For your reading pleasure – adapted from Finding Love by Dr Brown.

Finding love is one of the best things that can happen in our lives. Many of us search and search for love and have trouble finding that special someone- either we don’t meet the right person – or we think we had met the person only to find out that he or she isn’t what we are looking for.

There are a few things we can do to help cupid get you moving in the right direction. First, you need to clarify the things that are important to you in a partner. By doing so, you will draw yourself towards the person and the relationship that you are looking for.

One of the most important tips is to, first decide what you ARE NOT looking for. What are your “deal-breakers”? What is absolutely essential for you to have in a long term relationship? Do you want to get married and have children? Think about critical issues such as finances, religion and lifestyles. These are your core values and you need to be clear on what you can compromise and what you can’t.

Once you have clarified these basic core values – your deal breakers, you need to trust yourself and stay clear of potential partners who fall outside of these categories. Typically, these are also things you can find out in a few dates. Hoping that your partner will change or telling yourself that “this doesn’t really matters,” will only set yourself up for heartache down the road. Follow what you’ve decided and ultimately it will lead your heart in the right direction. KNOWING YOUR DEAL-BREAKERS IS CRUCIAL AND STICKING TO THEM THE KEY.

Be open to trying new things and be realistic about the outcomes. While it is essential to clarify what you do not want in a relationship, it is also important to keep your mind open about the other qualities that the person can offer, even if these are qualities that you have not been attracted to before. Your deal-breakers should be kept to between 5-7 core values that you will not compromise.

Outside of that, be open minded about stepping out of your comfort zone and date people who may not be exactly what you think you are looking for. As long as they are not deal-breakers, keep your mind and heart open!

Another important tip: Make finding love and dating a priority. Just as a photographer never travels without his or her camera, a person looking looking for love should always be prepared to find love. Knowing what you are looking for and what you want in a relationship and what you do not want) is a good starting point. The next is to to make dating a priority, and that means dedicating  time and resources to it, this can be in the form of consciously expanding your social circle, joining dating events or taking up a new social hobby.

Falling in love has been reduced to a scan of the brains.
Such scans of people in love is also helping to refine science’s grasp of love’s various forms. Helen Fisher, a researcher at Rutgers University, and the author of numerous books on love and attraction suggests it comes in three flavours: lust, romantic love and long-term attachment.

There is some overlap but, in essence, these are separate phenomena, with their own emotional and motivational systems, and accompanying chemicals. These systems have evolved to enable, respectively, mating, pair-bonding and parenting.

Lust, of course, involves a craving for sex. Jim Pfaus, a psychologist at Concordia University, in Montreal, says the aftermath of lustful sex is similar to the state induced by taking opiates. A heady mix of chemical changes occurs, including increases in the levels of serotonin, oxytocin, vasopressin and endogenous opioids (the body’s natural equivalent of heroin). “This may serve many functions, to relax the body, induce pleasure and satiety, and perhaps induce bonding to the very features that one has just experienced all this with”, says Dr Pfaus.

Then there is attraction, or the state of being in love (what is sometimes known as romantic or obsessive love). This is a refinement of mere lust that allows people to home in on a particular mate. This state is characterised by feelings of exhilaration, and intrusive, obsessive thoughts about the object of one’s affection. Some researchers suggest this mental state might share neurochemical characteristics with the manic phase of manic depression. Dr Fisher’s work, however, suggests that the actual behavioural patterns of those in love — such as attempting to evoke reciprocal responses in one’s loved one — resemble obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD).

Wonderful though it is, romantic love is unstable — not a good basis for child-rearing. But the final stage of love, long-term attachment, allows parents to co-operate in raising children. This state, says Dr Fisher, is characterised by feelings of calm, security, social comfort and emotional union.

Because they are independent, these three systems can work simultaneously — with dangerous results. As Dr Fisher explains, “you can feel deep attachment for a long-term spouse, while you feel romantic love for someone else, while you feel the sex drive in situations unrelated to either partner.” This independence means it is possible to love more than one person at a time, a situation that leads to jealousy, adultery and divorce — though also to the possibilities of promiscuity and polygamy, with the likelihood of extra children, and thus a bigger stake in the genetic future, that those behaviours bring. As Dr Fisher observes, “We were not built to be happy but to reproduce.”

The stages of love vary somewhat between the sexes. Lust, for example, is aroused more easily in men by visual stimuli than is the case for women. This is probably why visual pornography is more popular with men. And although both men and women express romantic love with the same intensity, and are attracted to partners who are dependable, kind, healthy, smart and educated, there are some notable differences in their choices. Men are more attracted to youth and beauty, while women are more attracted to money, education and position. When an older, ugly man is seen walking down the road arm-in-arm with a young and beautiful woman, most people assume the man is rich or powerful….

