How Men Get Addicted To Women

by Dean Cortez, MackTactics.com

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Hey Dean,

I met a girl a few months ago and we started dating. I really thought she was the one; we couldn’t keep our hands off each other, and the sex was AMAZING. My friends weren’t so enthusiastic about it. They told me about her reputation for sleeping with a lot of guys and cheating on her ex-boyfriends. But what I can say? I was falling in love.

I wanted to make our relationship exclusive and make her my girlfriend, but she told me it was too soon and we should both be able to see other people. Well, she wound up meeting some other guy and choosing him over me. I was totally depressed for weeks. Finally, when I thought I’d gotten over her, I went to a party—and there she was, with her new boyfriend. Now I’m even more depressed than before. Should I make one final effort to get her back? What if she really was the one?

Steve, Detroit

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For guys out there who want to know how to meet single girls, one of the most powerful male desires we must overcome is the desire to “possess” women. The popular assumption is that women are the more possessive gender, that they’re the ones who want to “lock down” their men and jealously guard them from other females.

But just as often, it’s men who feel the need to possess.

We see the following scenario unfold all the time. After a period of loneliness and frustration, having faced rejection and disappointment on the dating scene, a guy meets a girl. They hook up and have sex. Finally, he feels like the black cloud over his head has lifted. He thinks he may have found “the one.”

When they’re spending time together and she’s being affectionate towards him, he feels euphoric; when they’re apart and she’s not returning his phone calls right away, or is unavailable to hang out with him, he feels despondent.

When we look back on those periods in our lives, we usually wonder what the hell we were thinking! But there’s a reason why you behaved the way you did, and the answers actually lie in science. Yes, there is a science behind love—and it’s an addiction that has brought many a man to his knees.

When you start dating a girl and having mindblowing sex—especially if you’ve been out of the game for a while—an intense chemical reaction is occurring in your brain. The effect that a new woman (and more specifically, good sex) has on a man’s brain can be even more powerful and hard to shake than an addiction to cocaine.

When we “fall in love,” dopamine and norepinephrine levels rise, and serotonin levels fall. This is actually the same state that cocaine sends our brains into. Helen Fisher, a psychologist at Rutgers University, conducted a study in which she broke down love into three stages: lust, attraction and attachment. Each stage is fueled by different hormones and chemicals.

Stage One, Lust, is driven by the sex hormones testosterone and estrogen. Stage Two, Attraction, is when you’re love-struck—constantly thinking and talking about her. Scientists believe there are three main neurotransmitters involved in this stage: adrenaline, dopamine and serotonin. These chemicals send your stress response into overdrive. When you bump into her unexpectedly or call her on the phone to plan a first date, your heart starts racing; you start sweating; your mouth goes dry.

Fisher studied a number of “love struck” couples and examined the chemical content of their brains. She found they all had high levels of dopamine. This chemical creates an powerful rush of pleasure that leaves the brain wanting more and more. Surging dopamine levels give you increased energy, diminish your desire for sleep or food, and make you intensely focused on your object of desire.

Meanwhile, the level of serotonin in your blood plummets. Dr Donatella Marazziti, a psychiatrist at the University of Pisa in Italy, conducted a study with twenty couples who'd been in love for less than six months. By analyzing their blood samples, she found that their diminished serotonin levels were equivalent to the levels of patients suffering from OCD (Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder). In effect, when you’re in this love-struck state, you are mentally ill.

One of the effects of this “chemical cocktail” is that you begin to idealize the woman. You focus on her positives and find ways to explain away her faults. You also romanticize the relationship itself, believing it to be something unique and incredibly special. If your buddies take a different view of her and warn you against getting involved, you don’t listen. You get defensive. THEY don’t know her the way you do!

We’ve all been through this at some point when we are trying to find girls to pick up: we develop an infatuation with a girl that our friends warn us against. At the time, we refuse to acknowledge the warning signs that should have been obvious. Later on, when the relationship crumbles, we feel foolish for not having realized it sooner.

