Why Men Want Sex and Women Need Love Read Free Page B

into her cheeks, making her “glow,” and she will radiate warmth. If she feels unloved and ignored, however, that’s easy to see, too.
    What is the difference between men and women?
A woman wants one man to satisfy her every little need.
A man wants every woman to satisfy his one little need .
     
     
    The studies by David Buss showed that when couples are in the falling-in-love phase, men’s testosterone levels decrease and their oxytocin levels rise to make the bonding process quicker. This makes men softer, gentler, and more easygoing. At the same time, women’s testosterone levels rise with the excitement and confidence they feel at the start of a new relationship. This increased testosterone makes women hornier, giving the couple the illusion that male and female sex drives must be the same. When this “shagathon” period ends, about three to nine months into a new relationship, their sex drivesreturn to the “default position,” leaving a man with the idea that she’s gone off sex and giving her the impression that he’s a sex maniac. Many relationships end at this point.

Why Lovers Are So Crazy About Each Other
     
    Josephine, a thirty-three-year-old single mother, had devoted her life to bringing up her children by herself. After six months in her new job, she attended the company’s annual Christmas party on a cruise ship in Sydney Harbor. She looked glamorous when she arrived at the docks and received many compliments and admiring gazes from male staff. This boosted her confidence and made her feel beautiful. As the ship cruised around on the moonlit water, she was introduced to Rick, a handsome new male executive from the Melbourne office. As they shook hands, her heart started racing. He was tall, dark, and handsome and made her laugh, and it seemed as if he was as attracted to her as she was to him. After a magical night of dancing and dining, they talked until the early hours of the morning and spent the entire next day and evening together. For Josephine, it felt as if some kind of magical spell had been cast over her
.
    Returning home to the kids was wonderful, but her mind was full of thoughts about Rick and their time together. She wondered if he missed her as much as she missed him. Over the next few days she started to lose weight and couldn’t eat—all she could do was think of him and the beautiful memories. She began phoning him every hour just to tell him she was thinking of him, and she sent him text messages in the early hours of the morning. She began buying him gifts to show him how much she cared. Her kids started to feel neglected and their behavior began to change for the worse, but she didn’t seem to care. She canceled her son’s dental appointment and used the money to buy a plane ticket to fly to see Rick. She thought, Wasn’t it her time to think about her own needs and to have a life as well?
     
    In many ways behavioral changes during romantic love resemble a psychosis, and from a biochemical standpoint, passionate love closely imitates substance abuse. Dr. John Marsden, the head of the British National Addiction Centre, found that love is addictive in similar ways to cocaine and speed. He concluded that romantic love is a “booby trap,” intended to drive partners together long enough to bond. Anthropologist Dr. Helen Fisher, author of
The Anatomy of Love
, described falling in love as “a distinct set of chemical events occurring in the brain that have similarities with mental illness.” According to Dr. Fisher, exactly the same brain circuits that become active when you take cocaine light up when you’re in love, and you experience an intense elation, just like when you’re high on drugs. Researchers have also connected romantic love to the signaling pathways that use the hormone dopamine, a chemical messenger closely tied to the state of euphoria, craving, and addiction.

I Get a Shiver Down My Backbone
     
    The chemicals released from the brain during new love