THIS Is All You Have To Do To Make Someone Fall In Love With You

With a simple technique, psychologist Arthur Aron made
two strangers fall in love.
If you’ve been crushing on someone for quite
sometime, then this is the news that you want to hear.
Because contrary to those feelings of doubt, there is a
real possibility that you can, finally, get your crush into
your clutches.
In the New York Times this past weekend, Mandy Len
Catron, wrote about psychologist Arthur Aron, and how,
with a simple technique, he made two strangers fall in
love. She also wrote about how she applied it to her
own life and — voila! — magic there, as well.
Dr. Aaron’s study was all about questions and staring.
The two participants in the study were to sit facing each
other while answering a series of questions about
death, family relationships, dreams, love, and so on.
Each question got more and more personal, with the
final question, or rather statement, being, “Share a
personal problem and ask your partner’s advice on how
he or she might handle it. Also, ask your partner to
reflect back to you how you seem to be feeling about
the problem you have chosen.” After that part of the
experiment was finished, the two were to stare into
each other’s eyes for four minutes.
It might seem simple, but what it’s really doing is
opening up a path to honesty and communication
through intimacy. The strangers in that initial study
ended falling in love and were married six months later.
So, with that as her inspiration, Catron, did the same
with a “university acquaintance,” and had the same
results.
But before we go crazy and start chasing Ryan Gosling
down the streets, begging for him to look into our eyes
for four minutes, take a step back. As with all things in
life, there’s no guarantee. But what the experiment
does do is “generate trust and intimacy, the feelings
love needs to thrive,” and that makes for a great
jumping off point. There’s also something really
intense about staring into the eyes of someone for four
minutes. As Catron noted:
“I’ve skied steep slopes and hung from a rock face by a
short length of rope, but staring into someone’s eyes
for four silent minutes was one of the more thrilling and
terrifying experiences of my life. I spent the first couple
of minutes just trying to breathe properly. There was a
lot of nervous smiling until, eventually, we settled in. I
know the eyes are the windows to the soul or whatever,
but the real crux of the moment was not just that I was
really seeing someone, but that I was seeing someone
really seeing me.”
When it comes down to is being open. When we reveal
ourselves we’re allowing someone to get inside and
sort of rummage around, and when they open up, we
get to do the same. We get the complicated stuff out of
the way; we skip the drama, and see each other for who
and what we really are. This isn’t always easy in
today’s world, so when we make the time to do it, it
strikes us.
Will you fall in love by answering 36 questions then
staring into the eyes of someone for four minutes? I
don’t know. But what I do know is that there’s nothing
wrong with trying—and you and a partner can here —
and if it doesn’t happen, then maybe you should just
chalk it up to something else.
“Love didn’t happen to us,” wrote Catron, “We’re in love
because we each made the choice to be.” But I think we
can all agree that the experiment helped.