Your Choice to love or is it really just chemicals?

It was forwarded to me in email by a friend and i liked it so much that I decided to reproduce here….=)

During one of our seminars, a woman asked a common question.
She said, “How do I know if I married the right person?”
I noticed that there was a large man sitting next to her so I said,
“It depends. Is that your husband?” In all seriousness, she answered “How do you know?”

Let me answer this question because the chances are
good that it’s weighing on your mind.

Here’s the answer.
EVERY relationship has a cycle. In the beginning, you fell in love with
your spouse. You anticipated their call, wanted their touch, and liked
their idiosyncrasies.

Falling in love with your spouse wasn’t hard. In fact, it was a
completely natural and spontaneous experience. You didn’t have to DO anything. That’s why it’s called “falling” in love…

Because it’s happening TO YOU.

People in love sometimes say, “I was swept off my feet.” Think about the
imagery of that expression. It implies that you were just standing
there; doing nothing, and then something came along and happened TO YOU.

Falling is love is easy. It’s a passive and spontaneous experience.
But after a few years of marriage, the euphoria of love fades. It’s the
natural cycle of EVERY relationship. Slowly but surely, phone calls
become a bother (if they come at all), touch is not always welcome (when it happens), and your spouse’s idiosyncrasies, instead of being cute, drive you nuts.

The symptoms of this stage vary with every relationship, but if you
think about your marriage! , you wi ll notice a dramatic difference between the initial stage when you were in love and a much duller or even angry subsequent stage.

At this point, you and/or your spouse might start asking, “Did I marry
the right person?” And as you and your spouse reflect on the euphoria of the love you once had, you may begin to desire that experience with
someone else. This is when marriages breakdown. People blame their
spouse for their unhappiness and look outside their marriage for
fulfillment.

Extramarital fulfillment comes in all shapes and sizes. Infidelity is
the most obvious. But sometimes people turn to work,a hobby, a
friendship, excessive TV, or abusive substances.

But the answer to this dilemma does NOT lie outside your marriage.
It lies within it. I’m not saying that you couldn’t fall in love with someone else. You could.

And TEMPORARILY you’d feel better. But you’d be in the same situation a few years later. Because

THE KEY TO SUCCEEDING IN MARRIAGE IS NOT FINDING THE RIGHT PERSON;

IT’S LEARNING TO LOVE THE PERSON YOU FOUND.

SUSTAINING love is not a passive or spontaneous experience. It’ll NEVER just happen to you. You can’t “find” LASTING love. You have to “make” it day in and day out. That’s why we have the expression “the labor of love.”

Because it takes time, effort, and energy . And most importantly, it takes WISDOM . You have to know WHAT TO DO to make your marriage work.

Make no mistake about it. Love is NOT a mystery. There are specific
things you can do (with or without your spouse) to succeed with your
marriage.

Just as there are physical laws of the universe (such as gravity), there
are also laws for relationships. Just as the right diet and exercise
program makes you physically stronger, certain habits in your
relationship WILL make your marriage stronger. It’s a direct cause and
effect. If you know and apply the laws, the results are predictable…you
can “make” love.

Love in marriage is indeed a “decision”… Not just a feeling .

No one falls in love by choice, it is by CHANCE.

No one stays in love by chance, it is by WORK.

And no one falls out of love by chance, it is by CHOICE.

I woke up really early today, at 7am to attend a Pond’s creative Workshop, as a guest speaker touching on the subject of dating and romance. I was quite excited as this sounds quite fun!  I was perspiring terribly when I  reached the location as I had walked in my 3 inch heels all the way from the MRT, only to found out that I went to the wrong place!

Oh well, it is nothing out of the ordinary for me to those who know me well. =P

The workshop is held in a cosy  shop house, with the participants encouraged to pen down their thoughts and inspirations on post-its, while Lissy (a marriage counsellor with SACAC www.sacac.com) and I talked about what we do for a living – I match make for Singles and help them to be in a meaningful relationship while Lissy helped couples rekindle romance in ailing marriages.

Had a fun one and half hour, and the chocolate muffin was delicious. =P

Thank you, Charming Eric from effective Brands (www.effectivebrands.com) for arranging this. More information on Ponds

can be found on http://www.unilever.com/brands/personalcarebrands/Ponds.aspx.