Voted one of the Top 20 Most Followed Dating Experts on Twitter, Dawn Maslar, MS, is an expert on the science of love. While technology has helped make meeting people easier today, why does finding real love seem more elusive than ever?
Men Chase, Women Choose equips readers with the knowledge of how love works; no more guessing or anecdotal theories. They now have the latest cutting edge, peer-reviewed research in their hands. Dawn makes a dynamic guest who fires up an audience with entertaining, interactive research enactments on stage; part of her ‘Great Love Experiment.’
Men Chase, Women Choose
The Neuroscience of Meeting, Dating, Losing Your Mind and Finding True Love
By Dawn Maslar, MS
“Men Chase, Women Choose is warm and witty with a perfect balance of science and insight. You’ll find yourself wondering why a book of this magnitude didn’t come out sooner. But like everything else in life, all in due time.” – Gabe Berman, author of Live Like a Fruit Fly
“Understanding the anthropological principles that underlie our responses to love does not lessen its beauty and enigmatic wonder, but allows us to clearly view love as a biological responsibility.”- Lisa McCourt, author of Juicy Joy: 7 Simple Steps to Your Glorious, Gutsy Self
Davie, FL, September 27, 2016 ― A question that seems as old as time comes closer to a definitive answer than ever before ― What is love? In Men Chase, Women Choose, Dawn Maslar, MS, provides engaging insights into one of life’s most elusive and misunderstood topics by offering science-based research to help anyone discover and sustain love. Maslar’s relatable and easy-to-read book uses the most relevant neurological, physiological, and biochemical studies on the science of love, while incorporating stories and examples based on participants of her popular classes and seminars.
For the past decade, the “love biologist” has been using her cutting-edge research to describe how the brain works when two people first meet, start to date, fall in love, and then move on to a more passionate, lifelong love. Even simpler, she breaks down her love science into four precisely timed phases:
1. Attraction
2. Dating
3. Falling in love
4. Real love
During these phases, Maslar explains that “love” is actually neural activity as well as the presence or absence of certain neurotransmitters. Most people associate love with the euphoric feeling during which anxiety is low or nonexistent among these brain signals. However, Maslar demonstrates that levels of anxiety and other feelings can fluctuate throughout love’s path. “Love isn’t just one thing that you luckily fall into,” says Maslar. “Finding and maintaining lifelong love is a process … Because the stages are different, you can feel different emotions during each phase.”
Maslar reasons that once we understand how love works, we can make educated decisions. Men Chase, Women Choose helps readers in this boundless endeavor by addressing all those time-honored questions like:
• Does love at first sight really exist?
• Who should make the first move?
• What happens to your brain when you fall in love?
• Why won’t he commit?
• Why does love make us crazy?
• What can you do to have love that lasts a lifetime?
Readers can expect answers involving how love is a biological need, the “natural laws” of love, purposes of the brain’s anatomy, and how testosterone and other biochemical differences between men and women affect how we love. Maslar states, “When you understand the science of love, it will help you easily and effortlessly find nourishing and passionate, long-lasting love.”
More praise for Men Chase, Women Choose…
“Whether in between relationships or currently in one, readers will find valuable insight on how men and women interact with each other and what dynamics long-term relationships need to work. Maslar mixes scientific concepts, often with humor, making it a light and enjoyable read. – Theresa Braun, author of Groom and Doom: A Greek Love Story and dating blogger.
“Finally, a book that doesn’t treat finding true love like a Nora Ephron movie! Biology, nature, evolution … they all play a role in helping us find that special someone. Or in keeping them from us forever. – Eric Rogell, author of The Art of War for Dating
About the Author:
Dawn Maslar, MS, (Davie, FL) award-winning author, adjunct biology professor and the go-to authority on the science of love. She was voted one of the Top 20 Most Followed Dating Experts on Twitter and Best 28 Dating, Marriage and Relationship Blogs in the UK to follow in 2015. She is a contributing author at scienceofrelationship.com, a collection of leading experts in the field of scientific relationship research. She is a TEDx speaker on How Your Brain Falls in Love and worked with the TED Education division to create their Science of Attraction video. Her work has been featured on South Florida Today, Pittsburgh Tribune and NPR. Her online videos have had over 2 million views. In addition to the book, she has created The Great Love Experiment; a show where audience members learn about the science of love by participating in research reenactments on stage. It’s a fun and often hilarious event that she does at colleges, comedy clubs and singles events.
