It’s an old, old story. Women equipped and gifted with an advantageous nurturing hormone (oxytocin– the orgasmic-bonding-empathy-cuddling-love chemical) produced in the brain and enhanced by kissing and physical contact- even hand-holding) that distorts women’s thinking and decision making, particularly their selection of life partners beyond any measure of logic or reason.

And so women are drawn towards the helpless, the stray dog, the lost cat; it’s what makes women willingly take care of a newborn baby that cries incessantly, urinates in their face, requires endless diaper changes and needs regular feedings and attention. It’s also why women are drawn to a pathetic guy who fulfills their need to fix or change a man.

When an accomplished woman falls in love with a homeless loser

So the inexplicable story of Emily Abrahamson, a writer, tells her story of finding love, romance and finally a husband by chance while sitting on a park bench next to a scruffy, dirty homeless (and alcoholic) man in Amsterdam. (Daily Mail UK Feb. 10, 2018) Unfortunately, it doesn’t always turn out like Emily’s dream-come-true story.

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Oh, Emily already had a pet cat to nurture, like most women do. It’s said, if you want to pick up chicks, get a mangy-looking little dog and make frequent visits pet shops that oxytocin-driven women frequent. Women see you care for an otherwise helpless pet dog and reason in the back of their minds maybe you will care for them like you do that dog, as the illogic goes.

Back to Emily’s story: she is college educated and an accomplished writer. But she was enthralled with this tramp, this “loser.” He made her happy and made her laugh, she said. She needed to be needed. She already had some level of financial security. She was in control as she was the breadwinner initially. He eventually reinvented himself and became a mechanical engineer and a doting father of two. But most alcoholics simply never give up booze as their first love.

Of course, the progressive-leaning news media made Emily’s story into a “don’t have prejudices against the homeless” report. Emily’s book is not just her personal account, it eggs women on to find the same dream homeless man she did, as her self-help book title instructs: “How to Fall in Love With a Man Who Lives in a Bush.”

That’s a new way to handle the homeless problem – an army of women should rescue these hapless men and remedy this growing social problem. Women really need no tips on how to do this.

The billionaire woman who bought a loser

Recall the recent story of Chloe Green, daughter of a billionaire who began dating convicted criminal (grand theft, gun possession) Jeremy Meeks. Jeremy’s fame rose as he was labeled a “hot felon,” the most unlikely man to win over the love of a billionaire’s daughter. She buys HIS jewelry. And who is to stand in her way, she can buy anything, even a boyfriend.

Love and murder

So, as I continue in my quest to understand women, I read of Ian Huntley. He is a British man charged with murders (yes, that is plural). In prison, Ian gets fan mail from women every day. More than 100 British women are reported to be engaged or married to men on death row in the U.S. Overseas romance = more drama.

For German waitress Dagmar Polzin, it only took a brief view of a photo of a man on death row, Bobby Lee Harris, a North Carolina man with an IQ of 75, who had stabbed his boss to death, that she was suddenly enthralled with him.

Once again, it must have been oxytocin that skewed her judgment. As Dagmar said: “It was something in his eyes,” she later said. “There was this remorse, sadness. I was attracted. I knew he was the one.”

Women are clueless to their own selection of men

Sheila Isenberg pursued answers to this man-woman chemistry phenomenon in her book entitled Women Who Love Men Who Kill. Isenberg asked these women why they pursue lovers who have murdered. The women seemed bewildered as to why too. The intense desire to be the “only one” who will care for a criminal seems to be part of their mysterious obsession.

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Isenberg paints a picture of these women who love losers and simply can’t explain why. She says the bigger the criminal, the more fame and importance the woman feels. And she is competing to win a guy against other women who send love letters (even more drama). So the more horrid the crimes that were committed, the more these women are driven to love, if one can call it that. Their oxytocin has become their oxytoxin.

Marry for love or money?

I asked a young single nurse what criteria she uses to find a mate. She answered: “Oh, I would never marry for money, only love.” I responded: “But wouldn’t money be #2 or #3 since financial security is so important, especially for a woman who may have children and have to lay aside her career?” She never thought about it that way, she said.

