Kim Mills: If you have ever fallen in love, you probably remember the intensity of the longing and desire that you felt for the object of your affection, the breathless anticipation of seeing each other, wanting the moments together to last forever. For most of us, that passionate intensity fades over time. Few people celebrate their 10th or 20th Valentine's Day together with the same enthusiasm that they did their first. But, some couples remain deeply and passionately in love, even after decades of marriage. What is it that sets those relationships apart? What makes love like that last? Are some couples just lucky, or are there things that any couple can do to sustain love or rekindle it in a long-term relationship? What does science say about the secrets of everlasting love?
Welcome to Speaking of Psychology, the flagship podcast of the American Psychological Association, that examines the links between psychological science and everyday life. I'm Kim Mills.
Our guest today is Dr. Arthur Aron, a professor of psychology at Stony Brook University in New York. Dr. Aron has spent decades studying how people develop and maintain close relationships, particularly romantic relationships. He developed the self-expansion model of relationships, which posits that one main motivation for forming bonds with others is our own personal growth. Relationships allow us to grow and expand our sense of self. Outside of academia, Dr. Aron is perhaps best known for developing ”The 36 Questions that Lead to Love,” work that was profiled in a New York Times Modern Love column that went viral a few years ago.
Thank you for joining us, Dr. Aron.
Arthur Aron, PhD: My pleasure to be here.
Mills: Let's start with the big question I posed in the introduction: what makes love last? You've done research on couples who say they're still madly in love after many years together. How do they do it?
Aron: Let me just say a word about the fact that it really can happen. We have a lot of studies showing that. People find it hard to believe it really can happen. For example, in a representative U.S. survey we did a few years ago of people married 10 years or longer, 40% claim to be very intensely in love. And that was on a seven-point scale, where five was somewhat in love, six is a little in love. Those are the low end. But intensely in love, very in love, this is even higher than that, very intensely in love. And if you look at people who were married greater than 30 years, we still had almost that many, 40% of women, 35% of men. Now of course, that's the people who are still together. So it means if you get married and only half are still together 10 years later, 20%, but still that's a lot of people.
And we were concerned about whether this is really the case, or they're just saying so. And so we did some fMRI studies, some brain scan studies. Now I've done, with my colleagues, a lot of studies of people who are newly in love. So we know what the brain looks like, particularly something called the dopamine reward area responds when you've fallen in love.
So we recruited people who claim to be—we went around in New York and we recruited people who said they were still madly in love with their partner, who were married at least 10 years. On the average, the sample we studied was married 20 years. And they claimed to be intensely in love. We interviewed them. They looked like it. My then graduate student, now a very successful professor, researcher, Bianca Acevedo, told me about one couple she interviewed and she could see it. They were saying, “When we talk to our friends,” —these are people who are in their 60s—“When we talk to our friends, they're always complaining because we're always all over each other physically.”
So when we looked at their brains, when we did the same basic brain scan, what happens when you see your partner versus a familiar other, equally attractive? What we see is that same activation, as much as the people who've newly fallen in love. There were some minor differences. They didn't show the anxiety that we see in people who've just fallen in love. And they did show activation in what's called a pair bonding area, which we see in animals. But it does seem like it really can happen. Now, not everyone's happy to hear this, because if you're planning to get married it sounds good, but one of the ways people feel good about their relationships is by comparing to other relationships. But on the other hand, it should be a motivation to do something.
Mills: Are there characteristics that these madly-in-love couples tend to share? Do they meet at older or younger ages? Does that matter? Do they have certain types of personalities? Are they very similar in their outlooks on life? Or are they opposites who attracted?
Aron: Well, as far as initial attraction, that doesn't seem to affect things as much years later. Now, who you are and who your partner is do matter a lot, and your skills matter a lot. And people think similarity is very important, and it turns out it's—I mean, it's important to share values, but it's not so important to share personality. And if one of you gets angry easily, it's not better if both of you get angry easily. But we like to think we're similar on all sorts of things. And of course, as people are longer together, they become more similar. Not just in their ideas, but in their physical appearance. People tend to look more alike over time. Anyway, I won't go into that sidestep—
Mills: You can measure that? I mean, it's for real? People always say that.
