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Falling in love is the easy part

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    I published this article
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    in the New York Times Modern Love column
    in January of this year.
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    "To Fall in Love With Anyone, Do This."
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    And the article
    is about a psychological study
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    designed to create romantic love
    in the laboratory,
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    and my own experience
    trying the study myself
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    one night last summer.
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    So the procedure is fairly simple:
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    two strangers take turns asking each other
    36 increasingly personal questions
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    and then they stare into each other's eyes
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    without speaking for four minutes.
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    So here are a couple of sample questions.
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    Number 12: If you could wake up tomorrow
    having gained any one quality or ability,
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    what would it be?
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    Number 28: When did you last cry
    in front of another person?
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    By yourself?
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    As you can see, they really do
    get more personal as they go along.
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    Number 30, I really like this one:
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    Tell your partner
    what you like about them;
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    be very honest this time,
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    saying things you might not say
    to someone you just met.
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    So when I first came across this study
    a few years earlier,
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    one detail really stuck out to me,
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    and that was the rumor
    that two of the participants
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    had gotten married six months later,
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    and they'd invited the entire lab
    to the ceremony.
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    So I was of course very skeptical
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    about this process of just
    manufacturing romantic love,
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    but of course I was intrigued.
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    And when I got the chance
    to try this study myself,
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    with someone I knew
    but not particularly well,
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    I wasn't expecting to fall in love.
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    But then we did, and --
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    (Laughter)
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    And I thought it made a good story,
    so I sent it to the Modern Love column
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    a few months later.
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    Now, this was published in January,
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    and now it is August,
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    so I'm guessing that some of you
    are probably wondering,
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    are we still together?
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    And the reason I think
    you might be wondering this
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    is because I have been asked this question
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    again and again and again
    for the past seven months.
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    And this question is really
    what I want to talk about today.
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    But let's come back to it.
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    (Laughter)
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    So the week before the article came out,
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    I was very nervous.
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    I had been working
    on a book about love stories
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    for the past few years,
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    so I had gotten used to writing
    about my own experiences
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    with romantic love on my blog.
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    But a blog post might get
    a couple hundred views at the most,
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    and those were usually
    just my Facebook friends,
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    and I figured my article
    in the New York Times
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    would probably get a few thousand views.
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    And that felt like a lot of attention
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    on a relatively new relationship.
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    But as it turned out, I had no idea.
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    So the article was published online
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    on a Friday evening,
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    and by Saturday, this had happened
    to the traffic on my blog.
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    And by Sunday, both the Today Show
    and Good Morning America had called.
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    Within a month, the article
    would receive over 8 million views,
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    and I was, to say the least,
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    underprepared for this sort of attention.
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    It's one thing to work up
    the confidence to write honestly
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    about your experiences with love,
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    but it is another thing to discover
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    that your love life
    has made international news --
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    (Laughter)
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    and to realize
    that people across the world
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    are genuinely invested
    in the status of your new relationship.
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    (Laughter)
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    And when people called or emailed,
    which they did every day for weeks,
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    they always asked the same question first:
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    are you guys still together?
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    In fact, as I was preparing this talk,
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    I did a quick search of my email inbox
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    for the phrase "Are you still together?"
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    and several messages
    popped up immediately.
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    They were from students and journalists
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    and friendly strangers like this one.
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    I did radio interviews and they asked.
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    I even gave a talk, and one woman
    shouted up to the stage,
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    "Hey Mandy, where's your boyfriend?"
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    And I promptly turned bright red.
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    I understand that this
    is part of the deal.
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    If you write about your relationship
    in an international newspaper,
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    you should expect people
    to feel comfortable asking about it.
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    But I just wasn't prepared
    for the scope of the response.
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    The 36 questions seem
    to have taken on a life of their own.
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    In fact, the New York Times
    published a follow-up article
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    for Valentine's Day,
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    which featured readers' experiences
    of trying the study themselves,
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    with varying degrees of success.
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    So my first impulse
    in the face of all of this attention
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    was to become very protective
    of my own relationship.
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    I said no to every request
    for the two of us
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    to do a media appearance together.
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    I turned down TV interviews,
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    and I said no to every request
    for photos of the two us.
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    I think I was afraid that we would become
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    inadvertent icons
    for the process of falling in love,
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    a position I did not at all
    feel qualified for.
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    And I get it:
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    people didn't just want to know
    if the study worked,
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    they wanted to know if it really worked:
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    that is, if it was capable
    of producing love that would last,
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    not just a fling, but real love,
    sustainable love.
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    But this was a question
    I didn't feel capable of answering.
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    My own relationship
    was only a few months old,
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    and I felt like people were asking
    the wrong question in the first place.
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    What would knowing whether or not
    we were still together really tell them?
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    If the answer was no,
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    would it make the experience
    of doing these 36 questions
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    any less worthwhile?
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    Dr. Arthur Aron first wrote
    about these questions
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    in this study here in 1997,
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    and here, the researcher's goal
    was not to produce romantic love.
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    Instead, they wanted to foster
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    interpersonal closeness
    among college students,
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    by using what Aron called
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    "sustained, escalating, reciprocal,
    personalistic self-disclosure."
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    Sounds romantic, doesn't it?
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    But the study did work.
