"It is better to have
loft and lost than to never have loft at all." — Groucho Marx
Falling in love is a
magical experience that happens between two people. So why do people fall in
love? Professor Arthur Arno from State University of New York at Stony brook
has been exploring the dynamics of what happens when two people are falling in
love:
Q: What motivates
people to seek out love?
A: Our primary
motivation as human beings is to expand the self and to increase our abilities
and our effectiveness. One of the ways we accomplish this is through our
relationships with other people. We have learned in our research that it is
important to feel that you have the ability to be an effective person,
especially in our relationships.
Q: How does this
theory of self-expansion explain the process of falling in love?
A: Usually, we fall
in love with a person that we find attractive and appropriate for us, but also
someone who demonstrates that they are attracted to us. This creates a
situation where a great opportunity is open to us for self-expansion. The fact
that they are attracted to us offers a significant opportunity — when we
perceive this, we feel a surge of exhilaration!
Q: Does it always
work this way?
A: No, an interesting
exception to this occurs if we feel badly about ourselves. The process gets
thrown off if we can't believe that another person’s finds us attractive — like
the Groucho Marx joke where we don't want to belong to a club that would have
us for a member. We tend to miss out on opportunities for falling in love if we
don't feel good about ourselves.
Q: What conditions
are best for meeting someone and falling in love?
A: When you meet
someone under conditions that are highly arousing — a political demonstration,
turbulence on a plane, a stimulating performance — a time when the body is
stirred up and excited, we tend to experience attraction at a heightened level.
This effect is well documented but the explanations for it are very
controversial. I tend to believe that we come to associate the arousal of the
situation with this person and our own self-expansion.
Q: When do we fall in
love?
A: Contrary to what
most people think, the statistics show that most people fall in love with
someone that they have known for a while. People only report falling in love
quickly about 1/3 to 40 percent of the time. Of course, this varies from
culture to culture. Falling in love happens differently between cultures but it
does occur in most cultures.
Q: How does our
appearance factor into the equation of falling in love?
A: This is
interesting; we have found that if you are very unattractive, it can hurt you a
lot in forming romantic relationships. However, being attractive doesn't help
that much.
Q: How do you explain
that?
A: We have found that
two important characteristics, kindness and intelligence, are extremely
important in the process of falling in love. And attractiveness is not
connected to these things. These two attributes are things that people learn
about someone from knowing them over time. Intelligence is important in all
aspects of life, especially in love. But kindness is the strongest indicator
for a successful long-term relationship.
page referent :
http://health.howstuffworks.com/relationships/love/why-do-we-fall-in-love.htm