Aron: Oh yeah. There's been some wonderful studies done where they've shown people pictures of individuals taken when they were getting married. And then they showed people pictures of who they are now. And they had many different people they showed them. But people, right away, saw much more similarity.
So what can people do to make this happen? And we know quite a bit. We don't know everything, but we know quite a bit. And you can help make it happen. There are certain things that are sort of essential to make it basically okay. And those are crucial because if it's not basically okay, it's hard to spark. There are people who are intensely in love that aren't happy, but not many. Usually, if your partner's responding and you're intensely in love, you're very happy.
So there are basically four basic things that are sort of crucial to make a relationship at least okay. I mean, sometimes they'll manage without them, but they really make a difference. One of the biggest is another one people don't want to hear, and that is yourself. If you're anxious, or depressed, or insecure, it's very hard to feel happy in your relationship. Initially, you might be, but then you sort of start blaming it on the other person or you just go back to being unhappy. So one of the biggest things you can do is to get therapy, or if it's not very big, learn to meditate, or if it's very big, see a psychiatrist, get medication.
If you're insecure, that's another big factor. There are some things you can do. People with low self-esteem have a hard time. Some great work by Murray and Holmes and others. If you have low self-esteem, it's hard to feel your partner likes you. There's that whole joke of Groucho Marx. I wouldn't belong to any club that would have me as a member.
So you wonder if your partner—What's wrong with your partner if they like you, or could your partner really like you? So some nice research has been done showing that one of the things you do is to think if your partner compliments you, try to think about it abstractly. Try to look at sort of why your partner said it and what it means to you. Of course, who your partner is matters too, but it matters even more who you are.
And then another one, a huge one is stress. If you're under great stress or some big thing happens in your life, one of you loses a job, or worse yet, a child dies, those are really hard. And they're not only hard because they affect you. When you're under stress, you don't behave as well and you're likely to—if your partner does one little thing, you may just go off the top. You can't see, “Oh, well they weren't usually like that.” And if your partner does it, it's hard to remember that they're under stress if you're also under stress. So it's important when you're under stress to try to remember this effect that stress can have, because your ability to think broadly is hard. But if you can remember that one thing, it can help in interpreting yourself and your partner's behavior.
And more generally, communication skills is a huge factor. Your partner and you need to feel you're hearing each other, what's called responsiveness. Harry Reis, great social psychologist in this field. He and many of his colleagues have shown that one of the biggest things in interacting with people, especially close others, is feeling that they're responsive to you. They hear you. They understand you. They verify what you say. They care about you. And so you want to show that to your partner and you want to reveal things about yourself. We'll talk more about the 36 questions later, but that's a little what that's about. You want to reveal a little to give the other opportunity to be responsive, and you want to be responsive to your partner. And then of course, there's handling conflict, which is a huge problem.
Mills: I was going to ask that one. That's a big one. Yeah.
Aron: Yeah. Conflict's kind of inevitable in relationships, but it isn't always rising. But one of the recent lines of research on that has shown that when you're in conflict, try to think about it from a third person's perspective who is neutral, but they care about your relationship, but they're not on either side. Try to see if you can reflect it from that perspective. And then there's some sort of rules you should follow. John Gottman's done all this wonderful research. He calls them the four horseman of the apocalypse.
Mills: Right. Right.
Aron: Things you should avoid, criticism, defensiveness, contempt, stonewalling, what he calls kitchen sinking. The person does one thing and you remind him of everything that's always annoyed you. You don't want to do that. In fact, you should sort of sometimes discuss this with your partner when you're not in a conflict so that you have some sort of rules.
And another thing is if you're really worked up, and I mean in a negative way, you're angry or upset, it's not so good to discuss it. If your pulse is over 100, the thing to do is go say to your partner, “I'm not leaving you. I'm not just stopping talking about it, but I should have 20 minutes to settle down.” And then you go back to the discussion and you don't want to just leave it. Anyway, those are some things for handling conflict that we know. It's not my main area of expertise, but it's really important. And then there's one other thing, and that is family and friends, if they disapprove. The iconic example of love in the West is what?
