How Do Guys Fall In Love – Decoding The Science

By Ananya SayeeAnanya Sayee  • 

With girls, it’s a million things. We’re choosy that way. And once you decide you love a guy, you go with it. With guys, it’s about biology and procreation and attachment. Guys don’t mess with evolution. They don’t fight the flow. So obviously, the way they fall in love will be different. And they can actually do that only after their lizard brains have had a chance to procreate (surprise! ) No judging; we’ve got lizard brains too.
But how does it happen exactly?

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Well, there are 8 stages.

1. Checking out the target(s)

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In other words, mate stats. It takes a guy about 20 seconds to tell if a girl is a suitable vessel for his kids, and if she’s a permanent mate or a temporary one. And unfortunately, that’s why a guy can keep checking out all kinds of girls, all the time, until he’s committed permanently. It’s how you know if a guy is really very serious about his mate, and happy with her. He stops checking out other women when his oxytocin levels cross that required mark, causing him to override his need to recreate.

He looks for the following attributes, which are obvious on a woman in the first 20 seconds.

  • Looks. He’d want good genetics for his kids. Even if he looks average.
  • A good hip to waist or body ratio.
  • A propensity for devotion to others over self. Yes, it’s visible in a girl’s body language, and her facial ratios. Too much and you know she’s a pushover, covert or not, and too little and he’ll assume she’s a better mate, coz she knows how to choose.
  • Distinct feminineness. If she’s got too much testosterone in her system, the kids will have problems because of that. Plus hormone disorders.
  • Company. Is she with friends? Or is she alone? ‘Alone’ means she’s a temporary mate. ‘With people’ means she’s a great catch.
  • Mom factor. This last one’s a doozy. Every straight guy will look for the stuff he sees in his mom. This factor determines if he sees a girl as a temporary or permanent mate.
  • He’ll look for the ‘mom factor’ even if his relationship with his mom was tumultuous, because she was the first woman he loved, with sincerity and purity.

2. Making The Target Notice Him

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After those first 20 seconds, if he likes a girl, he then tries to get her attention. It’s not always welcome, but he will try anyway. Men know when they see a girl who will date down, or if she will choose a lesser mate, or if she’s malleable enough to be manipulated into dating him. His goal at this stage is to get her to look at him. To get a girl to consider him.

If she doesn’t notice him, then he forgets her and moves on to the next target. Most guys do this all the time, casually. Some take it to another level altogether by bumping into her or with catcalls sometimes; though if those advances are ignored, he forgets her and looks for another mate. It’s not like he has his heart broken.

If he decides to chase her despite her distinct lack of acknowledgement, it normally means he’s got a few screws loose.

3. Reciprocation

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Reciprocation here means a different thing. See, if a girl notices him, after he notices her, that’s reciprocation. If she reciprocates, in any way, it equals success. All she has to do is acknowledge his existence. Whether she does it as a friend or as a mate or even in negative ways, he’ll still take it for what it is – a response to his attention. It’s not all that great for either side, but it’s what nature vs nurture has programmed him to do, and without any other reprogramming or troubleshooting to fix his initial set-up, that’s what he’ll do.

So, if a girl actually reciprocates, and his attempt to get her attention is successful, then he’s onto the next challenge.

4. Making The Target Susceptible To Him

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So, he’s got her to react to him. His next stage is to get her to consider him for ‘matehood’. He’s going to try his best to make her see how awesome he is. He’ll do a lot to make her do more that just react. He wants a positive reaction. He wants her to be impressed with him. If she doesn’t find anything about him that gets her attention, she’s not going to laugh at his bad jokes, be with him when the going gets tough, and say nice things to cheer him up when he needs to hear them. Guys need those things just as much as girls do.

He’ll know whether it’s working or not based on how she reacts to him. And he’ll keep changing strategy till he gets her to respond positively. The goal here is a good positive response. He just wants her to actually like him. Because otherwise, stage five won’t work.

5. Wooing The Target Into Exclusivity

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Yup. He now must tell her she’s a potential candidate to carry his children, so she’d better stop looking at other males (it’s a nine month thing, evolutionarily speaking, so obviously he’d prefer that). How he does that is by telling her what he knows will get her to be inclusive with him alone, so that he is the father of any products. Only he says it in her language “I love/like/am interested in you, can we go out?”

You’ll need to remember, even if he says the “L” word, it doesn’t always mean that; women are known to be inclusive only after the guy uses the “L” word, in a relationship, so he will, if he has to, trick the system to get that if he has to. His goal in this phase is just that, to make sure that he doesn’t have to share.

6. Seeding The Target

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It’s still all business; the business of procreation. Even if we don’t have sex to procreate any more, the same rules still apply. He will look for some action that looks like procreation, even if he’s not interested in any long-term thing at this point. It’s heart breaking but it’s true. He wants her to look at him alone as a mate, and expect progeny with him. He will have sex with her in this phase, if she lets him. With short-term partners, he’ll let her go after this phase, coz his lizard brain thinks he’s seeded so there’s no purpose in sticking around. He probably won’t even know why he’s being a jerk by doing this. He’ll just know he’s not interested anymore.

