Love & Other personalities

Daniel Govan believes in love at first sight. He is a man of reason, a biological anthropologist with more than 15 years of academia behind him, and yet to him it makes perfect sense.

''Oh sure,'' he says with a smile. ''You can be instantly scared. You can be instantly happy.

So why can't you be instantly romantically in love? I think when it happens, it's because you are ready to fall in love."

''Someone walks in who fits within your love map - they are the right shape, the right size, the right kind of background. You have a conversation for a few minutes, the person flirts with you, smiles, expresses real interest in you and boom,'' he claps his hands in delight, ''you're off to the races.''

Daniel's knows a lot about love. What he doesn't know about it is, perhaps, not worth finding out about.

He has devoted almost his entire career to working out why we love, whom we love and how we love. And he believes that his findings could help steer the ever-increasing number of single people through the minefield that is modern dating.

And so it is that I find myself sitting in Daniel's balcony on the Upper side of Phomn Pehn, just one of countless singletons to have passed through his door in the hope of understanding where they keep going wrong.

His bookshelves, crammed with scientific tomes, are testament to the very different approach he takes to the dating game - it is intellectual and scholarly rather than airy-fairy, self-help flim-flam.

I have read The Rules, Ellen Fein and Sherrie Schneider's seminal dating guide, which advises never to call, basically to act like a Stepford Wife, and I found it old-fashioned and restrictive. He's Just Not That into You was hopelessly negative and depressing.

Fisher's fifth book on the subject of love, Why Him? Why Her?, is more constructive, more interesting, more based in reality. Put simply, it centres on her theory that our heads, or at least our brains, rule our hearts far more than we are led to believe.

''I have always been interested in how you can walk into a room and there will be 40 people there and you are immediately drawn to one,'' says Daniel.

''Similarly, that you can be set up on a date and just know immediately that it isn't going to work. You know: he's too tall, too short, too fat, too thin, too old, too young, too pink, too green.''

When we talk about having chemistry with someone, it may be that it is more literal than we think. Daniel and his colleagues James have scanned the brains of about 60 people who claimed to be in love.

They discovered increased activity in the ventral tegmental area of the brain and other parts that are associated with motivation, pleasure and heightened focus.

He has also studied the behavioural patterns of 50 men who have taken part in a questionnaire on the dating site chemistry.com, and through this extensive research he has worked out that all of us conform to one of four personality types, which are controlled by different chemicals in the brain.

These chemicals mould us, and cause us to be attracted to people who complement our personality types.

There is the ''explorer'', a sensation-seeker ruled by dopamine; the ''builder'', a respecter of authority driven by serotonin; the ''director'', analytical and ruled by testosterone; and the ''negotiator'', intuitive and fired by oestrogen. Negotiators need to connect with others on a deeply personal level, are very trusting and good at talking.

Daniel says he is a negotiator, though he sometimes veers into explorer territory; he guesses immediately that I am an explorer.

''Negotiators and explorers get on - they are both quite emotionally expressive,'' he says.

''But I was just doing a radio interview and I could tell that the person I was speaking to was a builder. I'm a scientist, not a soothsayer, but I have got to the point now in my research where my reaction to people is often quite accurate. I was internally struggling with the interviewer; he was too literal, he didn't go with the flow.''

Daniel’s believes that understanding who you are is vital to understanding to whom you are attracted. Builders tend to go for other builders (he points out that British Prime Minister Gordon Brown and his wife, Sarah, both appear to fall into this category), and explorers for other explorers, whereas directors and negotiators tend to go for each other.

''I think Nicolas Sarkozy is a director. Carla [Bruni] is definitely a negotiator.

''Oh, goodness. she's soft, sweet, verbally skilled, whereas her husband is like a bull in a china shop.''

For Daniel, the most interesting aspect of all this is why these patterns have evolved.

For me, as an anthropologist, that's the thing. It's pretty easy to see why the negotiator and the director go together so well. They are pooling their resources. The director needs the compassion and the verbal skills of the negotiator, while the negotiator needs the direct decisiveness of the director.