Mills: The iconic example of love?
Aron: In literature in the West.
Mills: Well, I mean there's always Romeo and Juliet, and of course there was family conflict.
Aron: Yeah, how did that work out?
Mills: Not so well.
Aron: Yeah, they were intensely in love, but no, if your family—it isn't as big a problem for most Westerners, but in many cultures, and many people who are from other cultures, what your family thinks matters a lot. In the short run, sometimes it makes you feel better if your parents disapprove, if you're an American. But in the long run, it's hard, especially once you start having children and stuff like that. So you really want to work. And of course, if your friends strongly disapprove, you really want to work to create good relationships. So those are some things that are sort of essential. I mean, essential is a little too strong because there are people who somehow manage if just one of these things is in place, if the other three are out. But it's a lot harder. And so these are things you want to do to get it to the level where it's at least okay.
Mills: So what advice would you give to our listeners who feel inspired by what you're saying and they want to improve their relationships? So what can they do to take a relationship that's maybe okay, or maybe it's gotten a little boring, how can they rekindle the intense love that they felt at the beginning?
Aron: Well, there's a few crucial things. One is, of course, creating time together by yourself, particularly if you have kids or you're living with extended family. You need to have some time by yourself, with your partner, I mean. You need to have some time together. Of course, right now during the pandemic, you may need a little time apart too.
Mills: A little too much time, yeah.
Aron: Yeah. But the thing is to sort of pull yourself out of this environment and just working and this and that, and really have some time together. And then how you use that time is kind of crucial. Being playful is really, really important. And particularly, my research on self-expansion is really central, doing things that are new and interesting with your partner matters hugely, not just same old, same old, but new, different.
Mills: So what might those things be if you're talking about self-expansion?
Aron: Well, on one level, it could be flying in a helicopter together, but it could also just be taking a cooking class together or doing something new and interesting. And it can be a little thing or a big thing. My wife and I, we went kayaking down the river, and that was lovely, on our own. It wasn't dangerous. We picked a river that wasn't dangerous, just the fun of it. It's a little challenging, but that makes it all the better. Or another example is one night we were coming back from a play, and we walked by a bar, and we said, “We haven't hung out in a bar in years and years.” So we went and hung out in a bar for a little while.
So in one of our studies, one of our first studies, we had a large sample of couples who agreed to be in the study. And we gave them a big list of activities couples do together. And for each one separately, we said, “How exciting would this be to do with your partner? And how pleasant would it be?” And then we gave them a list that was based on what both of them rated as highly pleasant but only moderately exciting, and another half were randomly assigned to get a list that was highly exciting but not rated as high on pleasantness, not low on pleasantness. And we asked them to do something for about an hour every week from the list we gave them. And then after 10 weeks, the couples that had done from the exciting lists were substantially increased in their satisfaction with their relationship. In fact, the other couples were slightly less so, but not much so.
It's also—boredom's a problem. We've done lab studies. We had a study where couples came into the lab and they were told they'd be videotaped doing an activity together. And they filled out some questionnaires first. And we did tape them, but it didn't matter what they were doing. In one condition, the expanding condition, we tied their wrists and ankles together with Velcro straps. And they had a big long gym mat that went very long, two or three of across the room. They had to push a foam roller across and back without using their fingers or teeth, and over a barrier in the middle, a round barrier. And they had to do it within a certain amount of time. And they had like four chances to do it.
Mills: Sounds like a TV show, like Beat The Clock.
Aron: Right. And the control condition, they just each went back separately and it was pleasant. They didn't mind that. They thought it was sort of funny. But they didn't know about the other condition. And we timed it. They had to take watches off to do this and stuff. So we timed it so that they didn't quite make it the first two times. The third time they just made, if it was unbelievable that they had made it the third time, then they made it the fourth time. And the couples who did the exciting activity versus the pleasant—well, in a couple of the studies, we had a questionnaire afterwards, but in another study we had them have a conversation afterwards. And again, they didn't know which condition they were in or anything like that.
