Falling in Love

Sometimes you can spend six months living, breathing, dripping, drooling, loving and lusting after someone with zero result. And it’s when that happens that the techniques which follow suddenly seem like a gift from heaven.

Now, pay attention because this is the tricky bit. Just when you're convinced you've won them over and they like you, start being a little less available. And then even less, until they hardly see you at all. You've now effectively instigated the ‘law of scarcity’. We all know this one: people want what they can't have and by constantly being available, you diminish your value. If every time you walked outside your front door there was a huge pile of diamonds to step over, you'd hardly see them as precious would you?

The law of scarcity says don't be at their beck and call. This will make them fancy you. Be around and then not around and they'll fancy you and like you. I'm stating the obvious here but liking someone is important. We talk loads about chemistry, passion, sexual attraction, and even more about love, yet ‘like’ rarely gets a look in. Opposites don't attract long-term - we search for similarities in a partner. Most of us can't see the point of hanging around friends we don't like, why do it with a lover? Liking someone is more important long-term than actually loving them. It's not just similarities in our personalities that count.

Did you know that if you go out with someone who looks like you, they're four times more likely to fall in love with you? ‘That's so true’, said a girlfriend, when I told her this trivia titbit. ‘Look at my sister and her husband’ Umm - why? Lisa's sister has bleach-blonde hair, freckles, and ivory skin. Her husband is Indian. ‘I'm not quite with you.’ I said carefully. ‘I know it's not obvious,’ she said, ‘but it's the proportion of their faces. His mother came up to me at their wedding and said ‘They will be happy because they are the same. Look at them.’ And it's true. They have the same features, in the same places, in the same proportions.

Don't do Nice Things for Them, Let them do Nice Things for You

If you do something nice for someone, it makes you feel good on two levels. You feel pleased with yourself and extra-warm towards the person you've just spoilt. To justify the effort or expense, we often over-idealize how wonderful they are to deserve it. End result: we like the person more. When someone does something nice for us, we're pleased. But there are a whole lot of other emotions that come into play - and they're not all good. Sometimes we feel overwhelmed. There's pressure to live up to being the wonderful person who inspired such a gift/act, not to mention pressure to return the favor. It's all even trickier if the ‘nice thing’ comes from someone you quite fancy but aren't sure about yet. Got the point? When we're infatuated with someone, we're desperate to do nice things for them. You're much better off letting them spoil you.

Give them the Eye

Harvard psychologist Zick Rubin measured love scientifically by recording the amount of time lovers spent staring at each other. He discovered that couples who are deeply in love, look at each other 75 per cent of the time when talking and are slower to look away when someone dares to intrude. In normal conversation, people look at each other for 30-60 per cent of the time.

The significance of what's now known as Rubin's Scale is obvious: it's possible to tell how ‘in love’ people are by measuring the amount of time they spend gazing adoringly. Some psychologists still use it during counseling to work out how much affection couples feel for each other. It also happens to be remarkably handy information if you want to make someone fall in love with you. Here's how it works: If you look at someone you fancy 75 per cent of the time when they're talking to you, you trick their brain. The brain knows the last time that someone looked at them that long and often, it meant they were in love.

So it thinks. OK, they're obviously in love with this person as well, and starts to release phenylethylamine (PEA). PEA is a chemical cousin to amphetamines and is secreted by the nervous system when we first fall in love. PEA is what makes your palms sweat, your tummy flip over, and your heart race. The more PEA the person you fancy has pumping through their bloodstream, the more likely they are to fall in love with you. While you can't honestly force someone to adore you if they're not remotely interested, (they won't let you look into their eyes for that long, for a start) it is entirely possible to kick-start the production of PEA using this technique. Try it. I think you'll be pretty impressed with the results.

Give someone the sensation of feeling in love whenever they're with you and it's not such a huge leap of logic for them to finally decide that they are.

Don't Look Away

There was another crucial finding from Rubin's research: the couples took longer to look away when someone else joined the conversation. Again, if you do this to someone who's not in love with you (yet), you trick their brain into thinking they are and even more PEA floods into their bloodstream. Relationships expert Leil Lownes calls this technique making ‘toffee eyes’. Simply lock eyes with the person you fancy and keep them there, even when they've finished talking or someone else joins the conversation. When you eventually do drag your eyes away (three or four seconds later), do it slowly and reluctantly - as though they're attached by warm toffee.

This technique may not sound terribly inspired but, believe me, if done properly it can literally take your breath away. If you're too shy to openly gaze, skip the toffee and think bouncing ball. Look away and at the other person who's joined the conversation, but every time they finish a point or sentence, let your eyes bounce back to the person you fancy. This is a checking gesture - you're checking their reactions to what the speaker is saying - and lets them know you're more interested in them than the other person.

Practice Pupillometrics

We all know ‘bedroom eyes’ when we see them: it's the look of lust. There's just one thing you need for bedroom eyes: big pupils. According to pupillometrics, the science of pupil study, this is the crucial element we respond to. You can't consciously control your pupils (one reason why people say the eyes don't lie). But you can create the right conditions to inspire large pupils and get the effect. First, reduce light. Our pupils expand when they're robbed of it, one reason why candlelight and dimmer switches are de rigueur in romantic restaurants. It's not just the softening of light that makes our faces appear more attractive, larger pupils also help.

Scientists showed two sets of pictures of a woman's face to men. The photograph was identical, except for one thing: the pupils in one set had been doctored to make them larger. When shown the doctored photograph, men judged the woman as twice more attractive than when shown the real photo. It was repeated with a man's face and tested on women and gave the same result. Our pupils also enlarge when we look at something we like. Again this can be proved using pictures. This time, researchers snuck a picture of a naked woman into a pile of otherwise bland, commonplace photographs then watched men's pupil size when they flicked through. Without exception, the men's pupils expanded on cue.

This means when you fancy someone a lot, your pupils are already big, black holes. All good. To ensure this is happening or to up the effect of your bedroom eyes, focus on the bit of the person you fancy the most. (On second thoughts, better make it the next best thing).