Taught to fall in love

Robert Epstein is not an especially handsome man. He is thinning a little on top and his eyes are too closely set together. Given that the number of women clamouring to be his mate is now running into thousands, he is not exactly the Don Juan you might expect. But that does not seem to stop the sackfuls of letters pouring through his letter box every day.

Last month Dr Epstein published a request in an American psychology magazine, of which he happens to be editor, for a woman who would learn to love him. He wrote that his intention was to conduct an experiment, with himself as a guinea pig, to prove to the world that people can make themselves fall in love with one another.

The woman selected to be his female guinea pig would, as a requirement of their arrangement, also be a co-author of his already titled book, Making Love: How We Learned To Love Each Other and How You Can Too. She might also have to go on a TV show or two.

"My concept is not that I could make any woman fall in love with me," explains Epstein, leaning back in his sunlounger at his San Diego home. He wants to show that "by carefully selecting a compatible partner and then both making the commitment to fall in love, signing a Contract of Love, in which both parties agree to date each other exclusively for a period of time, say six months, attend counselling sessions and really try to get to know each other, will lead to a more deep and meaningful love than falling prey to thunderbolt lust that rarely lasts.

"The idea is you choose the right partner, and then you learn to love them. It's entirely doable," he says.

With a Jaguar parked in his driveway, and a Jacuzzi in the backyard of his luxurious home, Epstein is not such a bad catch. For a man of 48, he is in good shape, and he is very charming. He talks expressively in a gentle Californian drawl, and when his face breaks into a smile, the lines around his piercing blue eyes crinkle in a way that is very endearing. He is also super-intelligent, with a Harvard PhD and a professorship at the Alliant International University.

But be warned: how Epstein intends to make his chosen one, picked from the sackfuls of letters, fall in love with him, sounds more like a laboratory exercise than romance.

"Most of the exercises already exist," he explains. "There is a very simple one that is used by a lot of therapists. You hold somebody and you synchronise your breathing. It's a very powerful bonding experience. You can do that with a total stranger and be smitten for at least a few minutes.

"We will also go to weekly counselling sessions and retreats that foster love - the kind that are already out there for couples who are trying to repair damage.

"There are many exercises developed by mental health professionals which bring people closer together and increase understanding and empathy. Some of the top therapists in the US have already agreed to serve as advisers on this project.

"The idea is that we will do a lot of the techniques that couples who are trying to repair a broken marriage go through, but the context will be different, because we're not going to be hurting or arguing. So these techniques are going to work that much more effectively."

Epstein came up with the idea to find love in this unusual way while chatting to a female psychology colleague. Divorced last year and as a father of four, he told her he would like to find love again, but wanted to be sure that it would be a healthy love, not the neurotic, warm, fuzzy feeling which never lasts.

They came up with the idea of the Love Contract, but his colleague already had a boyfriend, so Epstein decided to advertise to find someone in his magazine.

"Sixty per cent of the world's marriages are not love marriages - they're arranged," he explains. Divorce rates are extremely low for such marriages, and even more surprisingly, the spouses somehow fall in love with each other.

"Meanwhile in our society we live by the 'Happily Ever After' myth: you find the person that makes you happy and you get hitched and you think that's it.

There's no work to do, you're never going to change, your spouse is never going to gain weight, there will be no challenges to your relationship, no one's going to get old or sick, there will be no financial problems.

"And it's nuts, because the reality is all of those things occur and people are unprepared for those changes.

"People have totally unrealistic expectations and they end up splitting up, and kids suffer as families are torn to threads."

Epstein is convinced his more scientific approach to love will work - and lead not just to a successful experiment that might change the basis on which most of us look at marriage, but will ultimately mean his own personal happiness. "I hope this will lead to marriage," he says earnestly. "I would love to have more children. I'm a fantastic dad and I firmly believe in marriage and am prepared to go about this whole thing much more intelligently than I have in the past."

Unprepared for the deluge of responses, Epstein has yet to wade through them all and make his choice of partner. But already he knows he is doing a public service. "One letter was from a 28-year-old woman - not proposing herself as a candidate - who said my editorial had given her new hope, that she felt burned out because she falls prey to these great passions and now she knows there is another way to approach love.

"And, really, that's what this is all about. I would love to see this project raise consciousness about love and romance. I hope people will follow my progress with a love contract and maybe want to try one themselves or try that retreat or that therapist. I would love to see this project give rise to a new branch of the mental health profession and call it Love Therapy.

"Ultimately, I would love to see this project strengthen marriage and reduce the number of broken homes." Now, who could not fall in love with a man with a mission as romantic as that?

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