And the conversation, it was friendly conversation. Suppose you were given a bunch of money to go on a trip, where would you choose to go, or to remodel your home. And we had people coding the conversations who didn't know which condition the subjects were in. And those who were in the exciting condition had much more positive interaction. And then there's been studies by others. I mean, there's been a lot of replication of this, studies that followed people up four months later, things like that.
We did one study where we had a sample that had been—this is from Terri Orbach's group sample, where they had a large sample, national sample. And they followed people for like, what was that, I think it was year 9 and 17, something like that we were looking at. And their ratings of how exciting their daily life is with their partner, how bored they were, predicted their satisfaction at year 17, 9 years later, whatever it was. And some of the most recent research has shown that one of the reasons this is working is that it increases your sex life. It makes your sex more lively. So that's one big thing.
Another big thing is your sex life. And just physical contact is really important. You don't need to have sex every day. Once an hour is—no. You don't need to have sex every day. In fact, once a week for most people is just about the right amount. And it's important that both of you want to have it, you enjoy it. And you have a little variation in what you do a little bit. But that's sort of crucial.
But you know, sometimes, like in the big national sample we did of people who claimed to be intensely in love after 10, 20 years together, there were a few older couples who weren't ever having sex, but they had a lot of physical contact. And in fact, even in the daily basis, aside from the sex, just holding your partner's hand, hugging them, to an extent it's legitimate and feels honest, is really important. And there's a lot of research showing that. So physical contact, sex, and of course, eking time out together alone from your children or your extended family is kind of important, in part, to have sex.
Mills: But it sounds like you should be putting aside some time for sort of a date night and maybe go skydiving, do something that's really going to get your blood pumping.
Aron: You're right. Skydiving's a great example. It's important that you do things that are challenging and interesting, but not more than you can handle. There's this study showing this sort of curvilinear effect that up to the point where you can handle the challenge, the more challenge, the better. But when it goes beyond that.
Mills: Diminishing returns.
Aron: Yeah. Like my wife really loves going out in the water and really loves whales. And I love whales too. So she said, “Why don't we go on a whale watching trip?” But I get seasick. And so we said, “Well, let's try.” And I took all these pills and things you put on your wrist and stuff like that. And we went out and I fed the whales leaning over the edge.
Mills: But she had a great time.
Aron: Well, yeah. She was supporting me. And the support was good, feeling her support. But we had to stay out there a long time because it was a group thing. But so it is important to do things. They have to be new. As I say, taking a cooking class together, or a dance class, of course, is some physical thing, but it's not the physical.
We've done studies when people initially meet. And when they initially meet, being physiologically turned on, I don't mean sexually, but just stirred up, does make you more likely to be attracted to a new person. And the novelty of it isn't what matters. But in a long-term relationship, what matters is the novelty and not the amount of physical stirring. And when you meet a new person, if you've just exercised and worked up for 20 minutes and you're all stirred up, if they're reasonably attractive, you're more likely to think, “Oh, I know why I'm worked up. I'm attracted to them.” But in a long-term relationship, you're used to being worked up from exercising. It's the novelty that sort of rekindles things.
Mills: Yeah. That makes sense.
Aron: And then there's some others that are important. And here's where the 36 questions come in. Deep friendships with other couples matter of a lot. Now, the 36 questions, for the few people who aren't familiar with it, is a procedure that takes about 45 minutes, that we designed so we could create closeness in the laboratory. The problem is that if you want to study the effects of closeness scientifically, you want to be able to randomly assign people to be close or not. If you just take people who are close versus not, they have different histories, they've chosen each other. So we wanted to be able to create a procedure, which in 45 minutes could do that.
And so we developed that procedure. And that was not intended to make people fall in love. It was to make people close. In fact, most of the people in our studies were heterosexual people paired with same sex others. But it created closeness. It created closeness. And that was the idea. Now, of course, if everything else is in place then closeness can add to the chance of falling in love initially, but that wasn't the goal.
