What does it take to be genuinely happy in love? Serious researchers, among them the psychologist Arthur Aron, set out to bring scientific answers to a question as old as love itself.
You cannot know what love is until you have lived it. And once it is there, we all ask ourselves the same questions: “is he the one?”, “can this last?”, “how do I hold on to it?”
What does science really say about love?
Arthur Aron, who holds a doctorate in psychology from the university of Toronto and teaches psychology at Stony Brook University in New York State, is one of the reference figures in research on romantic love. He wrote, among other works, Handbook of Closeness and Intimacy and The Heart of Social Psychology: A Backstage View of a Passionate Science. His work sets out what makes a person attractive, what makes a first date work, and what can make or break a relationship.
Love, he says, is not strictly speaking an emotion: on brain imaging (MRI) it looks a great deal like wanting — the way you look when you really want something. Love fills that want, that need, with an effect close to that of narcotics or the lure of money: love, drugs and money would all fire the same dopaminergic reward system in the brain, which stimulates the areas that secrete dopamine, the hormone tied to pleasure.
Can a feeling that intense last? Dr Aron says yes: his research has shown that couples together for 40 years and more still love each other passionately, with neurological examinations revealing the same patterns of response as in couples who have just fallen in love.
A few definitions
- Passionate love is that feeling of intense desire for a person, carried by physiological arousal.
- Companionate love is that feeling of affection and intimacy felt alongside one particular person.
- Passionate love is said to be harder to live with, often mixed with anxiety, instability and obsession.
What keeps a relationship going?
For a marriage to last 30 years and more, love alone will not do it: you also have to be your partner's friend. Professor David Niven writes, in his book 100 Simple Secrets of Great Relationships, that the quality of the friendship between the two partners is the reason couples happy together for 30 years and more cite most often to explain how long their union has lasted.
Attraction
Attraction is the spark, not the blaze: being attractive may matter, but it is not what counts most. For Dr Aron, you are drawn to someone all the more when that person is drawn to you — and add a feeling of similarity and you have hit the jackpot. Professor Niven finds that partners who use the same strategies during a conflict live with 12% less antagonism and are 31% more likely to call their relationship satisfying.
Playing hard to get
Feigning total indifference is not the best strategy. Showing that you are demanding in your choices, that you know what you want and hold high standards — while letting your interest in the person opposite show through — is the masterstroke.
How do you make a first date work?
A study by Dr Aron and Donald Dutton shows that we tie the excitement we feel in a given situation to the people around us at that moment — even when they have nothing to do with it. Aiming for a stimulating activity on a first date is therefore a good approach, while steering clear of conversation that stays on the surface (without unpacking everything from the start either). How you respond to what the other says matters too: be attentive, be captivated, without overdoing it. A conversation that works is one where you give something of yourself without exaggerating, while showing interest and empathy — enough to create, in under an hour, a bond that lasts a lifetime. Here are a few questions that studies on the subject have found go down well:
- What matters most to you in a friendship?
- Is there something you have dreamed of doing for a long time?
- If you could invite just one person in the world to dinner, who would you choose?
- If you woke up tomorrow with a new skill or a new quality, what would it be?
- Do you have a memory you hold especially dear?
- Finish the sentence: “I would like someone to share… with me.”
Did you know?
Love cannot be reduced to a simple feeling, because it lights up several areas of the brain at once, beyond the zones tied to emotion: those of reward, of motivation, and of the capacity to socialise. The regions tied to fear and aggression, on the other hand, would switch off under the effect of love. The “rational” areas and the language functions would be stimulated as well — which would explain why, in love, we so often find beautiful things to say to each other.
