Do you believe in soulmates? Romantic comedies certainly might, as well as a massive collection of romantic literature, but the question of whether partners are perfectly matched and destined to be together is relevant to all of us! Arthur Aron, a research professor at Stony Brook University in New York wanted to find out if people could really develop relationship intimacy with just about anyone, or if takes a very special spark to make people click.
Aron himself is a huge fan of love-“I fell in love very intensely,” he says, “Love is central to human life! …It’s the biggest predictor of human happiness, more than wealth or success. And it’s a huge predictor of health”. It’s also why he entered into his research field! After falling in love with a woman in college, he was inspired to study for himself what makes people fall in love. “Given that I was studying social psychology, just for fun I looked for the research on love, but there was almost none.” So he and his beloved wife, Elaine Aron, started to study the psychology of love together to see how falling in love really works.
One of the Arons’ most interesting findings involved designing a simple exercise that could connect people in a very deep and personal way in a fairly short time. After years of research, they developed a set of 36 questions that two people would ask each other and answer honestly. “Part of falling in love is feeling a connection”, Arthur Aron explained. Here’s how it works:
36 Questions To Fall In Love
Two people who are interested in each other take turns asking each other the following questions, one set at a time. The questions get more and more personal. Then once all the questions have been answered, they simply look into each other’s eyes for 4 minutes without a break.
These questions are so effective at building intimacy between two people (even complete strangers) that when Aron conducted the experiment for the first time, two of his participants actually fell in love and were married 6 months later! So, Aron warns, good-naturedly, “If this is an appropriate person for you, [the questions] are probably good to facilitate falling in love. If they’re not, though, you have to be careful!”
The study might suggest that people can probably fall in love with all kinds of people if they put themselves in the right circumstances. Humans can build closeness and trust with each other surprisingly quickly, and it seems like there’s enough common ground that exists between even strangers to lay the foundation for love if people choose it.
How to Fall Back in Love with 36 Questions
But the simple exercise isn’t only for people seeking a new relationship; Aron believes asking these types of questions can also add a new spark for partners who have already shared a lot of their lives together:
“The theory is, when you’re first in a romantic relationship, there’s an intense excitement, but then you grow used to each other,” Aron said. “If you do something new and challenging, that reminds you of how exciting it can be with your partner, it makes your relationship better.”
Writer Mandy Len Catron tried Aron’s list of questions for herself with an acquaintance from school and wrote about it in The New York Times. She described the experience like “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… rarely does adult life present us with such circumstances.”
Catron went on to reflect, “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.” (And yes, if you’re wondering, she actually did end up falling in love and starting a relationship with the man she tried the questions with! Check out her full story here)