Now, what does it do? Well, if you do it with an ongoing partner, it does make you feel closer to your partner if you're in a long-term relationship, but it doesn't particularly increase love. But there's all this research showing that if couples have a close friendship with another couple, they're more likely to be in love and happy in their relationship. We don't know which is causing which. The initial study was done by Rich Slatcher. This was his dissertation, in fact. And then later, I collaborated with him on a bunch of studies and Keith Welker, another former student of his. And what we found was that when a couple does it by themselves, as I say, they get closer, but it doesn't necessarily increase their love. But when two couples do it together as a foursome, each of the four answers each of the 36 questions, it not only makes them closer to each other and to the other couple, but it increases their passionate love within the couple.
Mills: And they're really great questions. I mean, can you just toss a couple out there because I know you start at a certain level of sort of familiar and then you go deep.
Aron: Right. The idea of this came from survey research showing that when people form friendships, which is our main focus at the time, they do so by initially sort of exchanging and then gradually revealing more and more. If someone reveals too much too fast, it sort of is a little scary. It puts you off. And so we set up a set of questions where initially, you answer questions. If you could go out to dinner with anyone in history, who would you want to go out to dinner with, and things like that. And then towards the end, we initially were doing this with college-age students. How would you feel if your mother died? I mean, so it moves along. And we also threw in two or three other questions that mattered. After a little while, we asked have you noticed anything you have in common with the other person? And we never say, have you noticed anything you don't have in common.
Again, being in common in isn't that important, but thinking you’re in common. And then also, a little later, we have some items that say name some things you've noticed you like about the other person. Turns out that's a huge factor in feeling close to someone. And in fact, it's a huge factor in initially falling in love, is thinking the other person likes you. Now people think 36 questions, how long is that going to take? There's three sets of 12 questions. And we say don't rush it. We don't expect you to get through all of them. And the reason we have 12 questions is some people move quickly. We don't want them to run out. But most people will get through six or seven.
And you do this with another couple. You can do it as long as you want. But it's better not to take it too long. You'll get bored with it, but it's really valuable. And in fact, my wife and I have done this once or twice with couples, we know a little bit, by Zoom. It's something you can do by Zoom with another couple who's on the other side of the world, like some friends we have in Sweden. So it's a pretty powerful thing. One thing I should remind people about the 36 questions, if they're using them either initially to get close or with a friend or with someone they're dating, is you can't use the same set of questions again and again and again because you know the answers.
Mills: Right. Well this episode is being timed to mark Valentine's Day. And I'm just wondering, a lot of people kind of pooh-pooh the importance of a Hallmark holiday in a long-term relationship. Do you think that a day set aside to recognize and celebrate romantic love helps relationships, or is it something that just leads to unmet expectations and an overpriced restaurant meal?
Aron: I mean, I don't know of any research on this, but I think putting your attention on the relationship is a good thing. There's a couple more things you can do to sparkle it up. And one of them is to express gratitude and to think about what you're grateful for in your relationship. And a holiday is a good day to do that. What am I grateful for that my partner's given me? And of course, it's also important on a day-to-day basis when something happens. Again, you want to be honest about it. You don't want to say thank you for something that doesn't matter. And one thing that that's interesting from some of the recent research, it especially matters in a long term relationship, when you're saying you appreciate they did that thing, to not only let them know how hard you thought they worked to make it happen, but how much it meant to you, how much you got from their doing it.
So expressing gratitude and feeling gratitude is really important. And it also reminds me. There's one other thing I didn't get to, some wonderful work on celebrating your partner's successes. If your partner has something good happen, don't just say, “Oh, that's nice.” Let them know. Really let them know. It turns out that matters more than supporting them when things go badly.
