"Obsession" sounds so…….extreme.

Sometimes though, when you have a new man on your mind, thereality is that you are a woman obsessed:
• you wake up to the thought of him• you keep re-playing in your mind the last contact you twohad• at least once an hour you wonder where he is and what he’sdoing• all songs remind you of what it’s like to be with him, orwithout him• if a phone call, text message, or email isn’t from him, you're disappointed• one minute you’re certain that he wants you as much as you want him, the next minute you’re imagining that he doesn’t want you at all• you wear your friends out talking about him• you feel out-of-control and, at the same time, incredibly alive• as you drift off to sleep at night, you imagine him in bed besideyou

If this is how you’re feeling, I’d never dream of talking you out of it! Falling in love, or in lust, is one of the mostintense, wonderful, and crazy-making experiences you get to have.

But please. Don’t allow it to make you act like you're crazy.

Even for a smart, otherwise reasonable woman, obsessive thinking about a new man in her life can quickly turn into a fatal attraction reaction.

How?

Start with any unresolved, nagging insecurities you might have in general, or with that man in particular. Then, add an unrealistic expectation of how emotionally close you and he already are.

And craziness is on the way.

You, pushing him for reassurances and frequent contact to chase away your insecurities. You, acting like the two of you are a couple when you're still just getting to know each other. You, telling him [oh no!] how you can't stop thinking about him.

Physical attraction has a way of fooling you into thinking that you're close to and familiar with each other, even during the first several months when you're still pretty much strangers. Sex intensifies that sensation. With the help of a hormone called oxytocin, which is released during orgasm, both men and women experience more intense feelings of bonding with their sexual partner.

But there's a twist. Testosterone production in men apparently helps counteract those "getting closer" feelings.

Which means that if you weren't already obsessing about him BEFORE sex, you're even more likely to be obsessing about him AFTER sex. And chances are good that he's not obsessing about you in the same way.

Like I'm always pounding on about: there are so many good reasons to wait a while to have sex. Now you know one more.

Still, a surge of oxytocin isn't the only thing that can bring on a woman's fatal attraction reaction.

Obsessive thinking over a new man during the first several months of dating turns ugly so often because we've forgotten something: the art of savoring the experience of falling in love.

Instead, we're impatient. For emotional connection. To be part of a couple. To be able to say, "He's mine," if only to justify our decision to sleep with him in the first place!

Meanwhile, we're missing the pleasures of revealing ourselves more slowly, of not knowing what comes next with a man -- at least for the first three or four months of "courting" and getting to know each other.

What do you think. Can you wait that long?

And would the average man perhaps like that timeline, too...