Elizabeth Barrette (ysabetwordsmith) wrote,
Elizabeth Barrette
ysabetwordsmith
  • Mood: busy

Falling in Love on Purpose

Here's an interesting piece about falling in love on purpose.  

While there are no guarantees, given two potentially compatible people, it is possible to generate love by going through steps of increasing intimacy.  This is how the more effective arranged marriages work.  There is a culturally framed series of meetings and activities through which the couple-to-be grow more involved with each other.  As long as they're both decent human beings and want similar things from the relationship, love (or at least a strong friendship) tends to result.  Some people find this more appealing than love by random chance, which can stick you with someone who is neither decent nor compatible in ways that may be difficult to unstick.  

If you aren't looking for a sex/romance partner, bear in mind that the same techiques work for building friendships and other connections.  You might want a different set of questions, depending on what kind of partnership you want.

Intellectual Foreplay and Virtual Foreplay are good resources.
Tags: news, romance, science
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  • 3 comments
cat_sanctuary

cat_sanctuary

January 11 2015, 18:20:38 UTC 6 years ago

Interesting research. I experimented with this in the 1980s after it had worked *on* me and I'd fallen in platonic love with a girl...*that* friend, the one who was just a bit older and much prettier and more sophisticated than I was, and similar enough that we liked and were liked by all the same boys, all of whom naturally preferred her, so that if I hadn't been asexually in love with her too I probably wouldn't have liked her. It works all right. Does it ever. Young women, especially top-heavy ones, should probably think more about toning *down* their effect on other people. What I learned from my experiments was to minimize eye contact and personal attention to people whom I didn't want to impress as being a total bisexual maniac.
kestrels_nest

kestrels_nest

January 13 2015, 18:43:11 UTC 6 years ago

Fascinating. I'm thinking it would also be helpful to couples who have drifted apart for whatever reason and want to re-connect.

It also explains why shidach dating works. Ultra-orthodox Jewish couples are not permitted to touch before they're married. So they date, going to museums, picnics, talking endlessly, all the usual things, but without touching. I have a friend who had never held her husband's hand before their wedding day. The whole thing mystified me, (more especially since I'm very tactile with people I care about) but this makes sense.
ysabetwordsmith

Yes...

ysabetwordsmith

January 13 2015, 20:52:55 UTC 6 years ago

>> Fascinating. I'm thinking it would also be helpful to couples who have drifted apart for whatever reason and want to re-connect. <<

It does. Similar are bonding exercises for adopted children, too. You can see that in the Danso & Family thread where Hannah puts in extra effort to bond with her new kids and help Rosita reconnect with her birth family.

>> It also explains why shidach dating works. Ultra-orthodox Jewish couples are not permitted to touch before they're married. So they date, going to museums, picnics, talking endlessly, all the usual things, but without touching. I have a friend who had never held her husband's hand before their wedding day. The whole thing mystified me, (more especially since I'm very tactile with people I care about) but this makes sense. <<

That sounds like it would work great for hearing-dominant people, maybe okay for sight-dominant people, and not at all for touch-dominant people.