Fall in love with anybody

1.

more than twenty years ago, psychologist Arthur Aron succeeded in making two strangers fall in love in his laboratory. Last summer, I used his method in my life. Because of this, I stood on a bridge in the middle of the night, staring a man in the eye for four minutes.

allow me to explain. Earlier in the evening, the man said, "I guess you can fall in love with anyone on the basis of some commonalities." If so, how do you choose to fall in love with someone? " He is my acquaintance in college. I occasionally ran into him in the indoor climbing room, and I thought, "what if we were together?" I took a peek at his daily life on Instagram, but this is the first time that only two of us have come out to play. "in fact, psychologists have tried to make people fall in love," I said, recalling Dr. Aron's research. " It was fun. I've always wanted to try.

when I first read this study, I was going through a breakup. Every time I want to leave, emotion triumphs over reason. I feel like I'm at a standstill. Therefore, as an excellent scholar, I turned to science, hoping for a smarter way to love. I explained the study to my college acquaintance. A heterosexual man and woman entered the lab through two different doors. They sat face to face and answered a series of questions about increasing privacy. Then they stared silently into each other's eyes for four minutes. The most intriguing detail is that six months later, two participants got married. They invited the whole lab to their wedding.

"Let's try," he said.

Let me declare that our experiment is no longer in line with the points of the study. First, we are in a bar, not in a lab. Second, we are not strangers. Not only that, I now realize that if someone is not open to the occurrence of love, that person will not advise or agree to try an experiment aimed at creating love. I googled Dr. Aron's questions and there were 36. We spent the next two hours passing iPhone around, asking each question one by one.

the first question is harmless: "do you want to be a celebrity?" What kind of celebrities? " And "when was the last time you gave yourself a Sing? When did you give Sing to someone else? " But the problem soon became deeper.

in response to the question "name three things you and your partner seem to have in common", he looked at me and said, "I think we're all interested in each other." As he listed two other common points that I soon forgot, I laughed and took a big sip of beer. We exchanged stories about the last time we both cried and confessed one thing we wanted to ask the fortune-teller for advice. We explained our relationship with our respective mothers.

these questions remind me of the experiment of boiled frogs in lukewarm water. In the experiment, the frog realized that it was too late when the water got hot. For us, because the degree of weakness exposed is gradually increasing, I did not notice it until we had entered the realm of privacy. This process usually takes weeks or months.

2.

I like to know myself through my own answers, but I prefer to know about him. When we went to the bathroom after a short break, the empty bar was full of people when we first arrived.

I sat alone at our table, aware of my surroundings for the first time in an hour and wondering if anyone was listening to our conversation. If they were listening, I hadn't noticed. And I didn't notice that the crowd dispersed and the night was getting late. We all have a set of self-narratives that can be told to strangers and acquaintances, but Dr. Aron's problems make it impossible to rely on that narrative. Our conversation is an accelerated act of intimacy. My memory of this behavior comes from the summer camp when I was a child, staying up all night with new friends and exchanging all the details of our short lives. At the age of 13, it seems natural to get to know someone quickly when you leave home for the first time. But adult life rarely gives us such an environment.

the moment when I feel most uncomfortable is not when I need to confess about myself, but when I am brave enough to offer my opinion about my partner. For example, "take turns sharing the positive personality traits you think your partner has, say a total of five points," and "tell your partner what you like about them; this time, be honest about what you might not say to someone you just met.

Dr Aron's research focuses on creating intimacy between people. Specifically, there are several topics that explore how we integrate others with our perception of ourselves. We can easily realize how these problems encourage people to do what they call "self-extension". saying something like "I like your voice, your preference for beer, and your friends who like you seem to appreciate you" will make some excellent features that belong to one party clearly valuable to the other. It's amazing to hear what someone appreciates about you. I don't know why people don't always praise each other from the bottom of their hearts.

We answered all the questions at midnight, which took much longer than the 90 minutes we used to do the research. Looking around the bar, I felt as if I had awakened from a dream. "it's not that bad," I said. "it's definitely better than staring into each other's eyes." He hesitated and asked, "do you think we should do the same?"

"here?" I looked around the bar. It feels a little too weird, too public. "We can stand on the bridge," he said, turning to the window. It was warm that night, and I wasn't sleepy at all. We walked to the top of the bridge and turned to face each other. I fiddled with my phone nervously as I set my stopwatch. ""OK," I said "OK," as I took a big breath, he said with a smile.

3.

I have skied down a steep slope and been hung from a rock by a short rope, but staring quietly into someone's eyes for four minutes was one of the most exciting and frightening experiences of my life. I spent the first few minutes just trying to breathe properly. There are also a lot of nervous smiles, until finally, we get used to this state. I know that the eyes are the window of the soul, but the real key at that moment is not only that I am really looking at someone, but that the person I am looking at is also looking at me. When I accepted the scary part of the idea and took time to calm down, I reached an unexpected level.

I felt brave and entered a state of doubt. Part of the confusion is about my own weakness, and part of it is a strange doubt, similar to how you say a word over and over again until it loses its meaning and then becomes its essence: a collection of multiple voices.

the same is true about the eye, which is not a window to anything, but a very useful cluster of cells. The emotion associated with the eye is no longer, and I am moved by its amazing biological reality: the natural ball of the eyeball, the obvious muscle tissue of the pupil, and the smooth and moist mirror of the cornea. It's strange and exquisite.

when the clock rang, I was surprised-and a little relieved. But I also have a sense of loss. I have begun to look back on our night from an unreal and unreliable perspective.

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many of us think that love is something that happens to us. We immerse ourselves in it. We got hurt. But one thing I like about this study is that it assumes that love is an action. it assumes that I care about what my partner cares about, because we have at least three things in common, because we have a close relationship with our respective mothers, and because he asks me to look at him.

I want to know what our interaction will bring. If nothing else, I thought it was at least a good story. But I now realize that this story is not about us; it's about trying to understand what someone means, and it's more about what it means to be understood. Although I have spent many years hoping that this is not the case, the reality is that we cannot choose who to love you, nor can we create romantic feelings just for convenience. Science tells us that love and biology are related; our pheromones and hormones do a lot of work behind the scenes.

but all that aside, I'm starting to think that love is something more controllable than we think. Arthur Aron's research tells us that it is possible, even simple, to generate the trust and intimacy that love needs to thrive.

you may be wondering if he and I are in love. Yes, there is. Although it's hard to attribute it all to this study (which may happen anyway), it does provide us with a leisurely way to enter a relationship. We spent a few weeks in the private space created that night, waiting to see how the relationship developed.

Love doesn't happen to us.

We fell in love because we each made the decision to love.