Love Lab

One smart psychologist has quite neatly laid out a procedure to fall in love. It goes like this:

• Find a complete stranger.
• Reveal to each other intimate details about your lives for half an hour.
• Then, stare deeply into each other’s eyes without talking for four minutes.

He conducted a study where he asked his subjects to carry out the above 3 steps and found that many of his couples felt deeply attracted after the 34 minute experiment. Two of his subjects later got married. Some love lab!

I admit, he is right on about the key ingredients - someone listening to you and caring about you deeply. We all have experienced this at some point or other. I, personally, have gone through this lab procedure several times. I still do but less frequently. When someone who I just had a stimulating and meaningful conversation with, slowly leans forward and looks deeply in my eyes, I start trembling.  The dopamine, oxytocin in my body start firing up and I start feeling deeply attracted toward that person.  I am going to be careful with my use of words here. Attracted if that person is a man. Deeply connected if that person happens to be a woman. This is very important because these boundaries are very clear for me naturally. However, I have had many conversations with my gay/lesbian/bisexual  friends on this topic - about how they 'converted'. To my surprise,  for many of them it wasn't the natural biological preference. They confessed that they felt so deeply connected to the other person that the boundaries of gender melted, attraction flared up and before they knew, they had converted from a heterosexual to a homosexual person. It didn't matter that they had to go through tremendous  resistance from the close family, cultural/social re-adjustment or in some unfortunate cases, leaving the old ones behind. The strong force of love was able to carry them across.  When I asked them, would you 'convert' back if you met someone of opposite gender in similar way?, the answer was always - Yes!

So, going back to the 'laboratory of love', is this really it? Is that all it takes for you to get swept off your feet completely?  Steps 1-3?  Probably. For few minutes at least. But what he doesn't talk about is the time effect on this initial explosion of feeling of love. In my case, almost invariably, scales start falling down my eyes within a short time. It could be the next sentence he utters or the way he sips his tea ..or the reminder by my left brain that he is unavailable to me for various reasons such as he is a film star or a fictional character (!) or my friend's boss or my own boss or ..you get the idea.*  I imagine that it is true for most of us. It may happen in a less straightforward way but it happens. Soon you realize that you are projecting way too much onto something where there is nothing much. But once your chemistries are entangled, it is hard to get away. Really hard. Love or hate or both, no matter what form it takes, it will stick. That emotional mess will stick like a glue. And if sex was involved, well, it will stick like a super-glue!
  
So, the answer is, No. Steps 1-3 may be necessary but not sufficient to truly fall in love. Refer to my previous article for what it means to "truly fall in love'. 

What does it take then? 

I don't know. 

But I do know that it feels like a divine intervention. 

Something that is meant to be.  


* Luckily for me, another natural boundary I have is the strong, unshakable belief in fidelity/marriage. It means as a rule I never get attracted to a married man. He automatically goes into my Friends bucket if I like him. That is why I stayed in my marriage for so long even when it wasn't working and that is exactly why I got out of it too. A story for some other time.