Two builders together are good because they will both be very traditional. That's a good way of raising a relationships, though there could be bickering - you know, they've got a right way of doing things, and if it isn't done their way then they are going to be very stubborn about it.

Explorers together are going to have a ball, though the problem is that they're restless, they can be addictive and they can be unfaithful, so from a Darwinian perspective I have to wonder how that pattern has evolved.

''I suspect that they tend to have more sex by different partners, and what they are doing is creating sexual variety in their young.''

But surely our experiences in life shape how and whom we love? Doesn't nurture have as much to do with it as nature, if not more?

''I've run into two men recently with whom I have had splendid times talking, but I'm not attracted to them and they're not attracted to me, and that is because they are both builders.

''One of them is a big man about town in Kuala Lumpur. He is charming, he is funny, he is my age and single, but I just know that down the road we're going to go to the same restaurant every night, and every weekend we are going to have to do dinner parties.''

He smiles again. ''And I can tell you now that I am not a dinner-party boy.''

Over the years Daniel has seen many shifts in the way we date, two in particular.

''The first is that we are living much, much longer,'' he says.

''You get cougars in their 40s wearing tight-shirt - we have extended the years that we can express our sexuality and have affairs and get dumped and get new partner and so on.

I talk to Daniel about the problems facing forty-something men such as me - worries about finding men and keeping them and the concern that we will work too hard professionally and leave it too late and then wake up one morning and find ourselves lonely and dateless.

It is estimated that by next year there will be 1 million single men in Kuala Lumpur. I say that's a lot of people failing to find love.

''For a start, you have internet dating. It's the newest way to do the same old thing, but it's great in that you can learn about the person before you meet them. I mean, that old thing about meeting people in bars. Whoever met someone in a bar and then stayed with them? You know nothing about them, if they are even single or not.''

Daniel thinks the choices we have now are incredible.

''But today you are allowed to be yourself, you can pick the man you want, you can choose not to have children. For thousands of years men did not have these choices.''
Daniel says we are merely returning to the way we were when we lived in hunter/gatherer societies.

Daniel even goes so far as to say that we are living in an age of romance. I find this surprising, though he points out that the two are not mutually exclusive.

So I shouldn't worry then?

There is every reason to worry and be focused on this, because you are searching for life's greatest prize: the right mating partner.

''So the game of love matters. But it is going to happen. It will happen for everyone. You are going to find him.”

Which personality are you?

EXPLORERS Adventurous, sexual, impulsive and creative. Can be unpredictable, even narcissistic. Often drawn to other explorers.

BUILDERS Calm, loyal, traditional, the pillar of society. Can become dogmatic and stubborn. Usually fall for other builders.

DIRECTORS Analytical, decisive, logical and direct. Tend to lose their tempers and can seem blunt. Well-matched with negotiators.

NEGOTIATORS Philosophical, imaginative, trusting and intuitive. Can appear scatter-brained and depressed. Respond strongly to directors.

I told Daniel, Absolutely. I've only ever fallen in love at first sight. If the chemistry isn't there immediately, it never will be. Growing to love someone is just growing dependent on someone. Real love is an obsession that never diminishes.

Common sense really. I totally agree and enjoyed the view that we are shedding our agrarian past. This goes a long way to explaining the gap between 3rd world countries which are village and agriculture focused and the West, in particular the current clash between Muslim (men) ruled society's and our technologically driven and gender equal own.I'm not sure if I believe in 'true love' at first sight, but I think you can definitely meet someone and have amazing chemistry. Sometimes there will be a depth to it and it will lead somewhere and other times it will fizzle out over time or be bad for other reasons.

Till then....

What boy really want?

Dear Mr. D

You funny old men, yes my old, fat and ugly men is only 25th years last week, I still don't know about his being gay or straight. My gaydar were very slow at this time of the year.. huh...!

Well we went out few times last week and even last Saturday night, he drop by to my flat, before I am going out with my girlfriend for dinner, just to says hello and thanking me for the birthday card that I gave him last week.

