree abandon. But is it true that the course of true love never did run smooth? Sometimes it seems that way. Often, when embarking on a love affair, you think you are in control. When you first step into the Love Boat, it’s like a sailboat on a calm sea on a sunny morning. Everything is beautiful. All’s right with the world. You are sailing to Happily-Ever-After Land. An occasional gust of wind sweeps across the sea, and you break into song as it tingles your skin. Then the wind picks up, and that makes it even more exciting. You laugh out loud as you adjust the sails. The boat is a bit rocky, but you have faith it’s propelling you toward ecstasy.
Suddenly the wind changes and you fear you may be going off course. What happened? What went wrong? The tempest makes you all the more desperate to get back on track. Your heart beats faster. But each time you think you’ve regained control, a bigger wind comes up.
Now there’s an uncomfortable chill in the air, and the waves are rocky. Threatening clouds race across the sky and it starts to rain. The stabilizer cracks, and you desperately struggle to keep the boat afloat in the downpour. Soon darkness surrounds you, and you are helplessly tossed around. You are caught in the perfect storm. Will the Love Boat reach “happily ever after?” Or will it sink? It’s up to you and how you’ll use your new wisdom.
If only we could all be as wise in love as an Italian captain of a cruise ship, whom I’ll introduce you to later, was in his profession. Captain Giorgio Accornero was once offered the command of a 150,000-ton tanker. He refused. The flabbergasted shipowner asked, “But why? No captain has ever refused before. It is a great honor to be the master of such a large ship.”
Captain Accornero replied, “Because, sir, I want to control the ship. I don’t want her to control me.”
The problem is that most people let the Love Boat master them rather than the other way around. The only way to be in control of the relationship is to admit that, in addition to magic, love is indeed a condition, a blissful one that we want to stay afloat forever.
Just as knowing how to create rain, feed animals, and nurture plants doesn’t make the world less wondrous, likewise, wisdom about creating, feeding, and nurturing Chemistry doesn’t make it less magnificent. In fact, knowledge about love gives you the ability to make love stronger and last longer.
Other than those life-sustaining needs like air, water, and shelter, I can think of no other need except love that begins at birth and lasts until we die. Yet I am shocked—no, stunned—by how little people know about this exquisite emotion that we idolize in music, film, and poetry, not to mention personally throughout our lives. We live for it. Some have died for it. In the song, “Oh Love,” Brad Paisley and Carrie Underwood sang, “You’re the simple truth. And you’re the biggest mystery.” Up until recently, that it was. Happily, however, love is no longer a mystery, and we’re learning more about it every day.
For centuries philosophers, psychiatrists, and way too many lay people scratched their heads, made assumptions, and spouted theories about this phenomenon. Linguists, every bit as befuddled as the rest of them, wound up giving it a then-meaningless, cop-out name: “Chemistry.” Little did they know how right they were!
Perhaps the wordsmiths were inspired by Aldous Huxley, who, in the early 1900s, wrote, “In one way or another, all our experiences are chemically conditioned.”13 In his day, thanks to visual tools like the telescope, scientists could explore outer space. But the astronomically closer inner space, the brain, was beyond the reach of the best of them. How ironic. They had the equipment to view planets light years away but not the tools to travel a few centimeters in the other direction. Today, however, extraordinary instruments like fMRI, CT, PET scanners, and a few other brain-imaging devices with mysterious acronyms permit cognitive neuroscientists to examine precisely what’s going on in that wrinkly gray tofu between your ears.
The relatively new field of Cognitive Science—defined as the interdisciplinary study of the mind embracing philosophy, psychology, neuroscience, linguistics, and anthropology—is making phenomenal progress in putting pieces of the puzzle together. Although there are still unanswered questions—as there always will be in life—scientists have uncovered the influences that generate the electrochemical activity in your brain, making you feel that magical chemical Spark with someone. They have also discovered how identical chemicals can influence a male brain and a female brain and nervous system in very different ways.14 Thus, the ways to Spark romantic Chemistry in this book will be gender specific—very gender specific!
Many people stubbornly insist that igniting Chemistry and making it last are not possible. They are wrong. Making it last is indeed doable, but only if you understand what kind of Chemistry we’re talking about and work within the context of the following:
1.Your neuroanatomy is constructed in a very different way from that of the other sex, almost as different as your bodies.
