Why do fools fall in love? I’ve always considered that a kind of cynical question, for it implies that people who don’t fall in love are not fools. Or, put another way, wise people do not fall in love. As most of us know, and are reminded ad nauseam for the weeks preceding Feb. 14, people who don’t fall in love range from being merely unhappy to sociopathic. I’ll take being a fool any day.

ARE MEN more foolish — or foolish in different ways — than women in the love department? I’d have to say so. My conclusion is based on a couple of things, both vaguely scientific: The first one has to do with the only theory about love I’ve come across that makes any sense. The second has to do with how the powers of attraction work differently in men and women.

As a topic of scientific inquiry, love has long resisted serious, empirical research. We all recognize it when in the throes of infatuation or even the chummy reliable familiarity of a long marriage. But what’s actually going on?

We know this much, or this little: To maximize our genetic potential and cut down on diseases, nature has programmed us to be attracted to people whose DNA is dissimilar from our own. Studies, have found, for instance, that we are attracted to people whose odors — loosely defined as pheromones — we find pleasing, and that those people have genetic structures very different from our own.

All other social factors — Can she speak in sentences? Does she floss? — being a go, the pleasure centers in our brains are activated when our noses inform us that we’ve met an acceptable biological match. Our pupils dilate and tear ducts secrete a little moisture, producing that glistening “look of love” that is so highly appealing.

With subsequent contact, the feelings intensify. The brain releases dopamine, a pleasure chemical. Norepinephrine stimulates the production of adrenaline, causing the heart to go pitty-pat. A compound called phenylethylamine floods the brain, heightening the euphoria. This chemical cocktail, this natural love potion, accounts for the daydreaminess, loss of appetite, lack of judgment and other foolish acts that afflict a, well, fool in love.

What’s different for men in this scenario? It depends on which psychological theory of love you buy into. Though science is hard pressed to come up with some definitive answers, that hasn’t stopped theorists from cashing in on writing about humanity’s favorite subject.

I’ve come across dozens of theories of love, ranging from “limerence,” a kind of hallucinatory state that overcomes the infatuated, to “completion,” which maintains that we seek in a mate what we feel is lacking in ourselves.

LOVE MAPS

The most sensible theory, though, was advanced by Robert J. Sternberg, a psychologist at Yale, about 20 years ago. Sternberg maintained that from infancy through early adulthood we form a “love map” that will lead us to our ideal mate. The “map,” more like a collage, is a composite of the females we have encountered who have had a happy effect upon us. For most of us, Mom is in there somewhere, along with our first girlfriend, perhaps the first non-family adult female we admired as a kid, and various others, from teachers to neighbors.

When I first read Sternberg’s theory, it made enormous sense to me. But a few years later, when I met the woman who would become my wife, it took on perfect, personal clarity. I was immediately struck by her competence (like my mother), her coloring (like my childhood best friend’s mother, who I thought was ravishing), her physique (like my high school girlfriend’s). Her hobbies and interests, from raising horses to studying religion, had echoes among past loves, along with a thousand other details. I felt there was something eerily familiar about her, and now understood why.

Of course, women, too, form love maps of their own. But it’s a safe bet that their composites of future mates emphasize more heavily qualities associated with behavior — kindness, for instance, or the ability to be a good father. Why? These are the characteristics women list at the top of their wish list. At the top of men’s wish list is — surprise! — physical beauty.

It’s a wonder the system works as well as it does. But it does.