COMMENTS & CURIOSITIES:

“How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.”

I didn’t write that. Elizabeth Barrett Browning did. She was a poet. You probably knew that. But do you know what Thursday is?

It’s Valentine’s Day, which means if you are a male person and you have a significant other, you better get Thursday right or you won’t have a significant other for long.

You know what to do and what to get, my brothers, but let’s be honest — you’re just not very good at it.

If she loves you, she will smile and express pleasure, but in your heart, you’ll know you did it wrong. We can’t help it. We’re wired that way.

In the meantime, I thought it might be helpful to see what the experts have to say about this thing called love.

Biologists tend to see love as a body thing, a physical response much like hunger or thirst.

Psychologists tend to see it as a mind thing — an emotional response that is an expression of certain needs.

They’re both right of course. One thing all the love doctors agree on though is that what makes your heart go thump-a-thump is an impossibly complex mixture of hormones and attitudes, stimuli and responses and, in my case, pasta.

Dr. Robert Sternberg at Tufts University has developed something called the Triangular Theory, in which the three sides of the love triangle are intimacy, passion and commitment.

He mixes and matches those three elements to come up with eight types of love, ranging from Non-Love, which is a bummer, to Consummate Love, which comes fully equipped with passion, intimacy and commitment.

Between the two is infatuation, which is the overwhelming, all-consuming, hormone-induced frenzy stage, when you obsess about them while you’re awake and dream about them when you’re asleep.

If he or she really is the one, not to worry: You will eventually reach the Consummate Love stage, which is the bottom of the ninth, walk-off grand slam home run of love, the one we’re all after — that intense emotional bond between two people who are connected on many levels and totally committed to each other, a.k.a. soul mates. Easier said than found, but when you do, you’ll know it.

Anthropologist Helen Fisher takes a simpler view, slicing and dicing love into three phases: lust, attraction and attachment.

The lust phase, which is all the fun stuff your mother didn’t want you to find out about but you did anyway, is the strongest but the shortest. This is where physical senses rule, and a simple touch or smell can make you melt like a pat of butter in a microwave.

Only time will tell whether lust begets attraction, which begets attachment. Whoever invented the term “trial and error” must have had this stage in mind. Warning: This is not like wine pairings.

Don’t try to figure out who is going to attach to whom and why. Can’t be done, you’ll go mad if you try.

We all know our share of odd couples. You look at her, you look at him, you look at her again, and you say, “Wait, how can this be?”

But here is the most interesting love theory of all. Research has shown that love generates brain activity that closely resembles what goes on up there with certain types of mental illness.

Well OK then, now we’re getting somewhere. This explains a lot, including the odd couple syndrome.

Scans have shown that love stimulates the same area of the brain that deals with hunger, thirst, and cravings, and sometimes puts them in a similar state of unbalance, as in a craving that becomes an addiction.

Actually, Shakespeare figured it out a really long time ago, with this line from “A Midsummer Night’s Dream:” “The lunatic, the lover, and the poet are of imagination all compact.”

OK, fine. The theories are great, but they leave unanswered the perennial mid-February question that all male people have — i.e., what to do for Valentine’s Day.

It’s simple really, and it totally depends on the stage. Around here, the infatuation stage can be pricey, especially for Valentine’s Day.

If you’re ever going to see stage-two, you’re looking at one or more romantic dinners at a first-cabin restaurant and multiple trips to South Coast Plaza or Fashion Island with major purchases, preferably from Italian designers.

The Consummate Love stage, if you’re lucky enough to find it, is not only enormously fulfilling, but a whole lot cheaper than infatuation.

By that point, a movie and dinner at P.F. Chang’s with the chicken lettuce wraps and a nice Pinot Grigio should work just fine. Just being together is enough. You don’t need the frills.

So there you have it. Everything you need to know about love, life and the triangular theory. I knew I should have paid more attention in math. I gotta go.

PETER BUFFA is a former Costa Mesa mayor. His column runs Sundays. He may be reached at [email protected].