2.Your brain is saturated by dissimilar drugs that dictate how you think, feel, and act as well as what you respond to.15
3.Distinct evolutionary influences are working on males and females.16
4.Mother Nature has carved out diverse roles for you.17
5.As a relationship matures, it is natural and unavoidable that different chemicals flood your brain and body, affecting your emotions and desires.18
I will give you techniques called Chemistry Sparkers to generate these specific bonding chemicals that keep you and your partner together. And, to the extent it is possible, regenerate some of the earlier thrilling ones.
Although love is the most exquisite emotion known to man and woman since the beginning of time, a sinister face sometimes hides behind an alluring mask. We all know beauty can be deceiving. If you’re unaware of what you’re dealing with, love can destroy you. Some people feel a Spark with someone who treats them badly because it’s a familiar dynamic from childhood. Other common fragilities and shared unhealthy pathology can create damaging needs. Sadly, some people replicate these detrimental and sometimes risky relationships over and over again.
You’ve seen the TV ads for antidepressants that show previously despondent people dancing with delight through meadows tossing daisies at each other. Unless you listen carefully, you don’t hear the lightning-speed voiceover saying, “Side effects may include nausea, vomiting, internal hemorrhaging, epileptic seizures, respiratory arrest, coma, loss of hair, impotency, and, in rare cases, death. Ask your doctor if [this medication] is right for you.”
Likewise, when feeling that Spark, everyone is deaf to that internal voice warning, “Side effects may include hyperactivity, loss of appetite, trembling, obsessive thinking, compulsive acts, and symptoms associated with mental illness.19 Ask yourself if [this particular person] is right for you.”
Sometimes, when writing this book, I closed my laptop and gazed out the window, questioning whether I was writing a tutorial on how to create a bomb. The word Chemistry, in the sense we’re using it, is indeed like a chemical weapon that, if you are not careful, can claim you as a victim. I hope you get more from this book than you thought you would. Like learning to tell which mushrooms are poisonous, I want you to realize when you should run from Chemistry with someone before it thrusts you into a rotten relationship.
The other valuable lesson this book teaches is essential to your long-term happiness. Mother Nature makes the type of Chemistry between lovers change over time. Even in the best of relationships, it will. Don’t let the books that tell you you’ll want to jump each other’s bones until you are eighty fool you. You can, however, create bonding chemicals that make love stay longer and generate delicious tides of sex more often. Unbeknownst to most people, these chemicals that replace the early hot ones are far more precious and essential to a fulfilling life than the sizzling kind. They are definitely not household names like testosterone and estrogen, and they are relatively unknown by people outside science-related fields; however, they are the essence of long-lasting happy relationships.
For the moment please use your new knowledge on how to create the more sizzling hot Chemistry that we’ll talk about in the first sections wisely. Despite the overwhelming lust that you are absolutely sure is true love, slow down. Love can be as fragile and fleeting as an ice formation on the petal of a rose, or it can be as strong and enduring as an oak in the Petrified Forest.
Usually, if you are very young, it’s more like the former. It has nothing to do with intelligence. You could be as smart as Albert Einstein, Steven Hawking, and Lisa Simpson all rolled into one, but no matter how brilliant you are, your neural connections are not fully developed until about age twenty-five.20 In other words, you won’t be able make the wisest decision about a partner until then. However, the love and passion chemicals gushing through your brain can blind you to reality at any age. That’s part of Mother Nature’s plan, which we’ll discuss shortly. I pray this book will help you avoid the pattern of perceived love with the wrong person, marriage, disillusionment, divorce, and the tragedy of children left behind.
Staring at the blank computer screen with my anxious fingers hovering above the keyboard, I had to make a few choices before tapping the first key. Here’s what the Ouija Board decided.
Ah, the scourge of the English language, gender-specific pronouns! There was a day when the masculine “he,” “his,” and “him” graced most prose when referring to a nonspecific gender. Thankfully we are now an equal-opportunity pronoun language.
In the history of the world, however, there has never been progress without problems. The phrases “he or she” and “his or her” are unbearably clunky. Writer’s Commandment Number One is “Thou shalt avoid clunkiness at all costs.” So when a sentence is not gender specific, I will sometimes alternate “he” or “she” in the same paragraph. After much soul searching, I chose minor confusion over major clunkiness. I hope you won’t find it too distracting.
