On How to Fall in Love
Love is universal and can motivate us to overcome many obstacles.
Maya and I seemed to discuss on multiple occasions when we started to think more romantically of each other. I found messages I sent to people telling them that I was falling hard in Oct, Nov, and Dec 2023. But in the end she popped the L-word first in Feb 2024. It made me think a lot about whether love comes before labels or vice versa, and the nature of love and how I learned to love so readily despite coming from a broken home and being sent to single sex boarding school for 11 years.
At the centre of a pair bond is the availability of oxytocin, the bonding hormone. So when talking of wooing a mate, and in the absence of a working love potion, we’d be excused for thinking that we have to look at anecdotal guidance, asking, “Grandpa, where did you meet Grandma? How did you win her over?”
There is no potion. There is, it turns out, a protocol, and it’s considerably less romantic to read about than to live through. It’s no surprise that oxytocin is well-researched. A few studies jump to the fore. Some cut and dry ones in chronological order are the following :
In 1987 Carmichael et al. measured that men and women show sharp oxytocin increases during orgasm.
In 2003, Odendaal & Meintjes showed that human–dog interactions elevate oxytocin in both species, one reason why animal therapy is effective.
In 2003, a University of North Carolina study by Grewen, Light, and Girdler reported that 20 seconds of hugging before delivering a speech increases oxytocin.
In 2005, Light et al. found that affectionate touch between partners boosts oxytocin and reduces cortisol.
In 2007, Ditzen et al. compared no-interaction, social-support, and physical-contact groups, and found physical contact lowered cortisol responses to stress.
In 2008, Morhenn et al. showed that giving or receiving a 15–20 minute massage or doing a trust exercise in isolation doesn’t significantly raise oxytocin, but sharing a massage followed by the game does.
In 2014, Kreutz showed that group activities such as music making boost oxytocin.
So there’s a suite of studies that tell us what acts draw us together but how long must we do it for? American Professor Jeffrey Hall’s friendship-formation research at the University of Kansas in 2018 measured people needing 50 hours of exposure to move from acquaintance to friend, 90 to close friend, 200+ to best friend). A 2013 YouGov + eHarmony poll found men reported saying “I love you” about 88 days after embarking on dating someone. For women it’s about 134 days. Of course, that’s cultural and subjective.
New York psychologist Artur Aron, who wrote Love as the Expansion of Self (1986) with his wife Elaine, invited pairs of strangers to ask and answer 36 set questions of each other. Participants reported strong feelings of closeness. Author of How to Fall In Love With Anyone (2017) Mandy Catron’s addition of 4 minutes of eye contact is cited as a way to lock in that growing proximity.
Polish-American psychologist Robert Zajonc ran a study called the ‘mere exposure’ experiment which showed that people have a warmer reaction to things that they recognise than things they don’t, even when flashed images with a tachistoscope for such a short time that subjects failed to describe what they actually saw. This magnetism towards the familiar explains how with consistent data points, our friends grow to be more and more welcome sights. This phenomenon is the same reason why in August 1999 no one went to see The Iron Giant, favouring the familiarity of Smith, Hayek, Branagh, and Kline in Wild Wild West, despite their critic scores being diametrically reversed with their marketing budget and box office takings.
Whilst we’re discussing Zajonc’s work he notably also ran a study based on how couples, after years of picking up each other’s mannerisms, develop gaits, triggers, and expressions that start to resemble each other’s, which always reminds me of Busted’s hit She Wants To Be Me (2003).
Research by Canadian psychologist Danu Stinson found that people who eventually became romantically involved had spent 40–60 hours monthly for 3 consecutive months to foster the transition into a state of love.
Love is best incubated through novelty and adventure such as sharing unusual or exciting experiences. Closeness is encouraged through emotional disclosure such as sharing vulnerabilities, personal histories, and expression of Love languages, with perhaps the most important one being physicality including eye contact. So Grandpa’s answer was never “Well little Ryan, we sustained 20-second hugs and bought a tachistoscope”, but it turns out he was running the protocol anyway.
So falling in love is less a lust-laden thunderbolt of intrigue and more a 40-hour-a-month part-time job with no pay but excellent benefits. That’s how to do it. Recognising it is another story, and many have difficulty with the precise question of “am I falling for them?” [See — On How to Know if it’s Love].
