Dr. John Money, a world famous sexologist from Johns Hopkins University, invented a concept known as “love maps” that helps explain why we feel that certain pull toward someone without knowing why.
But just what is a love map made of? It’s a product of early childhood experiences delivered to us via the five senses, then activated later on by those very same senses. For instance, you walk into a crowded room and someone catches your eye. Or you feel the pangs of attraction when someone is wearing familiar cologne. If the senses are like paint to a canvas, a love map would be the complete landscape. The legend to your love map looks like this:
Smell: Pheromones, the smells that fly below the conscious radar, alert us to compatible mates and make us feel lustful, without quite knowing why.
Sound: The words of parents, teachers, and peers we admired (and certainly those we had crushes on) in early school days shape our emotional needs and self-image.
Taste: Food is a powerful metaphor for sex. Our real appetite and our sexual appetite are related in more ways than one. Freudian oral fixations abound.
Touch: We develop a craving for intimacy that is based in part on how we were touched and cuddled as children by our parents.
A love map may be what triggers the right hormones and neurotransmitters for romance. In fact, different circuits in the brain are lit up during lust and love. The picture of a brain in love is far more complex than that of a brain in lust. You don’t just want sex; you want the person because he affects you in a way that is hauntingly familiar.
Love maps may alert us to who’s the best fit, romantically speaking, but it doesn’t mean finding your soul mate makes love easy. Relationships take work! The chemicals at play in the early days of lust and attraction fade over time for every couple, no matter how much their maps coincide. However, you can recapture that feeling of euphoria by injecting some novelty back into your relationship.
Whether it’s a trip to an exotic location, bungee jumping, or ballroom dancing, the idea is to engage in new experiences together. Force yourself to leave behind that sense of predictability about what comes next. Thrill-seeking restores the thrill!
It works inside the bedroom too. Pretending you don’t know each other leaves room for surprise. Pushing yourself to change up a tired sexual routine restores the electricity of each other’s touch.
Love is often described as an experience that sets the body and the mind ablaze: The neurons are firing “we’re interested!” and the hormones are saying “we want to mate!”
The strongest electricity occurs when all five of the senses are activated, and that ushers in the sixth sense of sex: attraction. That’s when your love map really lights up!
Dr. Laura Berman
Laura Berman, LCSW, PhD, is a leading sex and relationship educator, researcher, and therapist, and an assistant clinical professor of psychiatry and obstetrics/gynecology at the Feinberg School of Medicine at Northwestern University.
Dr. Berman has helped countless couples build stronger relationships, improve their sex lives, and achieve a heightened level of intimacy through her TV and radio shows, her books and columns, her private practice, and intensive retreats.
Her newest television show, The Dr. Laura Berman Show, is on the Oprah Winfrey Network. She is currently taping the second season of her popular OWN show, In the Bedroom With Dr. Laura Berman. She is the award-winning Host of The Dr. Laura Berman Show on Oprah Radio on XM 111 and Sirius 204. She is also a regular guest on The Dr. Oz Show and a columnist for theChicago Sun-Times.
Berman is a New York Times best-selling author of many books, including: It’s Not Him, It’s You; The Book of Love: Every Couple’s Guide to Emotional and Sexual Intimacy; Real Sex for Real Women: Intimacy, Pleasure, and Sexual Wellbeing; For Women Only: A Revolutionary Guide to Overcoming Sexual Dysfunction and Reclaiming Your Sex Life; Secrets of the Sexually Satisfied Woman: 10 Keys to Unlocking Ultimate Pleasure; and The Passion Prescription. Her latest book,Loving Sex, will be released by DK Publishing in August 2011.
In 2011, she was honored with the prestigious Gracie Award for most "Outstanding Talk Show" from the Alliance for Women in Media. Past winners include Diane Sawyer, Barbara Walters, and Katie Couric.
She has been working as a sex and relationship educator and therapist for more than 20 years. After obtaining a master's degree in clinical social work and a doctorate in health education specializing in human sexuality from New York University, she went on to complete a training fellowship in sexual therapy with the Department of Psychiatry, New York University Medical Center.
Berman is a member of the American Association of Sex Educators, Counselors and Therapists, Society for the Scientific Study of Sexuality, National Association of Social Workers, International Society for the Study of Women's Sexual Health, and American Urologic Society.
Find out more at www.DrLauraBerman.com.
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