You may also encounter the signs for male and female, ♂ and ♀ respectively. The techniques for Hunters are marked with ♂, and Huntresses with ♀. The Chemistry Sparkers for both sexes are indicated by ♀♂. You will find an almost equal number of Sparkers for men and for women. However don’t skip the Sparkers for the other sex. Not only will they give you tremendous gender insights, but you’ll also understand why your own Chemistry gets Sparked and by whom.
Unfortunately, most sociological studies make a gross gender generalization saying females are primarily searching for a mate, and males just want a fling.21 There are many millions of exceptions, but until proven otherwise, I’ll follow their findings that this is primarily the case. Keep in mind, however, that most men do want to marry and settle down someday.22 And I’ve yet to meet a modern woman who hasn’t had a quickie tryst—or at least hasn’t thought about it!
Developmental evolution shows that nothing is written in stone, especially human relationships. Are we headed toward a world of mainly Mr. Moms and predominately working wives? Probably not in our lifetime. But who knows what the future holds?
Gay and lesbian Chemistry is every bit as powerful as opposite-sex relationships, and often their love can last even longer due to samesex couples’ neuroanatomical and neurochemical similarities. In this book, however, I speak primarily about male-female relationships because the structural, chemical, and functional brain differences are germane to the findings. They cause many of the most common relationship problems.23
This brings me to a related maintenance issue. Should I obey or break the unspoken rule about avoiding gender stereotypes such as women being talkative and men being terse, women being in touch with their feelings and men asking, “What feelings?” I didn’t have to think twice about this one because it is all biologically brain based. Whenever political correctness was contrary to the truth, I chose the latter.
Go ahead, PC police. Arrest me.
Happily, most meetings don’t take place in a bar these days. Because many studies were conducted in pubs and at singles parties, however, I will sometimes use those locales as examples when speaking generically. Obviously, please dub in a venue more pertinent to your lifestyle, whether it’s educational events, religious gatherings, concerts, or anywhere—including in front of your computer! The number of relationships that start with a cursor click is increasing exponentially. I’ll also give you some deliciously devious but not untruthful ways to Spark Chemistry online before the first flesh-and-blood meeting.
There are two ways to Spark Chemistry. The most renowned is the instantaneous, split-second BLAM. Unfortunately, unless you fit in your Quarry’s LoveMap—or invoke a “forgotten” intense adult experience—it’s an almost-impossible task. So sometimes when I talk of “Sparkers,” I’m referring to smaller pops that, when added up with a flurry of others, make the big Spark.
Those of you who have read my first book on love by the above title will find this one quite different in two important ways. In How to Make Anyone Fall in Love with You, I shared eighty-five techniques to, as the title promised, make someone fall in love with you. Each “Little Trick,” as I called them, was based on the latest sociological studies at the time. How to Create Chemistry with Anyone, however, deals with the most recent and current findings in the groundbreaking Cognitive Sciences and neuroimaging fields, which, when I wrote my previous book, were barely in their formative stages.
The best thing about my first book is that, as readers told me, the techniques worked. The worst thing is that some were a tad scheming. Although I never condoned lying, some methods involved presenting yourself in a way that magnified or minimized certain qualities depending on what your Quarry wanted. Now, with the new neuroscientific insights on love, however, retroactively I feel a bit guilty.
Mark Twain said that speaking with an uneasy conscience was like a having a hair in your mouth. Nowadays, when someone from the media asks me to tell their readers, listeners, or viewers some of the techniques from How to Make Anyone Fall in Love with You, I feel a follicle on my tongue.
So let’s make a deal. I will give you techniques to kick your Quarry’s nervous and hormonal systems into action. But when speaking with your Quarry, keep that hair out of your mouth! Don’t misrepresent your qualities or magnify your attributes. Simply highlight the truths about yourself that relate to the pertinent Chemistry Sparking technique we’re discussing. I say this not just on moral principles. When you embark on a serious love affair, any fabrication or falsehood could ruin two lives, your Quarry’s and yours. Maybe more—your eventual kids’.
Chapter 1, Love in Limbic Land, gives you a mini-tour of the territory (your Quarry’s brain) and the tools (chemicals) you have to create Chemistry with him or her.
Chapter 2, Chemistry at First Sight, unravels the mysteries of that instant Spark that blows you away.
Chapter 3, How to Spark Chemistry to Attract, gives you twelve surprising techniques to ignite it. (Be prepared, some are extreme—but proven to work.)
