The Beatles sang “I Want to Hold Your Hand” but only someone in love really gets it. Holding hands is often the first amorous outreach towards another, testing the waters for a response, and when there is one it can move a relationship towards the next level. In some cases it may be seen by one of the hand-holders as more of a gesture of platonic friendship, which can falsely raise the hopes of, and confuse, the other.

T.V. Carpio - I want to hold your hand - Across the universe

Being physically close is best. In the room: next best. In the building: next. In the area: next. Driving away from is bad. Driving towards is good. You park your car next to hers in the parking lot. The cars want to be close, too. Seeing her car means she is somewhere close ... Her car is your friend, and its windows in the rain a place to draw a heart an arrow with your finger, hoping she may respond in kind. When you can’t be with her, sitting in her chair, or touching the seat where she was sitting, become strange things you find yourself doing. Going to places where you went with her; anything to recreate her aura. Both watching the same TV program brings you closer. Everything in life seems happier generally. “I was too excited to eat, so I lost weight,” reports Laurie-Ann, my wife. I wrote you tons of letters and emails. I couldn’t wait to hear your voice or to read a written note from you. My heart would skip a beat when I’d see you – or even your picture. Why do you love me? I want you to love me! Sings Adele

Adele - Why do you love me? - 25

Although falling in love can be mutual – he and she at the same time, movie style – it is probably more common for one of the couple to fall first and then woo the other. Often this gets nowhere other than unrequited love – there’s a lot of that about. Another name for it is a crush. The one who is in love eagerly seeks signs that the other shares the passion, often grasping at straws and mistaking friendship for love. She gives you a smile and it makes your day; you think maybe she likes you after all. Next day you are full of doubts and worry she’s going to brush you off. Men don’t much like to be openly woo’d, but often don’t realize that subtle wooing has going on for a while – touch, hugs, compliments, voice tone. Wooing can be invigorating, creative, fun. Can good wooing turn around unrequited love? Sometimes, but not always. From the Bible to literature and song down the ages there seem to be more stories about unrequited love than requited love! What are the thoughts of the one who doesn’t want to accept the advances of the smitten one. Are they a nuisance – or even a hrassment? Or is it maybe nice to be wanted even though you don’t have it in your heart to respond? Sometimes the lack of response is because responding could lead to hurting others; such as when one of the duo is already spoken for in a relationship. A really good friendship may be crafted from such a one-sided relationship. For the partner in love, the benefits of a special friendship offer many of the attractions and feelings of the beginning of a love affair. And maybe such a friendship, based on wise restraint could outlast a full blown affair or even a marriage, while delivering Storgé love (which I’ll define later) and great human satisfaction and joy. Leonard Cohen wrote that ‘There ain’t no cure for love,’ and his word ‘cure’ reminds us that some aspects of the love condition feel a bit like the ‘flu. Sometimes it just won’t go away.

Leonard Cohen - Ain’t no Cure for Love - The Essential Leonard Cohen

Here are a few more characteristics of being in love. If you are not sure if you are in love, you probably aren’t, particularly if you don’t have any of these symptoms or the other give-aways I spoke about earlier.

There is an overwhelming desire to help the loved one in all things, particularly if she is in trouble. In extreme cases this can mean laying down one’s life.

The loved one appears beautiful to the would-be lover. Some aspect of her smile, her complexion, her eyes, her hair, her figure are magnified in the other’s mind to represent the whole. When she isn’t around personally, photographs can be of great help and value. Some may look at the images regularly throughout the day. Probably keep them on their phone for that purpose. When lovers are separated by great distances, for example in the armed services, photographs become all consuming in value; are taken into battle.

But there is always a need for the presence of the loved person that photos can’t satisfy.

As you go about your daily business and see others going about theirs, you feel sorry for them that they probabably aren't in love and having the passionate feelings that you are. How can just regular life bring them satisfaction?

In an unexpected absence of the loved one for a couple of days you start to panic. Has her phone died? Is she in hospital, paralysed? Is she dead? The mind selects the most terrifying possibilities.

Your lover’s possessions receive a reflection of your love for her. If you leave one of your possessions, perhaps a jacket or a tie in her car, it’s somehow pleasant that it is with her for a while.

There is a new factor in the game of getting to know someone and it is powerful. Texting. This safe, unobtrusive and private mode of instant communicating could have been designed just for lovers. All the time one is learning about his or her brain, the #1 erogenous zone. It’s a good idea to set a different ring for the lover, or every time anyone sends a text or email you’ll grab for your phone and interrupt whatever you may be doing – a recipe for inefficiency. But if it is your lover it takes precedence over everything. If you go out without your phone, yikes, guess what the first thing you do when you get home.

Your phone takes on an aspect of Storgé love since it is the major conduit between you. The downside of texting a hoped-for lover is that if he doesn’t reply within x minutes you start worrying that you may have gone too far with amorous innuendo, and the next message may be ‘goodbye.’ X can be anything from 1 to 1440 or more (a day). It can be stressful. The ring tone or lack of it becomes higher priority than whatever else you may be attempting to do – working, reading, studying. When you have some spare minutes, for example when waiting for the lights to change, you re-read your text dialog and particularly anything she wrote with affection in it.

Chris de Burgh - The Lady in Red - Into the light

Eros, Agape, Philia and Storgé love should be defined before we delve further. Eros is romantic and intimate love, the kind we are looking at in this program. Agape is the love God has for all of his people, and its derivatives between brothers and sisters in Christ. Philia, or brotherly love includes friendship and affection directed for the other’s benefit. Storgé, or familial love is a wide ranging force which can apply between family members, friends, pets and owners, companions or colleagues. C S Lewis wrote a book on them called “The Four Loves.” But long before Lewis the Greek philosophers were much into studying and writing about Eros, Agape, Philia and Storgé.

Any given relationship may be based on the characteristics of more than one of these. This may help to explain that it is possible that someone could legitimately love more than one person at the same time.

The heart appears to be capable of love-attraction regardless of whether there is already a partner around. A man can come into contact with hundreds, even thousands of women, and then one seems different from all of them, and he can be hooked in no time. This is unlikely if the prior relationship is Eros rather than Storgé . It is also more likely where the woman in question is sending out messages of attraction, subliminally or intentionally.

When a married man falls for another woman (or vice versa), he has been zapped by Eros, and it may have been the last thing he was looking for. But his long term Storgé for his wife may well remain intact. Some religions and cults even recognize Eros between more than one person, though Christianity strongly teaches against it, and I for one have never experienced it. Food for thought.

Diana Krall - The Look of Love - The look of love

Touch, for me, is the key sense involved in falling in love. The accidental touch of finger to finger can be electrifying. The desire to sit next to rather than sit opposite allows touch of body to body, or leg to leg. Hugs today are 2 a penny, but when two would-be lovers hug there is a lot more going on. A politically correct hug avoids pressing the female breast, but when a male hugs a female, the breast is usually in his mind. Hugging causes the brain immediately to secrete oxytocin, creating pleasure. While a female would back off hurriedly if a too-eager male attempts to touch a breast with the hand, women are not averse that touch from the male chest of a friend, even where neither of the huggers is in love. Where at least one of them is in love, that classic contact is a form of communication that can speak more clearly than words – and coming up with the right words at such a time is the stuff of poets, not ordinary guys and galls. But because hugging is so common, it can be misinterpreted by a wooer in a one sided romance when the wooee intends it as nothing other than a way of saying hello.