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Think you know what makes men fall in love? Think again. Here’s what makes men fall head over heels in love with you.
You may have intense chemistry with someone—be attracted to them on all levels and vice versa—but the attraction fades after a while. Or, it grows more intense. Why is that? What makes us fall in love or not fall in love? Below, you will find some things that are needed to move from attraction to falling in love.
1. Knowing You Have a Life
There’s this idea that men like women who are hard to get. It’s a bit of a myth. What men like is women who have a life. That, in turn, means you aren’t going to go off with the first man who comes knocking.
Men want to know you test them to see if they behave themselves. If you are always available, always answer the minute you get a text message, change your schedule to fit theirs and are desperately waiting for their next phone call, it shows you’re giving yourself to them without checking if they’re worthy of you. They won’t feel like you’re a reward—a prize for them being amazing.
Now, a woman who plays hard to get gives off signs that she’s checking to see if a guy is worthy of her, even though that’s not what she’s doing. However, playing games isn’t particularly fun because chances are she’ll be hard to get and aloof at times when it’s inappropriate and frustrating.
Instead, make sure to focus on your life. Fill it with things you love doing. Get busy achieving your goals. Ensure you don’t stop working or move your focus away from your friends as soon as you get a text message. Save the text till the break or when you get home from your night out with your friends.
It’s not that you shouldn’t savor the excitement of meeting someone new because you should—just make sure your life comes first. That way, chances are the guy will think you’re amazing because you lead an amazing life and he will want to be part of that life.
2. Adrenaline
Yep, it’s true: a man rescuing you from a dragon is more likely to fall in love with you than a man who isn’t rescuing you from a dragon. Why? Adrenaline makes us fall in love quicker—or so studies say.
It might also have something to do with the bonding you do in different experiences. Having dinner with someone is a lot less engaging than going zip lining with someone (on one of those obstacle tracks in the woods or similar), where you get to chat with them, help them and together feel the fear and thrill of getting through each obstacle.
It also makes sense that you fall in love faster as you are in a heightened emotional state when you are in a fearful or exciting situation. Compare the exhilaration of skiing down the alps and then cuddling up with hot chocolate afterwards, when your senses are still tingling, to having a drink at your local bar.
Also, experiencing new things will make you feel alive—only too often do we stop experiencing life and go on autopilot with our routines. When you have great experiences with someone, you associate them with the experience. If you want to make a great impression on someone, make sure you create great experiences with them.
3. Intimacy
I’m not talking about jumping into the sack with someone, but rather being intimate with your thoughts and emotions.
Psychologist Arthur Aron and co. did an experiment in which strangers got to sit down together and ask each other 36 questions then looked each other in the eye for four minutes. The results showed that people suddenly got close very quickly.
Normally we take time to get to know each other and as the relationship deepens, we open up more. Asking each other questions that speed up this process leads to feelings flying high a lot faster. It will also help you to establish more about the other person.
You can find the questions in the New York Times. (There’s a free app for it too, which you can find in the same place.)
4. Innuendo: Dare to Think it
When we fall for someone, we often get a bit… nervous. Suddenly, we have skin in the game because we want them and it makes us fearful of not getting them. The problem with nervousness is that it blocks out other things.
When you’re with someone, instead of bottling up your nervousness—which is like putting the lid on champagne—is that, sooner or later it will explode. Let it be. If you uncork the champagne, the bubbles will bubble away till there are none left. Nervousness is similar to that. I call it “hanging with the tension” as opposed to wanting to resolve it by repressing it, overriding it with charm or jokes, etc.
You see, once you are present and feel what you really feel, the other person will pick up on that. If all they pick up on is nervousness, they won’t feel a sizzling attraction. A little bit of nervousness every so often is cute—a whole night of it… not so much.
What attracts us to a person is a combo of things (our personality, physical appearance, intelligence, emotional state, etc.), but also sex. If you look someone in the eye, thinking about exactly how attracted you are to them, smiling and mentally alluding to what is to come, they will sense it. You just gave them “the look.” You’re promising them something—but only with your eyes.
No man will be unaffected if they’re attracted to you. Touching your leg or twirling your hair while thinking those thoughts also works a charm.
You can allude to sex in other ways, too, by touching the person, for example. If you say something like, “Well, you know, eating chocolate can be sexy…it’s such an intense taste,” they will think of sex.
People have called me the queen of innuendo due to my blog (I had this idea of spicing it up with sexy headlines and have since come up with more metaphors for bedroom romps than you care to know). It can be fun. You don’t have to be dirty. You never have talk about it straight out. You just allude to it.
Men and women are biologically wired to want sex, so whether we want it to be or not, it’s part of the attraction we feel for someone. The only way to turn a friendship into something more is if the other person suddenly sees you in a sexual light. That’s what differentiates friends from lovers.