Video links to see Dawn Maslar: https://vimeo.com/168358958 – TEDxBocaRaton: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eyq2Wo4eUDg
Available wherever books are sold or directly from the publisher at: www.hcibooks.com or 800-441-5569
Men Chase, Women Choose: The Neuroscience of Meeting, Dating, Losing Your Mind and Finding True Love by Dawn Maslar, MS
ISBN: -9780757319259–October 18, 2016 — $15.95
Author Interview provide by HCI Books, The Life Issues Publisher:
1. You worked as a biology professor, how did you end-up researching love?
I was a biology professor that was attracted to the wrong men. My love life was a disaster, so I began looking for a way to break my attraction to men that were wrong for me. The good news is I did, and I ended-up writing a book about it and leading women’s groups on the subject. However, the same questions would pop up over and over again. What is love? How do you find it? Why is dating so hard? Why doesn’t love seem to last? I wanted to answer these questions but as a biologist, I didn’t want anecdotal evidence and opinion. I wanted facts based on hard science. I wanted to understand exactly how love worked. And, I’m happy to say I have.
2. In your book, you state that there are four phases to love. Can you explain that?
The four phases are based on the neural activity and the different neurotransmitters that are dominant. For example, in order to get to love, you must pass through the first phase, which is attraction. Attraction is caused by the neurotransmitter norepinephrine. It gives you that unmistakable feeling of attraction such as rapid heartbeat, sweating palms, and nervous excitement. If you decide to pursue the attraction you move into the next phases or dating or courtship. Now a new set of neurotransmitters comes into play. If all goes well in the second phase, then you can reach the third, the phase of falling in love. This is the phase we all love, but this phase is temporary. Eventually you will leave this stage and hopefully move into long-term love.
3. You mentioned that attraction is more subconscious. Can you explain that?
An attraction begins with a subconscious response based on your senses. All your senses, including your eyes, ears, nose, skin and taste buds, have a vote as to whether you’re attracted or not.
4. How does your nose judge attraction?
Your nose senses for different things. In women, she will sense for something called major histocompatibility complex (MHC). These are proteins that are part of your immune system. Women are more attracted to men of opposite immune system. This of course makes perfect biological sense. It would give any offspring produced by this union a more complete and stronger immune system. On the other hand, men are attracted to pheromones, particularity copulins, a pheromone produced around the time of ovulation. In other words, a man is going to be most attractive to a fertile woman.
5. You call falling in love ‘temporary insanity.’ Why?
I call falling in love temporary insanity because of what happens to your brain when you fall in love. Important sections of your brain shut-down. Parts of your brain that are involved in judgment and safety are temporarily taken off line. In addition, you go through a neurotransmitter upheaval. For example, serotonin, your hormone of happiness, actually plummets. You would think it would go up, because most people report being happy, but it’s just the opposite. In fact, it can drop to the level of someone with OCD- Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. So, you’re not really happy, you’re obsessed.
6. You said falling in love is temporary. How long does it last?
The research shows it can last anywhere between one and three years, with the average around two. By the way, that happens to correlate with the divorce rate in the United States. The highest amounts of divorces occur around the two-year mark.
7. Why do you think those divorces happen?
After the two years, those parts of your brain that were shut down come back on line. Two of the important ones are the ventromedial prefrontal cortex and your amygdala. Your ventromedial prefrontal cortex is the part that judges the other person. It’s been dormant for a couple of years and when it comes back on line, all of a sudden you can start noticing things you didn’t before. All of a sudden he might notice that they now snore or drool when they sleep. Or, they smack their lips when they eat and she finds this annoying. Not only that, your amygdala comes back. That’s the part of your brain that sounds the alarm. So that cute little quirk they have that was so charming now becomes alarming. The combination of criticism and concern pulls two people apart.
8. Why do you think this happens?
It appears the process of falling in love is designed to bring two people together. In addition to what I described, the loss of fear and judgment of the other person, your body also produces brain-derived neurotropic factor (BDNF), which has been found to reduce avoidance behavior. In other words, all of these things are designed to help you to stick around long enough to get to know the other person.
9. Why does it stop?
Some researchers argue that this happens long enough for two people to produce a child. I would argue that this happens long enough for you to get to know and trust the other person. Mother Nature can’t leave you “brain damaged” forever. You need to be able to judge and to sound the alarm. She can’t leave you so obsessed that you never get anything else done. She needs to give you back you brain. I believe she holds you in position for maximum togetherness and once you understand what love is about, she gently lets you go to love on your own.
10. Why do you believe that long-term love is based on what you learned when you fell in love?
One study decided to look at all the characteristics in a loving, long-term love to figure out the components. They studied a group a group of people that had been together for over ten years to see what characteristic they shared. What they found was that there was no common characteristic, except one. That one characteristic that all couples in long-term relationships have is the ability to maintain positive illusions of the other. When you fall in love, the deactivation of the ventromedial prefrontal cortex causes you to have positive illusions of the other. Therefore, when that wears off, a person can become critical and judgmental, or they can take what they learned and choose to look at the good parts of the other. All couples in loving, long-term relationships chose to focus on the good in the other.
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