Yes, I still don't know and I don't want to know. As long as he want to see me and have a drink with me and have some good time with me, that will be just fine.

I am kind of tired looking around, I closed my eyes when I saw handsome men walking around me..

Unless out of the blue he dropped his pant in front of me, that make me believe that he is gay, otherwise , it's just fine with me hahahahahaha…

Perhaps, I am amused by the approached of one stranger last Saturday morning at KLCC. I am swearing at the counter because the mobile phone company make mistake and disconnect my phone line on Friday, as well with wrong bill they charge me blah...blah....

And this young Chinese guy (29 yrs ok! not 92 and just finished his study in the USA) said that I am very cute when i am angry and end up buying me a cup of latte at Dome @ KLCC, how nice....

I wasn't in the mood of anything, nor do I expecting any complement from someone. I am to upset but yeah, we do have a nice coffee and later that afternoon, he want to meet up again for another coffee and yes I did but I am in the hurry as Nick’s on his way to drop by to my flat and as well I have to get ready for dinner with my girlfriend....

Yes I am having a great time yesterday with Bloody Mary and glass of champagne for my brunch with my girlfriend and we went to Mid-valley Shopping Mall and do what most girls does on the weekend (I haven't been shopping for a while)..

We went for dinner after the long hours shopping (with her gay friend that coming to join us) I am kind of blind at the beginning, then I realized that she’s trying to be a Mother Theressa by matching me up with her friend.

Sorry to says, but the guy is not my cup of tea, not because he doesn’t have a nice eyes, or not having beautiful round arse, but I just didn’t see anything in him…. Did I sound too picky? But we do had a great time with more margaritas......

By the times mid-night comes, I was too high and sleepy. At least I did had have a great night out with her.

Yes, I am going to have busy week this week. I am really flat out with dateline before my trips this weekend.

I’ll try my best to catch up with you on your next visit.

Ok till then, speak soon eh

Love ya...

Fistival : The gift of truth and love

In all relationships, coming from a place of truth and love will deliver the joy you seek. But how often do we come from a place of withholding and fear and consequently get into strife..

Of course withholding through fear can be a valid choice but the question you need to ask yourself is: "Does coming from this place allow me to be the person I want to be and is it giving me the relationships I want?" If it is, then fantastic. If it's not, then maybe you might like to try another way. Consider coming from a place of love rather than fear or one based on truth rather than withholding or deceit.

For some, Hari Raya, Chinese New Year, Christmas or Deepavali is a time of stress because social conditioning demands we make it a "family" time. I hear people talk about how awful it is to go "home" because of the tension that arises around their families not accepting them for who they really are, besically for not accepting their truth.

We cannot control other people, we can only control ourselves. So, when you see them, forget about them accepting you and instead turn your attention inward. Put your focus and energy on showing up whom you truly are, being your true and loving self and not the person you think they expect you to be.

If you enter a situation with a mindset of fear, such as, "here we go again, I wonder what they will / won't say this time?" then that is what you will most probably end up with. But if you are thinking from a place of love, a place of self-love, like, "well whatever they think of me is up to them. I love who I am and no amount of unacceptance is going to ruin my time here, because I love and accept myself." You will be surprised at the difference in your experience.

The following is a simple, but somewhat challenging process to action, designed to strengthen you as a powerful individual in any relationship.

Step one: Know your truth. Know who you really are and who you want to be. Thinking of three qualities or values that describe the person you want to be is often a good way to build a reference point for you to base your choice on. Do you want to be calm, accepting, creative, loving, honest, communicative, sharing? Decide for yourself who you want to be.

Step two: Go about expressing those qualities in everything you do. Choose to express your truth with love as best as you can. Ask yourself the question: "What is the most loving espression of whom I choose to be?" Listen to the answer and the action is as best as you are able. The outcome then doesn't matter, as you know you have been the best you possibly could be.

With so much hype about what's happening around this time of year, you should gift yourself with the true and loving espression of who you really are. You and all of your relationships will benefit from the joy it creates.....

