Z,

I'm trying to figure out why this has to be such a difficult concept, Zelmo.

Wouldn't a good sense of humor actually be meeting an EN if it led to attraction? You're trying to make all roads lead to sex, which is not so much an indicator of how everyone works as it is of what one of your top ENs is and in fact one that is not currently being met.

Let's go back and look at the basic concepts for a minute. The hinge pin is the Love Bank. If the idea of the Love Bank is ignored then all bets are off and none of the rest of this stuff even matters. Meeting ENs,Love Busters, POJA, UA time, Radical Honesty all fall into nothingness if the Love Bank is not the point of the whole premise. ENs are the way Love Bank deposits are made, nothing more and nothing less.

Love Busters are the way emotional abuse, for lack of a better term at the moment, is measured as it applies to the Love Bank. POJA, UA, RH are all methods to maximize the deposits while avoiding the withdrawals of Love Busters. And that is pretty much the whole package right there.

So the linchpin is the Love Bank. The Love Bank is not a place or a thing or device. It is a name assigned to something that happens when we encounter other people. Everyone we interact with, don't miss that it is everyone we interact with here, does certain things that either make us feel happy, safe and accepted or causes us to feel unhappy, unsafe and unaccepted.

There are two types of things that fall into either category. One is instincts, that is certain things we do that we have not learned, never really think about and appeared full grown the first time they showed up in our actions or thoughts. The other type is habits which we also do not think about or knowingly invoke before doing but these are not things that are inherent to people and are actually learned processes.

So either type can be either a good thing or a bad thing as it relates to feelings of romantic love. An instinct might be good or bad and might be varying degrees of each to various people. Habits as well can be good or bad or might be either depending on circumstances. But all of these things either meet one of our emotional needs and therefor make us feel happy or they make us feel unhappy. There may be some range of neutral, but I would think it is pretty limited and even this I would think changes.

If when we are with someone they make us happy, then we enjoy being with that person and want to spend even more time with them. At this point we haven't even thought about sex and aren't even considering whether this person is the same sex or the opposite for the sake of our argument. But as this person does things that make us feel happy, they accumulate a surplus of making us feel good. We like these people. This is what Dr Harley calls a Love Bank balance, specifically one that is in positive territory.

Once a person has established a large enough balance, we will begin to seek him or her out for companionship. We WANT to be with them. And if the balance becomes large enough then not only do we want to be with them but we experience certain things when we are not with them. These things are all the same symptoms that a drug addict experiences when they are going through withdrawal. They are in fact withdrawal since the same part of the brain is involved as well as the same chemicals acting on the same receptors.

Whenever something happens, anything at all that we become aware of, our brain processes two distinct parts in opposite sides of our brain. The left side looks at, analyzes and prioritizes the details or facts of the event. The right side manages, feels and records the emotional content.

If there is a strong emotional content to the event then a memory is made or established and the details are recorded. If there is nothing or very little in the way of emotional content, then the details are held in a temporary memory and deleted after a few days since it appears they aren't going to be needed any more. They aren't important details. If the same details appear time after time in the same way, the brain records them and tries to find a way to make them accessible, usually by a assigning some emotional attribute to them for easy reference. This might just be boredom, BTW...This is how we learn facts and figures that have little to no emotional content.

If however there is a high emotional value to these details, that is they are associated with a high state of some emotion, then these details are recorded and the more intense the emotion then the stronger and more intense the memory.

Now whenever a memory is recalled, whether on purpose or by accidently being triggered, the first thing that happens is that our brain processes the details of the original event, recalling everything it can find, layering a sequence on top of another until some picture of the event is established. But about a minute and a half after that process begins, the right side of the brain, the part that processed the original emotions of the event recalls its file as well. Just like the detail memory, this emotional memory is little more that a certain soup of chemicals released in a certain order in a certain ratio to each other. When these chemicals are released again, the same emotions as the original event show up and we either have a good experience or a bad one depending on the associated emotions.

For the purposes of the Love Bank the chemicals are dopamine, oxytocin, vasopressin and serotonin. These make us feel happy, bonded, connected and peaceful or what we might say is having a sense of well being.