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    The participants
    did feel closer after doing it,
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    and several subsequent studies have also
    used Aron's fast friends protocol
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    as a way to quickly create
    trust and intimacy between strangers.
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    They've used it between members
    of the police and members of community,
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    and they've used it between people
    of opposing political ideologies.
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    The original version of the story,
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    the one that I tried last summer,
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    that pairs the personal questions
    with four minutes of eye contact,
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    was referenced in this article,
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    but unfortunately it was never published.
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    So a few months ago, I was giving a talk
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    at a small liberal arts college,
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    and a student came up to me afterwards
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    and he said, kind of shyly,
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    "So, I tried your study,
    and it didn't work."
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    He seemed a little mystified by this.
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    "You mean, you didn't fall in love
    with the person you did it with?" I asked.
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    "Well..." He paused.
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    "I think she just wants to be friends."
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    "But did you become
    better friends?" I asked.
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    "Did you feel like you got to really
    know each other after doing the study?"
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    He nodded.
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    "So, then it worked," I said.
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    I don't think this is the answer
    he was looking for.
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    In fact, I don't think this is the answer
    that any of us are looking for
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    when it comes to love.
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    I first came across this study
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    when I was 29
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    and I was going through
    a really difficult breakup.
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    I had been in the relationship
    since I was 20,
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    which was basically my entire adult life,
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    and he was my first real love,
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    and I had no idea how or if
    I could make a life without him.
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    So I turned to science.
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    I researched everything I could find
    about the science of romantic love,
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    and I think I was hoping that it might
    somehow inoculate me from heartache.
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    I don't know if I realized
    this at the time --
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    I thought I was just doing research
    for this book I was writing --
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    but it seems really obvious in retrospect.
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    I hoped that if I armed myself
    with the knowledge of romantic love,
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    I might never have to feel
    as terrible and lonely as I did then.
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    And all this knowledge
    has been useful in some ways.
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    I am more patient with love.
    I am more relaxed.
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    I am more confident
    about asking for what I want.
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    But I can also see myself more clearly,
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    and I can see that what I want
    is sometimes more
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    than can reasonably be asked for.
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    What I want from love is a guarantee,
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    not just that I am loved today
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    and that I will be loved tomorrow,
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    but that I will continue to be loved
    by the person I love indefinitely.
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    Maybe it's this possibility of a guarantee
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    that people were really asking about
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    when they wanted to know
    if we were still together.
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    So the story that the media told
    about the 36 questions
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    was that there might be
    a shortcut to falling in love.
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    There might be a way to somehow
    mitigate some of the risk involved,
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    and this is a very appealing story,
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    because falling in love feels amazing,
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    but it's also terrifying.
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    The moment you admit to loving someone,
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    you admit to having a lot to lose,
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    and it's true that these questions
    do provide a mechanism
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    for getting to know someone quickly,
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    which is also a mechanism for being known,
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    and I think this is the thing
    that most of us really want from love:
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    to be known, to be seen, to be understood.
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    But I think when it comes to love,
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    we are too willing to accept
    the short version of the story.
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    The version of the story that asks,
    "Are you still together?"
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    and is content with a yes or no answer.
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    So rather than that question,
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    I would propose we ask
    some more difficult questions,
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    questions like:
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    How do you decide who deserves your love
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    and who does not?
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    How do you stay in love
    when things get difficult,
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    and how do you know
    when to just cut and run?
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    How do you live with the doubt
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    that inevitably creeps
    into every relationship,
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    or even harder,
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    how do you live with your partner's doubt?
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    I don't necessarily know
    the answers to these questions,
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    but I think they're an important start
    at having a more thoughtful conversation
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    about what it means to love someone.
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    So, if you want it,
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    the short version of the story
    of my relationship is this:
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    a year ago, an acquaintance
    and I did a study
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    designed to create romantic love,
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    and we fell in love,
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    and we are still together,
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    and I am so glad.
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    But falling in love is not
    the same thing as staying in love.
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    Falling in love is the easy part.
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    So at the end of my article, I wrote,
    "Love didn't happen to us.
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    We're in love because we each
    made the choice to be."
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    And I cringe a little
    when I read that now,
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    not because it isn't true,
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    but because at the time,
    I really hadn't considered
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    everything that was contained
    in that choice.
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    I didn't consider how many times
    we would each have to make that choice,
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    and how many times I will continue
    to have to make that choice
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    without knowing whether or not
    he will always choose me.
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    I want it to be enough to have asked
    and answered 36 questions,
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    and to have chosen to love someone
    so generous and kind and fun
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    and to have broadcast that choice
    in the biggest newspaper in America.
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    But what I have done instead
    is turn my relationship
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    into the kind of myth
    I don't quite believe in.
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    And what I want, what perhaps
    I will spend my life wanting,
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    is for that myth to be true.
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    I want the happy ending
    implied by the title to my article,
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    which is, incidentally,
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    the only part of the article
    that I didn't actually write.
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    (Laughter)
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    But what I have instead is the chance
    to make the choice to love someone,
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    and the hope that he will choose
    to love me back,
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    and it is terrifying,
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    but that's the deal with love.
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    Thank you.
Title:
Falling in love is the easy part
Speaker:
Mandy Len Catron
Description:

Did you know you can fall in love with anyone just by asking them 36 questions? Mandy Len Catron tried this experiment, it worked, and she wrote a viral article about it (that your mom probably sent you). But … is that real love? Did it last? And what’s the difference between falling in love and staying in love?

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Video Language:
English
Team:
closed TED
Project:
TEDTalks
Duration:
13:53

English subtitles

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