So, my dear friend, I hope you enjoying your 'Merdeka Day' and 'Hari Raya' holiday with your family and with the love one. And Happy holidays season...........

It could be great if you could tell me all about the drunken night, or the drunken orgie you had during the loooong break, either with your rainy Hari Raya or dry Hari Raya.

I'll be in Combodia from next week till the 13rd. So my dear friends, please keep some 'ketupat and lemang' for me eh!!

Till then, have a lovely, naughty 'Merdeka Day, and 'Hari Raya' holiday, will catch up again once am back from Cambodia....

The book that changed my life...

There are certain milestones in every life: my first job, my first bad haircut, my first orgasm, and my first heartbreak …

I was 20 when I first got my heart broken. When I could finally rouse myself to do anything other than hide under the bed sheets with a tub of peanut butter and a stack of James Dean Pictures, I headed to the nearest bookshop in search for answers. Commitment-phobes, aisle one. Surviving a break-up, aisle two. How to find Mr. Right? Aisles three and four.

I'd long read books on motivation, inspiration, great autobiographies, philosophy, dieting and psychology and believed that you truly could find guidance from someone who knew enough about the subject to write an entire book on it. But a book on how to date? It had never crossed my mind ... until that fateful morning.

And that’s where I found it: The Rules: Time-tested secrets for capturing the heart of Mr. Right. Apparently I had it all wrong because according to the authors - two married women, although one has since divorced, who decided to bring old-fashioned dating tactics back - you weren’t actually ever supposed to call a guy (rule #5), stare at him too much (rule #3), leave things in his apartment like your toothbrush (rule #22), and you weren’t supposed to see him more than once a week (rule #13). Oops. No wonder I was still single.

So when the man of my mental checklist appeared out of thin air (not taken, not married, had a car and a job), I immediately put the Rules into play. I saw him twice a week (max), never called him before he called me, never accepted a Saturday date before Wednesday (okay, maybe a few times, but hey, a gayman can’t be too high maintenance these days), and all in all became a bona fide “Rules” gay man.

When his interest didn't wane (eureka!), I began to think that the Rules had all the answers. That if I followed them verbatim, I could have a successful relationship and that everything would be peaches and chocolate-dipped strawberries for all eternity.

That was, until I slipped. Or maybe it was doomed from the very moment I ever read the damn book because playing fossilized dating games gets pretty darn boring pretty darn fast.

So when I found myself newly single (the authors will tell me it’s because I ditched rule #22 and moved in with him too soon, or the fact that I slipped and framed a photo of us together breaking rule #17), I had to start from square one. Over the years I'd amassed quite a collection of dating books (for research purposes!) and decided it was about as good as time as any to actually read them. Surely something in there could help. Of course the rules had changed since my first heartbreak and suddenly I wasn't so sure what I was supposed to do.

It’s A Break-Up Not a Break-Down got me through the post-break-up roller coaster. Act Like a Man, Think Like A Man helped me set some boundaries. Why Men Love Slut insisted nice guys finish last. He’s Not That Into You ensured that any man who didn’t call when he said he would was binned instantly.

Each subsequent book gave me contradictory, conflicting, confusing advice. In fact the more I dated and the more books I read, the more my confusion grew. So when I met someone I kind of liked, I faced a dilemma: I had no idea which school of dating to listen to.

Do I sleep with him after three weeks, or three months? Am I supposed to be exclusive, or date other people? Should I call him if he doesn’t call me? Am I a bitch or a nice guy? Play the game like a man, or let him chase me so that his biological instincts and chemical reactions kick in and I trigger his neurological system that tells him to hunt (aka woo, wine and dine me) until I can resist no longer?

'Follow your heart,' they all said.

'Go with the flow,' my friends advised.

The flow? I had to make the flow! I had to send the text! Respond to the emails! Go on the dates! Attend single mixers! Get waxed and plucked and primped and preened! Update my wardrobe! The flow? Puh-lease.

Men need relationship advice too

It's not only women who are facing this dating dichotomy. The men I’ve polled are just as conflicted.

