“All over the world, people love. They sing for love, they dance for love; they compose poems and stories about love. They tell myths and legends about love. They pine for love, live for love, kill for love and die for love. Of all the societies that anthropologists have studied, they have not found a single one that did not present evidence of romantic love. But what is love anyway? Or better yet... how does love work? According to John Money, professor emeritus of medical psychology and pediatrics at Johns Hopkins University, what he calls our "love map" is what drives us to romantically pursue another person. A “love map” is a group of messages encoded in our brain that describe what we prefer and/or like about a potential mate. The first part of this map is about appearance. Much research has found that we tend to be attracted to those who remind us of ourselves! In fact, cognitive psychologist David Perrett performed an experiment in which he transformed a photo of the subject's face into a face of the opposite sex. Then he asked the subject to choose from a series of photos the one he found most attractive. According to Dr. Perrett, each subject was most attracted to their own transformed photo! Researchers have also found that we tend to be attracted to those people who remind us of our parents. The second part of this “love map” consists of what we like about someone's personality. Oddly enough, this aspect of attraction is also linked to our parents and we look for personality traits in a partner that remind us of both our parents, but especially that remind us of our mother. This is because when we are little our mother is the center of our attention, and we are the center...... middle of paper...... person, but behind love there is a much broader background than what we all realize. Love comes in phases, and while these phases can lead to a successful relationship, they don't always coincide, which leaves many people confused or heartbroken. What I've learned about love has actually changed my entire outlook on the feelings that come with it as well. I had a feeling that there was only one person out there for everyone and that we would find that person by fate, but knowing that there are so many scientific factors present in the reasoning as to why we fall in love with being with me makes me feel like there are lots of options for everyone. Now I have a feeling that if everyone kept an open mind and allowed themselves to open up to new people, then the game of love would be much more successful and each of us might be able to feel the pain of addiction.