Some women think they can only marry for love and that eliminates everything else. They may love the guy (feel sorry for him) but later after marriage and children come along, lose respect for him because he can’t offer financial security.

Princeton University graduate Susan A. Patton (President, class of 1977) urges college women to find a husband before graduation, as this is when they have the best pick of the crop. She says “the cornerstone of your future and happiness will be inextricably linked to the man you marry, and you will never again have this concentration of men who are worthy of you.”

But far too many women don’t marry till after college and at that point allow their hormones to take over. For whatever non-reasons, even some of the most accomplished career women unconsciously rely on their oxytocin to select a mate.

This is one of the biggest social issues that define our modern society yet many women seem to be unable to balance their own nurturing instincts with finding a man who is intelligent, ambitious and offers financial security. There is no counseling offered to women about this misjudgment in church, school or even at home.

How many families spend into the hundreds of thousands of dollars to put their daughters through law or medical school only to have them graduate, then get married, have kids, and never return to their careers? It is a woman’s prerogative (exclusive privilege) to squander family wealth.

Mating by horoscope

Are women captive to their own hormones or is it just the juxtaposition of the moon? (Women’s menstrual cycles are about as long as the lunar cycle. By the way, the Latin word for moon is luna from which the word lunatic is derived. I hope you laughed at that as I am having a bit of fun poking at the female predicament.)

This may be a reason why women appear to be more interested in the signs of the horoscope. How many times have you heard: “Oh, she is a Scorpio and he is a Gemini, that will never work.” Oddly, women use astrology to find a compatible mate. Maybe it ought to be the other way around.

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Women appear clueless about all this. Many women make decisions about finding a mate like a divining rod that spontaneously jerks downward when water is found.

How did Sheila Isenberg ever write a book that couldn’t come to any conclusion about why women send love letters and marry men in prison when the women she interviewed didn’t know why either? I call this a circuitous enigma.

Women will forever remain enigmatic. The biggest decision they will make in their lives is wrapped in mystery.

Women without oxytocin

So if women are so nurturing why do we read news reports of young women who are presumed to have high levels of oxytocin yet threw their newborn baby into a trash bin? It’s likely these women were taking illicit drugs like opioids that strongly suppress oxytocin.

“My oxytocin made me do it”

Oxytocin can also be blamed on other exclusive female phenomena.

Blame oxytocin for the exclusive female phenomenon of housing hundreds of cats in their home. An example is 67-year old Lynea Lattanzio who decided to live in a trailer on her six-acre property and allow 1,1oo cats to occupy her 4,200-square foot home.

And oxytocin drives many a young woman to bring home a loser. A father who orders his daughter to never invite her motor-cycle driving, tobacco-smoking, high-school dropout, rebellious boyfriend over to the house again is likely to unwittingly drive her towards this guy, her father giving further evidence to her that nobody loves him. So she will.

Modern women: nurture delayed and denied

A career woman suppresses and delays her nurturing instincts to prove she can compete against males, be financially independent and achieve what men achieve.

While women claim they aren’t on an equal basis with men in the job world, they are favored. The gender wage gap is largely due to choice, not discrimination. And due to heavy menstrual cycles, women take millions of sick days every year, costing employers billions of dollars.

So women writers like Claire Cain Miller in the New York Times suggests mothers raise more feminist sons who help out around the house, play with dollhouses (can you believe?) and don’t tease girls.

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The motherhood penalty

Miller also says the pay gap between men and women is largely due to having children and therefore less work hours. Miller wants employers to subsidize child care to narrow the pay gap and for males to receive maternity leave along with their spouses. Miller says employers must make up for the “motherhood penalty.”

Blame God, not employers for that problem. Yes, as far as I know, women have been biologically assigned to have the babies. Whatever businesses would elect to offer subsidized child care and male maternity leave would hardly remain competitive against other companies or countries that don’t.

So maybe women do have control over their oxytocin. For many women, when achieving financial independence is the goal, they can settle for a pet cat and suppress their urges to nurture.