CurtisEdmonds's Full Review: Andrew Trees - Decoding Love: Why It Takes Twelve ...
I wish I knew the man's name, so I could credit him, but I don't, so I can't. He'd responded to an article someone had written in the local paper about why men weren't more romantic. His idea was that what you needed was a romantic playbook for men, spelling out specific examples of what a man needed to do to create a romantic evening out for his significant other. Start with chocolates, proceed to dinner, include a foot-rub, all that sort of stuff.
The columnist who wrote the initial article responded and said, well, it's a brilliant idea, but if you actually went and followed the examples in the playbook, then at the conclusion of the evening, the woman would look at you crossways and ask, "You got this out of this book, didn't you?" And that would be that, you see, because just like that, it wouldn't count.
Andrew Trees has not written that particular book, but Decoding Love isn't all that far from it, and should be treated with the utmost caution. To use just one of the scientific strategies in the book, when you hug your significant other, you should hug them for a minimum of twenty seconds. Why so long? Well, at the twenty-second mark, the brain starts releasing the potent chemical oxytocin, which results in feelings of trust and security, and this is all to the good. But God save the poor wretch who times such a thing with a stopwatch, for he will surely wish that he hadn't.
Decoding Love is about the science and psychology of human interaction. Think of it as the romantic version of Freakonomics, the phenomenally successful book about the counterintuitive insights derived from economic research. Here, Trees cherry-picks the juiciest tidbits from the psych and physiology journals, trying to explain the weird business of human romantic interactions through scientific analysis.
The first part of the book is rooted in the science of evolution, and contains quite a bit more about the sexual habits of monkeys than some readers will be comfortable with. But such an approach is necessary; no matter how those of us who want to appear sophisticated might want to deny it, we all still have a good bit of animal nature in us, and that is nowhere more evident than in our mating practices.
What Trees is initially trying to explain here is not so much why romance is why it is, but why sex is what it is, and how that shapes how we are who we are. This can be a little daunting to the casual reader who is trying to get tips for his date on Friday night, but Trees has a solid conversational prose style that is able to explicate what could be dense material.
Once you move past the discussions of vasopressin receptors and flirting research, Trees has compiled some helpful hints for the prospective suitor. What you won't find here is some sort of technique; Trees specifically eschews having a "game" or following specific "rules" about anything. And none of it's guaranteed; even the most scientific approach won't turn a hopeless schlub into an irresistable Lothario. The advice is mostly common-sense - make a good first impression, make eye contact, tell the other person you like them - and is designed more to maximize opportunities than take advantage of the other person.
Decoding Love is the sort of book that demands patience, but it's the sort of patience that is rewarded. Come to think of it, that's not a bad approach to romance, either. (Just don't let the object of your affection know you're reading it.)
Drawing from the latest studies in economics, brain science, game theory, evolutionary psychology, and other fields, Decoding Love looks at how people...More at Buy.com
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