My wife does this research on the highly sensitive person and we collaborate, which is one of the exciting things we do together. And we've also collaborated on the relationship research. But a while back, she submitted a review paper to a very top journal, a psychology journal, on the state of the research on highly sensitive people. And it was a very top journal. We thought the chances of it being accepted were not that high. I was a co-author, but it was her work. I was home when the email came in saying the editor loved it, the reviewers loved it. And so I made a poster of that and put it on the wall for when she came home. We had a great night. But celebrating your partner's successes also matters. And I suppose you could make a point of that to some extent on like, “Hey, we're still together.” That's a kind of success.
Mills: So some of the relationship stressors that we've talked about, boredom and just tension have been really, really abundant in our lives these last two years. And it may be a little soon to be talking about what we know about what the pandemic is doing to people's relationships. But I'm just wondering, have you thought about this? Are you doing any research in this area? What are you seeing?
Aron: Well, I haven't myself done any research in this area. Several of my collaborators and colleagues have. Rich Slatcher, who actually was on one of these podcasts, has done a lot of work in that. Rhonda Balzarini, a former graduate student of mine, has done a lot of work in this area. But they're still just starting to get their results. And I haven't been following it as closely as I might. So I can't really comment on that.
But I mean, I think the one or two things that follow from my research is that, again, even though you can't do the usual things, or even the usual novel things, look for things you can do. Like I mentioned doing the 36 questions with another couple on the other side of the world, by Zoom. You can take a dancing class by Zoom, or things you can do that are—sit together and cook some food you've never done together if that interesting to you. And also, you do need some time for yourself. And it's important that people, if they're just alone as a couple, also have a little time alone so that they're not feeling overburdened.
Mills: Are there signs that the relationship can't really be salvaged? I mean, sometimes you reach a rocky point, but even the research that you have done and the suggestions that you make to bring people together, are there some relationships where it really just doesn't matter?
Aron: I don't know. It's tough. I mean, obviously if you're being physically abused by someone, a partner, and those kind of cases, or if you've got a partner who's an alcoholic and can't stop and something like that, that can be tough. Short of that, it seems like if people can pull these things together to some extent, they can make almost any relationship work.
Mills: So if you're really sincere in your effort, I mean, you have to take it seriously and try to follow the instructions. I mean, I've read a fair amount of John Gottman, for example. And he does have a lot of things that he recommends that couples do together. And they, at least as far as his work goes, he says they work.
Aron: Yeah, well, you need both members of the couple to be willing to do something. And of course, as I say, sometimes it's just yourself. Sometimes just getting your own therapy or doing something to make yourself better off will make the relationship better, and also give you more freedom to do things to make the relationship better.
Mills: So you've been studying relationships now for, I don't know, 50 years, right? I mean, it's a long time that you've been working in this area. What are the big questions that you still want to answer?
Aron: We know that these things I went through, each of them predicts more love, more satisfaction, but we don't know for sure, we know a little bit from the survey, what the things really make the few couples that are at the very top get there. And so I'm now doing some research with Terri Orbach and Rosie Shrout, who has this great data set. And also, we're trying to gather some other data of people who've done longitudinal research. And we're trying to see what from early on predicts which couples are not only happy, which is what most of it's been done, but which are super happy, which are very intensely in love. And so we're trying to sort out those data. So we're not collecting new data. We're trying to sort that out and try to get a strong handle on it. We presume it's a lot of these factors, but we don't know for sure. I mean, we're pretty sure, but it may be just particular combinations that really make it happen, or something we haven't looked at.
Mills: Well, I will look forward to seeing that. I appreciate you taking the time to talk to us today, Dr. Aron. Thank you so much.
Aron: Thank you for inviting me. It's a pleasure to be able to share so much of what our field knows.
Mills: You can find previous episodes of Speaking of Psychology on our website www.speakingofpsychology.org, or on Apple, Stitcher, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. And if you're listening on Apple, and you like what you hear, please leave us a review. If you have comments or ideas for future podcasts, you can email us speakingofpsychology@apa.org. That's speakingofpsychology, all one word, @apa.org. Speaking of Psychology is produced by Lea Winerman. Our sound editor is Chris Condayan.
Thank you for listening. For the American Psychological Association, I'm Kim Mills.
