How Do Men and Women Fall In Love?

I came across an amusing article on YourTango.com about how you might induce a man to fall in love with you

Dave Elliott says there’s a formula for making a man fall in love with you and you can remember what it is using the word MAGNETICS.
Let’s have a look and see if he’s right!

M is for masculinity

Of course we all have our own opinions about masculinity and what makes a man a masculine man: but I guess many of us would say it’s anything but the John Wayne, Arnold Schwarzenegger type of swaggering macho behaviour.

I’d agree with that because I define masculinity as consisting of qualities like strength, courage, loyalty, integrity, authenticity, or honesty, the ability to hold the family and relationship together, the ability to look after children and care for a woman and children as a family unit, and all the other juicy qualities we all want and aspire to in a relationship.

But there is one aspect of masculinity which isn’t really understood, I think, by women, and perhaps not even by men: the hero archetype.

Having a hero inside themselves means all men have to go out into the world at some stage in their lives and feel that they’ve had an impact on the world.

How that happens depends on the individual man – he might want to be a good father, or he might want to achieve in business, or he might want to win a woman, or he might want to build some kind of long-lasting memorial to himself in the form of a charity or social institution.

Yet heroes come in many forms: so a man’s ambitions and aspirations might be much more modest. For example, a man may simply want to make a difference in his role, however minor, in the company for which he works.

Men have all of these, and many more, aspects of the hero archetype within them, and it needs expression for a man to feel truly masculine.

And in among the expression of this energy, one vital factor is female appreciation. In other words he wants you, his woman, to see him as a hero – and bear in mind that he is not being a hero to please you, or because it’s a way in which he can get you to fall in love quickly, or because he thinks it might be what makes a man a man! It’s a basic part of who he is and that needs to be respected and honored.

Another aspect of male psychology that you should keep in mind, perhaps, is the fact that men WILL die for a cause when they’re up against the wall. Part of the hero archetype is about what a man would stand for in the face of death. Often that’s his woman and his children. What better reason to love a man that that?

A is for acceptance

You know, as well as anybody else, how nice it is to be accepted for who you truly are, without your partner seeking to change you.

If your project is to get a guy to want you, then you certainly shouldn’t take a man on with the view that if he is not right for you, you can change the aspects of him you don’t approve of, or make him change him for something “better”. Believe me, this is no way to make either a friend fall in love with you, or a man who you fancy fall in love with you. If you want to know how to make a man fall in love with you, take this as read: you mustn’t try to change him.

In fact, no matter how he reacts as you tell him what he should be wearing, or how he should behave, or who he should see, the truth is simple: he’s going to feel a whole load of resentment.

If you can’t accept his faults, then either accept the man you want to marry will only ever be one you have chosen as a friend, or fall in love with another man!

But do not try and change a man. That way leads disaster. You need to find a man who you can respect and appreciate exactly as he is.

And if you do want to offer him advice, and you can’t stop yourself, then do it in a way that doesn’t offend his sense of masculine pride.

G is for grateful

In a man’s eyes, his role in a relationship with a woman is to protect her and provide for her and the family. You might think it a romantic ideal that men are willing to lay down their lives for their children and family, but there is ample evidence to prove this.

In return, what he expects from you is appreciation of how hard he works – even if, as you see it, this isn’t serving the relationship or serving you, in his eyes he is doing what he’s programmed to do as a man.

So for him to see you as his love, and to fall in love in a week, or a month, or a year,
there are two major things required of you: one is not taken for granted, and the other is to disrespect him.

Sidebar – video – male and female psychology

N is for nurturing

Masculine energy is about protecting, putting a force-field of energetic strength around the family and the woman, and knowing how to solve problems.

Dare I say what’s on the other side of the equation? Yes! Feminine energy is about nurturing, providing, support and graciousness.

A man will respond to a woman’s nurturing energy, and whether you like it or not, whether you regard it as sexist or not, when two people come together with these complementary energies, they can form a beautiful relationship, a container in which true love can quickly grow.

One of the questions that men ask time and time again is why women nag, bitch, complain, and “push” men emotionally?

I think the answer to that is because women have two tendencies: (1) to test the man they’re with so they know he’s trustworthy and strong, and can protect the family as necessary, and (2) to nag when they do not feel cherished, respected or they are not the center of a man’s world.

So if you’re feeling like that, dissatisfied with your man, thinking that he’s not doing the things he needs to do to make you feel like a woman who’s loved, then perhaps you need to consider whether or not he’s ever going to be falling in love with you.

And indeed, whether you’ll ever be able to make him want you, or whether he’s actually the man of whom you can truly say “this is the man I love”.

E is for easy-going

Men don’t always make it obvious, but one of their greatest motivators is to please a woman – and we’re not talking here about what’s been called (slightly disparagingly) “People pleasing“.

We’re talking about the fact that a man wants to make a woman satisfied by his presence, his ability to solve problems, and his ability to fix things.

No matter whether you want him to fix you or not, it’s part of a man’s psychological make-up.

When men become depressed, it’s sometimes because they have a problem they can’t solve. So if you’re miserable, he may well take that personally, thinking that he’s somehow responsible, and if he does that, he’ll feel bad, and when he feels bad he might distance himself.

As always, rather than allowing things to fester, the solution for this misalignment of intention and feelings is open and honest communication.

T is for trustworthy

Men work in teams – they honor each other’s contribution, every man knows his role and only Mavericks can get along by bucking the system. (They are generally only being Mavericks because of some emotional baggage from the past.)

Where men are concerned, playing for the team is vital: and if you’re part of his team, he may well expect you to be a team player, to watch his back, and to support and protect him. If he doesn’t feel that’s what you’re doing, he’s probably never going to commit to you.

I is for independence

A man values his independence: to him it’s a symbol of his prestige in the world as a man who can cope with whatever life throws at him and his ability to survive.

You must realize, therefore, that trying to make a guy settle down before he’s ready – which requires him to lose a certain level of his freedom – is not necessarily going to work too well. It’s certainly not going to make him fall in love with you any faster!

Obviously a man will more readily give away his freedom when he thinks he’s trading it for something better – and that something better is you.

Hopefully, if you’ve been reading what we’ve covered on this blog, you’ll now be realizing there are plenty of ways to be the woman he sees as the better option!

If I’m honest about it, those qualities are probably the ones that you would need to see in him to want to settle down with him: loyalty, support, honesty, trust, compassion, strength, and so on….  you can fill in the rest for yourself! These are the things which make men and women fall deeply in love and stay in love.

C is for captivate

So what’s a woman got to do to captivate her man?

Perhaps simply to be the woman “your” man needs!

This means having qualities like being supportive, self empowered, strong, having good boundaries, not being a woman who “pushes” herself on the man and starts to erode his emotional security or his freedom just because she wants him to fall in love with her.

Men’s hearts open to love gradually, probably much more slowly than most women’s, so you may think in the early stages of getting to know a guy, and trying to get him to like you, that he is not responding – or that he doesn’t want to please you, or that (even worse) he doesn’t know how to please you.

In truth, what he’s doing is weighing up the benefits and disadvantages of being with you, assessing the situation, and working out how he feels.

Only when he experiences the advantages of being with you – the rewards & benefits which will accrue – will he then allow his heart to open and love for you to move through his soul.

Speaking of which, S is for soulmates

Well, what are soulmates? We’ll have another post on that in a minute, but essentially it’s when a couple find that the woman can love a man’s masculinity, appreciate who he is, feel gratitude for him being there, nurture him in the way that suits him, accept “what is” with an easy-going nature, and do it all in an atmosphere of trust and independence. And of course, this works two ways: he wants to love the same things about you.