Millions across the globe have read Neil Strauss’s eponymous The Game, which advises men to employ carefully tried and tested tips, tricks and tactics to get gorgeous men into bed. While it works like a charm on some men, keeping up the charade gets some blokes (who want more than just casual sex from men who fall for pick-up lines), mightily confused.

Ask Sam reader Barney writes to ask if there are any books out there for men to help with the dating game that don't resort to game tactics. I wasn’t sure.

But does reading any of these books really deliver any of us true love? Or do they just make us more confused? Because let's face it: when it comes to real life, nothing is predictable, straightforward or as simple as the books lead us to believe.

Sure, a good self-help book can pick us out of a funk and give us an instant injection of self-belief.

But rules? Games? Dating regulations? I think I've finally come to the conclusion that it just doesn't work that way and nothing you read is going to help you to navigate the future of your relationship. It's all about trial and error, the chemistry and the situation.

What do you think? What book has changed your life (or confused it even more?) Can you really learn about dating from a book?

Till then, Happy fasting ............

Suck and Blows - the sex-pectations that screw you over

He says, he says ... how many arguments could be avoided if we all just said what we were thinking?

Don’t you hate it when you feel cheated? Most people do.

In fact, so united are we in our hatred of cheating and cheaters that the subject forms one of the world's most popular topics of debate.

When is cheating, cheating? How do you deal with a cheater? What should you do if you’ve cheated? And how can you avoid getting caught …

So universal are these questions that I’d suggest cheating is our greatest ‘sex-pectation.’

That is to say, we all can feel cheated. And we all can agree that cheating is wrong.

But how many of us have actually sat down and thought about what cheating actually means to us? Or any other sexpectation for that matter?

How many of us have asked our partners and peer group how they ‘know’ they’ve been cheated on?

What it is about cheating that hurts them? What ‘rules’ have to be ‘cheated’ before the label ‘cheater’ can be applied?

I have a theory.

Most of us assume everyone else sees things from our perspective.

That’s fine. That’s natural.

That’s how we ‘survive’.

Of course, as dear mother would say, making assumptions only makes an ASS out of U and ME.

Therefore, if one person assumes another agrees with their view on cheating without actually uncovering what their actual view is, everyone winds up looking like an ass.

Rarely do we stop and ask ourselves or our partners what we/they really think and feel. About threesomes for instance. Or blow jobs. Or the linear progression of relationships (that one date = call back = more dates etc).

Instead, we frump and fume and moan and groan about people who fall short of our standards – who fail to make our grade.

Who Epically Fail more often than we care to count.

For instance, I have a friend who would get so frustrated with the way his partner ‘pleasured’ him.

“He’s not doing it right!” he’d wail. “I can’t stand it – I love him, but I can’t stand the way he … the way that he pokes me.”

“How can he not get it right? How come he can’t do it properly?”

Upon further discussion, we discovered that he’d not actually verbalised any of this to the person who needed to hear it the most: his boyfriend.

A fact which went halfway to explaining why he was struggling to give him satisfaction. To meet his sexpectation.

He then confessed he’d been sitting on his bitter feelings of disappointment, letting them fester and rot until and build into a bloody wound of resentment that finally exploded with :

“DON’T TOUCH ME ANYMORE!

“I CAN’T STAND IT WHEN YOU TOUCH ME.”

Such a brutal shame … and it all came about because he’d not communicated his sexpecation with his sex partner and wound up screwing himself.

That we should seek to avoid such maladies of miscommunication seems commonsensical.

But the fact is, such honesty is far from common.

But ought not we confront our fears once in a while?

Particularly when it comes to pleasure? To sex? To love and dating and the relationships we have with people?

I mean, isn’t happiness and satisfaction in those departments what good living is all about?

What are your great sexpectations? Have you been screwed over by them? Sucks and blows, true, but it happens to all of us. So do let's be honest!

Personally my comments so far will be : Goodness! How did we get from cheating, to lack of satisfaction, to poor communication? Got some things you want to get off your chest, my love?