Chapter 4, How to Spark Cyber Chemistry, gives you six unique ways to Spark your Quarry into clicking on your dating site picture, then responding to your profile.
Chapter 5, How to Spark Chemistry in Your First Conversation, presents thirteen verbal Chemistry Sparkers to turn “Hello” into “Let’s make a date.”
Chapter 6, How to Spark Chemistry on Dates, furnishes thirteen techniques to keep things Sparking between you two every time you go out together.
Chapter 7, How to Spark Chemistry for Sex, provides ten unusual Sparkers to light erotic explosions in your Quarry’s brain and keep them detonating time after time.
Chapter 8, How to Spark Chemistry for a Relationship, gives you eight techniques to turn a new relationship into a serious one—a seriously wonderful one.
Chapter 9, How to Spark Chemistry for Falling in Love provides five methods to make your Quarry want to take the tumble—into a beautiful life with you.
Chapter 10, How to Spark Chemistry for a Lifetime of Love, gives you eight methods to make beautiful beginnings last forever.
It is said that if you marry for any reason other than love, you pay for it every day for the rest of your life. Let me expand that. If you commit for the all-too-common initial madness of what you might mistake as “love,” you also run that risk. Only if you marry with your new knowledge on what love is, and then nurture it, can “happily ever after” really happen.
The first half of this book gives you “little tricks” to Spark that initial erotic Chemistry. Some readers might call them “games.” But ethical games have rules. The rules of this game of not-so-trivial pursuit are no deception, no dishonesty, and definitely no doing anything that would harm or mislead your Quarry. I warn you, however, that the ploys will involve a little strategy on your part—and also courage!
Women especially: you may be shocked to find the early flirtation techniques fripperous or outrageous. But absorb them because, as the content of the book deepens along with your relationship, you’ll retroactively understand the wisdom behind them. You will learn how to turn sizzling sexy lure into significant long-lasting love.
Practically all the information in this book comes from original studies referenced in the back of the book. While proofreading the manuscript, however, I found that phrases like “a study proved,” “the [name of journal] proved,” and so forth were a snore. I fell asleep reading phrases like “the highly respected [neurologist, psychologist, sociologist, or anthropologist] found that . . .” So I decided simply to state the fact and put a reference number beside each. For more information on each subject, I invite you to visit the annotated original source in the back of the book.
There are hundreds of contributors to the neuroscience of love to whom I’m indebted, and you will find many of their names in the references. Let me take a second, however, to express my admiration and gratitude to three of them for their extra-special contributions to the material in this book. First to Dr. Helen Fisher, biological anthropologist at Rutgers who, in addition to original research, wrote several beautifully written books for the layman on the subject. I am also in awe of the fascinating studies by Arthur Aron, PhD (SUNY, Stony Brook,) and David Buss, PhD (University of Texas at Austin) concerning the cognitive and evolutionary aspects of relationships. And a personal note of gratitude to my friend and “fact checker,” Dr. William Hoffman. This esteemed neurosurgeon made sure I followed the convoluted paths of the human brain accurately and didn’t drown in some of its synapses.
A multitude of research substantiates each fact in this book. For conciseness, however, I cite only one or two landmark studies on each finding. In my previous book, How to Make Anyone Fall in Love with You, I also referenced a great many studies. Except when absolutely necessary, I avoided citing those again.
Anyone who has witnessed the blue of the sky on a clear day, the green of the grass in spring, and the brightness of the sun at midday realizes Mother Nature’s breathless beauty. Anyone who has survived a tornado, a blinding snowstorm, or a tempest at sea is in awe of her power. And anyone who has fallen in love has unknowingly been her ecstatically willing pawn—for better or for worse. Mother Nature’s main task is to keep the earth flourishing by assuring that all fish in the sea, birds in the sky, plants of the land, and mammals on earth, including humans, go forth and multiply.
The personification of this powerful force is the only fiction. Other than that, the entire book consists of information (proven), stories (true), and humor (weak).
Some of you have already surmised that, considering the magnitude of the subject, How to Create Chemistry is, to say the least, simplified. I do this because the riveting field of Cognitive Science, which covers so many disciplines, needs a little simplification!
To readers who are more knowledgeable about Cognitive Science, I beg your pardon in advance for the oversimplification. How to Create Chemistry with Anyone is written in layman’s language. Sometimes too layman. Enjoy!