But at the time, we were powerless to the chemicals surging through our brains. We were, quite literally, “addicted to love.”

Another element of sexual chemistry is the hormone oxytocin. Men and women release this hormone during orgasm. It makes them feel “bonded” to each other after they’ve had sex. (Oxytocin is also known as “the cuddle hormone.”) We want to experience this high as frequently as possible, which is why we usually screw like rabbits in the early stage of a relationship.

When a couple stays together for a period, the lust stage progresses into the attachment phase, and other chemicals take over. The hormone vasopressin starts playing a key role. This, too, is released after sex. Scientists came to understand vasopressin’s importance in relationships by studying the prairie vole. Like humans, prairie voles engage in far more sex than is necessary for the purposes of procreation, and they also form pairs with the opposite sex.

But when male prairie voles were given a drug that suppressed the effect of vasopressin, their bonds with their partners instantly began to deteriorate. Their devotion to their partner ceased, and they stopped caring about guarding them from other horny males.

Fisher says that "falling in love" causes the main three signs of addiction. The first is tolerance. Drug addiction usually starts with casual use; you’re using the drug at parties, or only on weekends, and gradually your usage escalates as you start craving it on a daily basis. The addiction of love is no different. At first, you might only be seeing her on her Sundays; then you want to spend entire weekends with her; then you want to see her whenever she is available, even if it means ditching your friends or your work. Then you want her to move in with her. You want to be around her all the time, and make sure no other man can possess her.

The second characteristic of addition is withdrawal. When you’re hooked on a drug, being deprived of it causes physical discomfort; when you’re hooked on a girl, being separated from her causes anxiety and depression. Romantic love rewards your brain with that delightful flood of pleasurable chemicals; when it’s taken away from you, you become obsessed with regaining that feeling. In most cases, it’s not her you crave. It’s the sensation you get from being with her, and your desire to end the discomfort of withdrawal.

The final characteristic is relapse. So you stop using the drug, or you break up with a woman, and after a period of depression you finally feel like you’re “over it.” Then you spot her at a party months later, and those intense desires return. You’re right back in love, obsessed with her all over again. If she welcomes you back, you’ll leap back into the relationship without considering all the crap she put you through.

When a woman you “love” stops seeing you, and your brain is suddenly denied those pleasurable chemicals, depression sets in. This, too, is a neurochemical state. Over the last couple of decades, scientists have figured out the chemistry of depression and come up with ways to treat it. Antidepressants such as Prozac and Zoloft have been touted as miracle cures. What they actually do is quite simple: they raise the serotonin level and suppress dopamine, which balances you out. You’re not experiencing the “lows” of depression, but you’re not experiencing the highs, either. These drugs present a Catch-22 for the broken hearted, because although you may no longer be depressed over the girl, they may also prevent you from falling in love again. Your brain is no longer producing the pleasurable chemicals that make you fall head over heels.

After spending months (or years) trying to learn how to pick up girls at bars, there’s no greater feeling in the world than falling in love and knowing the feeling is mutual. Our brains behave this way for a reason; the need for this exhilaration ensures that our species will continue to reproduce and survive. This information isn’t meant to discourage you from finding “the one” and living happily ever after.

But understand the science behind it. Next time you experience these euphoric feelings, but your buddies are pleading with you to run the other way, guess what: they’re usually right. I'm sure you know guys who didn't figure out this lesson until after she had wrecked his life (and finances).

Also remember, every brain is wired differently. Some people can enjoy a few beers once in a while; others will compulsively drink themselves into oblivion the moment alcohol touches their lips. The same goes for drugs addicts and people with eating disorders. If your romantic history is filled with out-of-control, obsessive relationships, then the “love chemistry” in your brain—or in the women you’ve dated—is probably imbalanced or jacked up to a higher level than the norm.

This can result in some very hot, passionate relationships, but remember that love is like a flame: it can keep you warm at night, or it can burn your house down.