7. Long-Term Saturation

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Like I said, he’s already determined if the girl is a long-term or short-term mate in the first 20 seconds. He gets rid of temporary mates in the sixth stage. Temporary mates (seeding) serve to increase his chances of having had kids (lizard brain). They don’t enhance his demand quotient. He knows this, which is why with a permanent mate, he will not talk about sexual conquests after the second stage.

This seventh stage is to prepare his mind for attachment to a figure other than his primary female caregiver. He is getting ready to hand over that position to this target. As a temporary mate, you will clash with him over attachment, but it’s not attachment, it’s just his transference projections that look like attachment. The actual attachment and the subsequent relinquishing of singledom happens after this stage, where he starts to replace his mom’s love with yours. By this stage, he finally starts to like you for you, and lets his guard down around you a bit.

8. Loving The Target

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Success. Long-term stage seven will result in attachment. That may take months or years. Attachment is not always love, and that’s why that rare case of divorce after two decades of marriage happens. It’s rare, but it does. Guys who are capable of love, and not just attachment, are rare. The best you can hope for is extreme attachment, which is the closest he’ll get to permanent love. Once he stops feeling like he needs to keep seeding, he’ll let you love him, and love you in return.

How To Hack The System

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  • The first six are pure matter over mind, and they’re subconsciously driven phenomena. He may or may not know that he’s doing them, but they’re about procreation alone. And his mom features as the lead. Unless you have a way to have his dad carry him for nine months, and him not ending up gay afterwards, you can’t change that. Accept that. She took care of him, so she deserves to matter.
  • Since he knows in the first 20 seconds if you’re a permanent change or a notch on his bedpost, you can use subtle clues to check this with him. More often than not, a guy will be honest about whether he thinks you’re permanent or not. Even if he doesn’t say so himself, his actions will speak louder than words.
  • If he keeps checking out other girls while he’s with you then that’s a problem. If he’s still checking out other girls by stage five, that means even if he ends up with you, you’re not the one he’ll sell his soul for. Don’t settle for a guy who settles for you.
  • If he’s still talking about exes after stage three, it’s a no go.
  • A good way to know if you’re permanent or temporary is to check with his median – his mom. If he took his mom to dinner, would he make her pay? If he was having an argument with his mom, would he say that or react like that? It’s messed up, but it’s the most accurate scale of things.
  • Don’t let him hit home run any time before he enters stage seven. You can do whatever else you want to with him, but don’t let him score. He’s only about seeding till then, so once he’s done with seeding, he’ll be off to find the one he can form a real attachment with before she lets him into her special place. The girl who was patient and waited (for him) till he actually liked her back earns his respect, not the one who gave into his awesome majestic manliness and got too horny to let him fall in love with her first.
  • It’s his job to woo you like that, don’t forget. It’s not his problem if you decided midway to jump him while he’s taking his time to fall in love with you; that breaks his love cycle. Even if you are a permanent mate, jumping into sex like that is not his problem. He’s supposed to ‘wow’ you like that, and get you riled up, or you won’t stay interested. You’re supposed to wait for him to start liking you back. Not jump at him because he’s doing all the right things to your magic vortex of womanhood.
  • If you notice you’re not a permanent mate, don’t rush to change that. Let it go.
  • While guys know if you’re a permanent mate or a temporary one in the first 20 seconds, a girl will know what he thinks of her in the first two-three hours. You’ll feel it; once you feel it, you know you have to change that or let it go. Changing it means changing parts of you, so think before you jump the makeover wagon and be what he wants for three months, before he sees the real you, and then dumps you coz you cheated him with the truth.
  • As dumb as this all sounds, it’s science talking. He will look for a good looking girl, or at least a nice looking one, or his kids will look bad. So you’ll have to preen. And be a girl. If he wanted a guy, he’d go looking for one. He has to preen also, but that’s up to you. You can choose a guy who preens or not.
  • A mate who talks too much is like a mate who screeches while he roars. In the wild, you wouldn’t find an alpha monkey with his female screeching behind him while he talks to his pals, at least not in public. Keep him on a leash if you must, but don’t do that to him in public; even if you make a lot more sense than five presidents and a dozen lawyers. Lizard brain, again; it’s evolution.

Remember, this is not your fault if you’re not a permanent mate, but it is up to you to pick the right guy and say ‘no’ to the wrong ones. You can’t completely rig the game just like how he can’t completely rig the game. You have a lizard brain too, and it tells you who’s good for you and who’s not. If you don’t notice a guy’s ‘mate potential’ in the first five minutes, that’s your lizard brain telling you this guy’s not worth your time.

Happy Hunting!

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