How to Fall in Love with Anyone? - Is it possible to Fall in Love with Anyone?

 How to Fall in Love with Anyone? - Is it possible to Fall in Love with Anyone?

 Mandy Len Catron says it is — and her story has captured the imagination of thousands.

The 33-year-old tried to replicate a study that said intimacy could be achieved with a set of 36 questions and a four-minute exercise. And it worked. Her New York Times essay, ‘To Fall in Love With Anyone, Do This’ has become an internet sensation in just a weekend.

 

“Everybody wants to be loved and the chance to love someone,” Catron, who teaches writing at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, told news.com.au.

“We like the possibility that we don’t have to be passive in that process.” Catron, from rural Virginia, found the idea particularly appealing. After she ended a 10-year relationship in 2011, she decided she wanted to write about love stories and how they make us see the world.

 

“I wasn’t convinced they make us better at love, in fact, I thought they may make us worse at it,” she says.

While researching the subject, she came across a 20-year-old study by psychologist Arthur Aron, in which he succeeded in making two strangers fall in love in a lab. “A heterosexual man and woman enter the lab through separate doors,” she writes in her essay. “They sit face to face and answer a series of increasingly personal questions. Then they stare silently into each other’s eyes for four minutes. The most tantalising detail: Six months later, two participants were married.” After three years of online dating, Catron was feeling disenchanted.

 

“You never know what the other person is thinking,” she says. “They’re usually keeping their options open ... I felt a lot of anxiety.” Last summer, she was talking to an old university acquaintance she occasionally saw at the gym when he started asking about her research. When she brought up the study, they quickly agreed to try it out. “With this guy, there was no anxiety,” she says. “I thought, ‘Maybe we’ll have a relationship, maybe we’ll just be close friends’.” She admits that there were flaws in her version of the study. “First, we were in a bar, not a lab. Second, we weren’t 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 isn’t open to this happening.” Nevertheless, as the pair took turns to ask each other increasingly personal questions, they felt a deepening bond.

 

By the time they headed out on to a bridge to stare into each other’s eyes, they were falling in love.

“It was scary, but I'm glad I did it,” says Catron. She insists the four-minute gaze is crucial to the experiment.

“Two minutes is just enough to be terrified,” she told the New York Times. “Four really goes somewhere.”

Six months later, she and her 38-year-old partner are still happily together.

“I don’t know how much was him — it was great talking to him — and how much was the study,” she says.

The test has also been used to help create bonds of friendship. Source: News Limited
 Since its invention, the experiment has been used to connect people in other scenarios. including students of psychology and people with different political ideologies.

It is also known as the “fast friends” experiment, or the “sharing game”.

“It always has the effect of bring people closer,” says Catron. “It’s about being vulnerable, letting your guard down.

“An individual could fall in love with any number of people. I don’t buy into the idea of a soulmate.

“It’s about timing, patience and also a willingness to be vulnerable with people. Rejection is so painful, I experienced that with online dating.

“You have to put yourself out there. Don’t wait for love to find you.”

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