Eugene spent the next week in a brain fog.

He went to work every day as usual, but the simplest tasks seemed difficult and were fraught with errors. He couldn’t concentrate; more than once his clients asked him if he was okay when they caught him daydreaming.

He took the long way to work just so he could walk past the pet store. He pretended not to look in the storefront window while he was looking in the storefront window. If he actually saw Emily looking back, he would quickly turn away, cheeks burning red!

He had lost his usual hearty appetite, even his favorite lunch spot held no interest for him. His pants were getting baggy in the butt!

Instead of his usual nightly entertainment of reading a good mystery novel, he now found himself laughing or weeping in front of a goofy romantic comedy.

He couldn’t stop thinking about her!

He felt like he was losing his mind…

Then one day while waiting at his dentist’s office for his semi-annual teeth cleaning, he found himself mindlessly thumbing through an old copy of a Cosmopolitan magazine. (It was either that or an even older issue of Vogue, he might have to mention to Dr. Roger that it was time to get some new magazines.) An article caught his attention…”How to know if you’re falling in love.” After looking around to make sure no one could see what he was reading, Eugene dove right in.

“Though it might be preferable to gracefully waltz into love, it’s not called falling in love for nothing. Meeting someone new, and developing feelings for them is messy, it’s overwhelming, and is actually accompanied by its fair share of strange physical signs.

Just in case you haven’t heard it a million times, you should listen to your heart, literally. According to science, your body is actually trying to tell you that you’ve met the one… or at least the one for now. Either way, these are the strange symptoms of falling madly, deeply in love.”

Eugene’s interest was sparked, maybe this could actually explain a few things. He started taking notes…

Symptoms of attraction included:  Feeling less pain, physically and emotionally; feeling uninhibited, unafraid and acting differently. The hormone Norepinephrine increases your heart rate making you flustered and fumbled. Monoamine, a brain chemical, increases sweating, and falling in love can activate your bodies fight or flight response. Butterflies in your stomach can reduce your appetite…

Eugene looked up from the magazine just in time to see Dr. Roger standing in the doorway of the waiting room looking at him impatiently, appears as though he had called him several times and he hadn’t heard him!

“Oh excuse me” Eugene stammered, “I’m sorry to keep you waiting.”

Placing the magazine upside down on the coffee table, he hurried off to his appointment, making a note to himself to do further research on the topic of symptoms of attraction. This was proving to be very enlightening.