To Fall in Love With Anyone
To Fall in Love With Anyone
To Fall in Love With Anyone
JAN. 9, 2015
minutes. The most tantalizing detail: Six months later, two participants were married.
They invited the entire lab to the ceremony.
Lets try it, he said.
Let me acknowledge the ways our experiment already fails to line up with the study.
First, we were in a bar, not a lab. Second, we werent strangers. Not only that, but I see
now that one neither suggests nor agrees to try an experiment designed to create romantic
love if one isnt open to this happening.
I Googled Dr. Arons questions; there are 36 (following this article). We spent the next
two hours passing my iPhone across the table, alternately posing each question.
They began innocuously: Would you like to be famous? In what way? And When did
you last sing to yourself? To someone else?
But they quickly became probing.
In response to the prompt, Name three things you and your partner appear to have in
common, he looked at me and said, I think were both interested in each other.
I grinned and gulped my beer as he listed two more commonalities I then promptly
forgot. We exchanged stories about the last time we each cried, and confessed the one
thing wed like to ask a fortuneteller. We explained our relationships with our mothers.
The questions reminded me of the infamous boiling frog experiment in which the frog
doesnt feel the water getting hotter until its too late. With us, because the level of
vulnerability increased gradually, I didnt notice we had entered intimate territory until
we were already there, a process that can typically take weeks or months.
I liked learning about myself through my answers, but I liked learning things about him
even more. The bar, which was empty when we arrived, had filled up by the time we
paused for a bathroom break.
I sat alone at our table, aware of my surroundings for the first time in an hour, and
wondered if anyone had been listening to our conversation. If they had, I hadnt noticed.
And I didnt notice as the crowd thinned and the night got late.
We all have a narrative of ourselves that we offer up to strangers and acquaintances, but
Dr. Arons questions make it impossible to rely on that narrative. Ours was the kind of
accelerated intimacy I remembered from summer camp, staying up all night with a new
friend, exchanging the details of our short lives. At 13, away from home for the first time,
it felt natural to get to know someone quickly. But rarely does adult life present us with
such circumstances.
The moments I found most uncomfortable were not when I had to make confessions
about myself, but had to venture opinions about my partner. For example: Alternate
sharing something you consider a positive characteristic of your partner, a total of five
items (Question 22), and Tell your partner what you like about them; be very honest
this time saying things you might not say to someone youve just met (Question 28).
Much of Dr. Arons research focuses on creating interpersonal closeness. In particular,
several studies investigate the ways we incorporate others into our sense of self. Its easy
to see how the questions encourage what they call self-expansion. Saying things like, I
like your voice, your taste in beer, the way all your friends seem to admire you, makes
certain positive qualities belonging to one person explicitly valuable to the other.
Its astounding, really, to hear what someone admires in you. I dont know why we dont
go around thoughtfully complimenting one another all the time.
We finished at midnight, taking far longer than the 90 minutes for the original study.
Looking around the bar, I felt as if I had just woken up. That wasnt so bad, I said.
Definitely less uncomfortable than the staring into each others eyes part would be.
He hesitated and asked. Do you think we should do that, too?
Here? I looked around the bar. It seemed too weird, too public.
We could stand on the bridge, he said, turning toward the window.
The night was warm and I was wide-awake. We walked to the highest point, then turned
to face each other. I fumbled with my phone as I set the timer.
O.K., I said, inhaling sharply.
O.K., he said, smiling.
Ive skied steep slopes and hung from a rock face by a short length of rope, but staring
into someones eyes for four silent minutes was one of the more thrilling and terrifying
experiences of my life. I spent the first couple of minutes just trying to breathe properly.
There was a lot of nervous smiling until, eventually, we settled in.
I know the eyes are the windows to the soul or whatever, but the real crux of the moment
was not just that I was really seeing someone, but that I was seeing someone really seeing
me. Once I embraced the terror of this realization and gave it time to subside, I arrived
somewhere unexpected.
I felt brave, and in a state of wonder. Part of that wonder was at my own vulnerability and
part was the weird kind of wonder you get from saying a word over and over until it loses
its meaning and becomes what it actually is: an assemblage of sounds.
So it was with the eye, which is not a window to anything but a rather clump of very
useful cells. The sentiment associated with the eye fell away and I was struck by its
astounding biological reality: the spherical nature of the eyeball, the visible musculature
of the iris and the smooth wet glass of the cornea. It was strange and exquisite.
When the timer buzzed, I was surprised and a little relieved. But I also felt a sense of
loss. Already I was beginning to see our evening through the surreal and unreliable lens
of retrospect.
Most of us think about love as something that happens to us. We fall. We get crushed.
But what I like about this study is how it assumes that love is an action. It assumes that
what matters to my partner matters to me because we have at least three things in
common, because we have close relationships with our mothers, and because he let me
look at him.
I wondered what would come of our interaction. If nothing else, I thought it would make
a good story. But I see now that the story isnt about us; its about what it means to bother
to know someone, which is really a story about what it means to be known.
Its true you cant choose who loves you, although Ive spent years hoping otherwise, and
you cant create romantic feelings based on convenience alone. Science tells us biology
matters; our pheromones and hormones do a lot of work behind the scenes.
But despite all this, Ive begun to think love is a more pliable thing than we make it out to
be. Arthur Arons study taught me that its possible simple, even to generate trust
and intimacy, the feelings love needs to thrive.
Youre probably wondering if he and I fell in love. Well, we did. Although its hard to
credit the study entirely (it may have happened anyway), the study did give us a way into
a relationship that feels deliberate. We spent weeks in the intimate space we created that
night, waiting to see what it could become.
Love didnt happen to us. Were in love because we each made the choice to be.
Mandy Len Catron teaches writing at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver
and is working on a book about the dangers of love stories.
12. If you could wake up tomorrow having gained any one quality or ability, what would
it be?
Set II
13. If a crystal ball could tell you the truth about yourself, your life, the future or anything
else, what would you want to know?
14. Is there something that youve dreamed of doing for a long time? Why havent you
done it?
15. What is the greatest accomplishment of your life?
16. What do you value most in a friendship?
17. What is your most treasured memory?
18. What is your most terrible memory?
19. If you knew that in one year you would die suddenly, would you change anything
about the way you are now living? Why?
20. What does friendship mean to you?
21. What roles do love and affection play in your life?
22. Alternate sharing something you consider a positive characteristic of your partner.
Share a total of five items.
23. How close and warm is your family? Do you feel your childhood was happier than
most other peoples?
24. How do you feel about your relationship with your mother?
Set III
25. Make three true we statements each. For instance, We are both in this room
feeling ...
26. Complete this sentence: I wish I had someone with whom I could share ...
27. If you were going to become a close friend with your partner, please share what
would be important for him or her to know.
28. Tell your partner what you like about them; be very honest this time, saying things
that you might not say to someone youve just met.