When a person has established sufficient good memories that contain sufficient good emotional portions, then we want to be with this person again. The opposite is also true and if they have built a negative emotional predominance we seek to avoid them. But something special happens when a person builds a high enough emotional (positive) balance. Not only do we want to be with them, but just being with them makes us recall the emotions of being with them when they were doing the things that made us feel good. In fact if they establish sufficient memories (here is where time together becomes a critical part of the equation and why once a person sees they are attracted to someone they must stop being with that person if they hope to avoid the consequences of falling in love with that person) then just those memories begin to cause the same feelings and the memories can be triggered by the person's name, face, similar event or a whole bunch of other things totally unrelated to that person at all.

THIS is Dr Harley's Romantic Threshold. When the mere thought of a person is enough to flood our brains with all the chemicals that make us feel good, bonded, connected and contented, then we are what we call "IN LOVE" with that person.

Now Sexual Fulfillment, as defined by Dr Harley is one of those things that can cause us to have strong positive feelings associated with an event, thus leading to our remembering the event and so having a reference for the details that can be associated with the emotions, which are really good in most cases, though if the emotions are bad, then sex itself becomes a trigger for bad emotions and therefore something that is avoided.

SF is also more than just the drive to orgasm. It isn't sex drive but some emotional landscape where certain criteria are met that causes not only dopamine, oxytocin and vasopressin to be released but also high levels of serotonin, which is the chemical that gives us a sense of well being. SF isn't just sex it is having some emotional requirement fulfilled by having sex and that is why it isn't just called sex but Sexual Fulfillment.

Now a man most likely desires sex with a woman that he finds attractive. Of course the definition of attractive is what trips up many women and men. But it isn't the drive for sex that always leads a man to a woman again and again. It could be, but unless she has other qualities and the sex is not just releasing energy but meeting some basic requirement at an emotional level, he will move on to the next conquest pretty quickly. This is the instinct part of our humanity coming out here.

But the mistake I think you are making is turning the whole process into sex and a drive to achieve orgasm. That isn't the only emotion involved in the process of falling in love and though for a man it might be the main one or top one of several, that isn't always true in all men and in fact is seldom true in most women.

At least as strong as the individual sex drive is the fact that once a person has made sufficient deposits into our love bank, that is, they have a high surplus of positive emotional content memories, then we want to begin to do things that we know make them happy. For a person who does not have a high sex drive, this alone can be sufficient reason to engage in sex. To the person without a high need for SF, this can even be a sacrifice but when we are feeling all of this good stuff as the result of our memories of this person we are willing to sacrifice in order to reciprocate.

Sex is but one strong attractive force between couples. It isn't the only one and isn't always the predominate one, especially in women. Conversation is more than just talking to someone. Physical Attractiveness is more than just looking really hot or showing up naked. Financial Support is more than just bringing home a paycheck. Honesty and Openness is more than just simply recounting the events of the day. Sexual Fulfillment, as the term applies to the Emotional Needs described by Dr Harley is much more than getting one's rocks off.

You see, we aren't simply talking about urges here, but about those things that meet some criteria that places them at a level that makes us have a certain emotional reaction. The attraction to people comes from the emotional reaction being triggered by them. Romantic Love happens when just the thought of them triggers that kind of response in us because of sufficient memories of good emotional content.

None of it is magic.

BTW, the FOG of an affair is this chemical soup that permeates a person's brain and causes them to feel intense emotions. It is the forsaking everything in order to achieve those feelings that make it like an addiction, and in fact make it not just LIKE one, but makes it a true addiction itself. Fog is the result of shutting out the logic and detail side of the brain in favor of allowing the emotional side free reign to experience the raw emotions. It is really the same any time we fall in love. It becomes dangerous during an affair because we have promised to not allow it to happen when we got married.

Yes, most often affairs end up as PAs. Unless there is some sort of opposite sex attraction there will be no PA and maybe no EA, but many EAs happen where no physical contact ever exists and in fact in many cases even pictures have not been exchanged. Physical attractiveness is important. So is conversation. So is Domestic Support. Any of the top ten ENs being met can cause our right side brain to dominate our decisions.

This isn't so much a difference between men and women as it is an over all sampling of human nature.