Can You Make Someone Fall In Love With You? What Psychology Tells Us

Love is defined as "an intense feeling of deep affection," according to the Oxford English Dictionary. According to clinical psychologist Kristina Hallett, Ph.D., research into the nature of human intimacy suggests there are actually two types of "love": One is passionate love, or what we think of as romantic love, and includes attraction and sexual desire (i.e., lust). The other is known as attachment, which occurs between bonded pairs like a mother and child but also develops in long-term relationships.

True, wholehearted love, as some people call it, is a beautiful fusion of that passionate love and attachment that evolves over time.

According to clinical psychologist Bobbi Wegner, Psy.D., when those three main components are present—attraction, lust, and attachment—people are more likely to fall in love.

"Attraction is what it sounds like: a curiosity, interest, or a liking for someone," she explains. "Lust is a strong sexual desire for someone, and attachment is an emotional bond between two people." As two people become emotionally closer, they seek that intimacy and feel more secure when with the other person, she adds.

We would be remiss not to mention what love is not before diving into how to make someone fall in love with you. The very nature of this question raises another one: Why are you trying to make someone fall in love with you?

As Page tells mbg, it's incredibly easy to get caught up in winning someone's approval while simultaneously abandoning your own needs or even sense of self. "The degree to which you hyper-focus on whether someone likes you is the degree to which you will self-abandon," he says, adding that it's far more important to get clear on how this person actually makes you feel.

"Even though you might be saying, 'Oh, they check all the boxes and I'm super interested,' maybe you realize you feel cold inside when you're around them, like you have to grab them because they're not really available," he explains.

Page adds that this line of thinking can majorly trigger abandonment wounds, and we're likely to get swept up in an "attraction of deprivation," in which someone's unavailability becomes addictive fuel for our own abandonment issues. "It's an incredibly addictive and compulsive kind of attraction that all of us are programmed to be sensitive and vulnerable to," he says.

This compulsion goes hand in hand with limerence, or a romantic infatuation marked by feelings of obsession and fantastical longing. As licensed marriage and family therapist Holly Richmond, Ph.D., LMFT, previously explained to mbg, limerence is the combination of hormones, endorphins, and emotional prioritization that occur in the initial stages of a relationship, but it doesn't necessarily equate to or lead to wholehearted, long-term love. That's not to say it won't eventually evolve, but if you're putting this person on a pedestal and trying to force love out of them, you are likely not seeing them clearly in the first place. Which—you guessed it—is not real love.

To love someone is to feel a deep sense of intimacy and closeness with them, and so one surefire way to encourage love between yourself and another person is to gradually deepen your intimacy through shared vulnerability and time shared together.

Part of love is a mutual attraction or desire for each other, and one way you can encourage that attraction and desire is through body language. Things like eye contact and sensitive touch can not only cultivate feelings of closeness, Page notes, but also amp up desire.

Speaking of keeping things interesting, Wegner highlights the importance of remaining your own (interesting) person, even when you're in love. This is particularly important in the long term or if you're trying to get someone to fall back in love with you again.

Real love takes time, so you'll want to be patient as the two of you fall in love. To that end, Page highlights the beauty of old-fashioned courting and taking things slow. While that advice has traditionally referred solely to sex, what we're actually talking about here is just the principle of not rushing and letting things naturally unfold.

Similar to being patient and not trying to rush the process, both Wegner and Page emphasize that love is a force in itself that does not (or at least, should not) require any force on your part.

"At the end of the day, there are so many unknown, visceral, and opaque aspects of falling in love with someone that cannot be faked. If you find yourself 'trying' to get someone to fall in love with you, ask yourself why," Wegner says, adding, "If love is not genuine, it will not last."

If this person seems like they are not falling in love with you, Page says, think back to that aforementioned idea of attraction of deprivation. "Our desire for somebody often increases when they're almost available and almost interested and almost in love, but they never fully get there," he explains—and this is not a recipe for real love.