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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 subconscious imprinting 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 continue to do so into maturity – Dr Lorenz decided to imprint the ducklings with himself.

      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 do not continue to 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 – and early sexual imprinting.

      Universally respected sexologist Dr John Money coined the term Lovemap 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 species.’⁷ Your 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 favourite 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 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 is 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 PEA, a little reason (hopefully) starts to make its way through the grey matter. As you and your PLP get to know each other better, you begin 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 is 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). Throughout How 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 PEA shooting through his/her veins over you?

       Chapter Four

       Where Are All the Good Men and Women?

       Looking for Love in All the Wrong Places

      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 make-up, as they touch up the grey in their hair, ‘Where are all the good men? Where are all the good women?’

      ‘One in five Americans is single and searching,’ American Demographics magazine tells us.⁸ That means there are 49 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.’ PLPs are sitting in the park munching a sandwich, 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 call residential propinquity show that Cupid’s arrow does not travel far. In fact, one study tells us the median distance travelled by an unskilled worker to find his spouse is just five blocks.⁹ Unless you have pitched your tent in the middle of the Sahara, you don’t have to venture far for your hunting expedition. You will outfit yourself with some new knowledge and, armed with the techniques in this book, you can start tracking Quarry very close at hand.

      You have 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 is not the real problem. Most have been looking for love in all the wrong ways.

      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.

       Chapter Five

       Does Love at First Sight Exist?

      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

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