OK, so really it all boils down to the old chestnut that I have mentioned more than once on these pages - the C word. Yep, Communication.

Not happy with his technique/performance? Tell him! Habing "issues" with the relationship? Talk about it! Got expectations, realistic or otherwise? Discuss them!

Pretty simple really.A few years back I learned a very good lesson in the relationship stakes.

That, no matter how uncomfortable the subject may be, or how negative you think the connotations could be, it is always, ALWAYS best to clear the air and TALK ABOUT IT. I was very surprised at how easy it was and how even to agree to disagree ADDED to the intimacy.

Till then, I'll be in Bangkok from tomorrow till next tuesday, let me see what I could find upthere.....

Who really needs Facebook?

When I read a while back that Prince Harry was deeply hurt when his ex-girlfriend Chelsy Davy changed her Facebook status to "is now single", I never thought I'd get caught up in anything remotely like that.

Sure, I've fielded some teary phone calls from devastated folk wondering who the hell their partner is smiling so happily with in a photo, or why the hell their ex has changed their status to "in a new relationship" before they've even had a chance to go on a new date with someone else. But I've always thought it was a rather childish way to make a statement. Why let the whole world (or at least 1000 of your closest friends) in on your private relationship business?

Yet a few weeks after my friend, a friend let me in on what had recently transpired: my ex had changed his Facebook status to "single". A little shocked that it had come to that, I promptly did the same. A competition ensued: who could get more pokes, prods and nude photos sent to their inbox? Who was living a more exciting life? (Or at least who appeared to be by their carefully selected, airbrushed, pre-approved photos?)

Status changes aren't the only thing getting keen Facebook users knickers in a knot.

Ever heard of the "honey pot" theory? Neither had I until recently, when a woman we'll call L - who suspected her man was doing the dirty behind her back - emailed to tell me she'd created a fake Facebook profile named "Mandi" in an attempt to catch out her boyfriend (who was displaying increasingly dodgy behaviour - such as being glued to his phone during date nights together).

The profile she set up was of a sexy, pouting blonde in a skimpy bikini complete with fake boobs, plumped-up lips and more navel showing than Cristiano Ronaldo on the cover of the latest issue of Vanity Fair magazine. I don't know where she got the photo from (I assume doing so is against the law so I'll leave that one alone) but in the excitement of it all, she forgot one important thing: no good can come out of the honey pot.

If her boyfriend dares to flirt back with "Mandi", does she confront him about it? And what exactly would she be catching him out doing? Talking? What if he doesn't take the bait, or worse - what if he discovers it was really her behind the sordid messages attempting to lure him in? As they say, sometimes doing the snooping shows a worse sense of character and mistrust than the person they're snooping on.

Yet if you're one of those people who is sitting there right now casually perusing your high school buddies' status updates, playing a spot of Facebook Chess or joining groups such as "Bro, she got an AVO against me", "If 1 million people join this group, nothing will happen", or "1000 reasons why north is better than the south", then (like I once did) you are probably thinking that the "Mandi" situation might just be a little too paranoid, stalkerish or bordering on psychotic for comfort.

Yet, a quick poll of my Facebook buddies found she might not be so far off the mark after all.
I often wonder what goes on inside the sordid mind of someone like that, but I guess we all know the types too well: they need every bit of social proof they can get their sweaty hands on to boost the fledgling egos, all the while cackling to themselves as desperate women flock to their Facebook profiles and get turned on by the nude photos of their bottom halves that they regularly dish out to unsuspecting suitors. (True story.)

I admit I spend more than my fair share on the site but, seriously, any married or taken person who sits all day flirting with unsuspecting singles seriously needs to re-examine their priorities in life. Or at least take up Facebook Chess instead. As for L? Her boyfriend did end up flirting back, propositioning her to meet up that weekend and even asked if she'd like him to book a hotel room for the two of them. So now she's in a dire dilemma. What should she do? Confront him about it? Go to the hotel herself? Or ignore the whole thing and chalk it down to innocent "talking" simply caused by the wrath of the honey pot that is known as Facebook ...

Till then