To Fall in Love With Anyone, Do This

To Fall in Love With Anyone, Do This
By Ms. Catron - First appeared in NYT on Jan 9th, 2015

More than 20 years ago, the psychologist Arthur Aron succeeded in making two strangers fall in love in his laboratory. Last summer, I applied his technique in my own life, which is how I found myself standing on a bridge at midnight, staring into a man’s eyes for exactly four minutes.

Let me explain. Earlier in the evening, that man had said: “I suspect, given a few commonalities, you could fall in love with anyone. If so, how do you choose someone?”

He was a university acquaintance I occasionally ran into at the climbing gym and had thought, “What if?” I had gotten a glimpse into his days on Instagram. But this was the first time we had hung out one-on-one.

“Actually, psychologists have tried making people fall in love,” I said, remembering Dr. Aron’s study. “It’s fascinating. I’ve always wanted to try it.”

I first read about the study when I was in the midst of a breakup. Each time I thought of leaving, my heart overruled my brain. I felt stuck. So, like a good academic, I turned to science, hoping there was a way to love smarter.

I explained the study to my university acquaintance. A heterosexual man and woman enter the lab through separate doors. 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 tantalizing detail: Six months later, two participants were married. They invited the entire lab to the ceremony.

“Let’s try it,” he said.

Dr. Arthur Aron's 36 Questions To Bring Lovers [and Strangers] Closer

36 Questions to Bring You Closer Together
Published on October 15, 2013 by Temma Ehrenfeld for Psychology Today based on Dr. Aron's findings in his Interpersonal Closeness Study.

[Editor's note: If you're looking to fast track a relationship or you just want to make sure the person you're dating is right for you before investing any more time, then this is one possible way to go about it. Treat it light-heartedly and with fun and it will be easy. I reccommend breaking this up into two dates so it can remain light hearted and fun.] 

Get to know someone and create a sense of intimacy, in just 90 minutes.

These questions only take about 90 minutes to discuss—and they almost always make two people feel better about each other and want to see each other again, according to social psychology researcher Dr. Arthur Aron of the Interpersonal Relationships Lab at Stony Brook University in New York, who published his results in "The Experimental Generation of Interpersonal Closeness" in Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin (1997).

You can try these questions with a date, but they're not necessarily only applicable to fostering romance. You can also try them with people you already know well—friends, family members, even long-term partners—to deepen your ties.

Here are the instructions and questions from the original study: