When the timer buzzed, I was surprised—and a little relieved. But I also felt a sense of loss. Already I was beginning to see our evening through the surreal and unreliable lens of retrospect.
Most of us think about love as something that happens to us. We fall. We get crushed.
But what I like about this study is how it assumes that love is an action. It assumes that what matters to my partner matters to me because we have at least three things in common, because we have close relationships with our mothers, and because he let me look at him.
I wondered what would come of our interaction. If nothing else, I thought it would make a good story. But I see now that the story isn’t about us; it’s about what it means to bother to know someone, which is really a story about what it means to be known.
It’s true you can’t choose who loves you, although I’ve spent years hoping otherwise, and you can’t create romantic feelings based on convenience alone. Science tells us biology matters; our pheromones and hormones do a lot of work behind the scenes.
But despite all this, I’ve begun to think love is a more pliable thing than we make it out to be. Arthur Aron’s study taught me that it’s possible—simple, even—to generate trust and intimacy, the feelings love needs to thrive.
You’re probably wondering if he and I fell in love. Well, we did. Although it’s hard to credit the study entirely (it may have happened anyway), the study did give us a way into a relationship that feels deliberate. We spent weeks in the intimate space we created that night, waiting to see what it could become.
Love didn’t happen to us. We’re in love because we each made the choice to be.
The following thirty-six questions are excerpted from a companion article to the author’s piece “To Fall in Love with Anyone, Do This,” originally published in the New York Times’s Modern Love column in January 2015.
arthur aron’s
36 questions
Set I
1. Given the choice of anyone in the world, whom would you want as a dinner guest?
2. Would you like to be famous? In what way?
3. Before making a telephone call, do you ever rehearse what you are going to say? Why?
4. What would constitute a “perfect” day for you?
5. When did you last sing to yourself? To someone else?
6. If you were able to live to the age of 90 and retain either the mind or body of a 30-year-old for the last 60 years of your life, which would you want?
7. Do you have a secret hunch about how you will die?
8. Name three things you and your partner appear to have in common.
9. For what in your life do you feel most grateful?
10. If you could change anything about the way you were raised, what would it be?
11. Take four minutes and tell your partner your life story in as much detail as possible.
12. If you could wake up tomorrow having gained any one quality or ability, what would it be?
Set II
13. If a crystal ball could tell you the truth about yourself, your life, the future or anything else, what would you want to know?
14. Is there something that you’ve dreamed of doing for a long time? Why haven’t you done it?
15. What is the greatest accomplishment of your life?
16. What do you value most in a friendship?
17. What is your most treasured memory?
18. What is your most terrible memory?
19. If you knew that in one year you would die suddenly, would you change anything about the way you are now living? Why?
20. What does friendship mean to you?
21. What roles do love and affection play in your life?
22. Alternate sharing something you consider a positive characteristic of your partner. Share a total of five items.
23. How close and warm is your family? Do you feel your childhood was happier than most other people’s?
24. How do you feel about your relationship with your mother?
Set III
25. Make three true “we” statements each. For instance, “We are both in this room feeling . . .”
26. Complete this sentence: “I wish I had someone with whom I could share . . .”
27. If you were going to become a close friend with your partner, please share what would be important for him or her to know.
28. Tell your partner what you like about them; be very honest this time, saying things that you might not say to someone you’ve just met.
29. Share with your partner an embarrassing moment in your life.
30. When did you last cry in front of another person? By yourself?
31. Tell your partner something that you like about them already.
32. What, if anything, is too serious to be joked about?
33. If you were to die this evening with no opportunity to communicate with anyone, what would you most regret not having told someone? Why haven’t you told them yet?
34. Your house, containing everything you own, catches fire. After saving your loved ones and pets, you have time to safely make a final dash to save any one item. What would it be? Why?
35. Of all the people in your family, whose death would you find most disturbing? Why?
36. 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.
acknowledgments
I am so grateful to Sam Stoloff for your rigorous editing, patient career counseling, and sincere friendship. I had no idea what I was getting into when I began this process, and I feel so incredibly lucky to have ended up with you on my team.
To Erin Harte: Every writer should be so fortunate as to have a best friend who is also an experienced editor, a thoughtful reader, and an exceedingly decent and sensible human. Without our frequent conversations, this book would not be what it is.
I owe so much to Marysue Rucci and Sophia Jimenez for helping me to write the book I’d imagined. I wanted to work with you both from our very first conversation. I am so grateful for your enthusiasm and your sharp edits.
Zack Knoll, I loved seeing your name in my in-box, as it was almost always exciting news. Thank you for your daily work on this project, especially toward the end. To the other folks at Simon & Schuster—especially Amanda Lang, Dana Trocker, Polly Watson, Lisa Rivlin, and Nancy Tonik—I am so grateful for your patience and guidance and support.
Thank you to Matthew Kolehmainen for believing this book would need a website long before I believed it would actually be a book. And to Claire Dollan for reading a very early, not-so-good draft and saying only nice things about it. And to Lisa Martin for helping me refine exactly what I had to say, and to Ryan Turner for your eagle eye.
Writing requires both friendship and calories, so I am especially grateful to Duffy and Kristina for all the roast chicken and beer, to Steve for fried-rice lunches, and to Erin and Kristin for melding editing with dining.
I am particularly indebted to the mentors who made me feel like writing was a legitimate way to spend my days: Melanie Almeder, Mike Heller, Keith Cartwright, Paul Hanstedt, Ned Stuckey-French, E. J. Levy, Myra Sklarew, Andrew Holleran, and especially Richard McCann (for many years your promise to watch my career is what pushed me to give you something to see). Thank you to Warren Cariou for urging me to keep going when all I had was thirty pages and a vague idea.
I am incredibly lucky to have friends and colleagues who took me at my word when I said I was going to write a book (though I didn’t quite believe it myself) and supported my work in ways large and small. Your faith was essential to the daily work of this project. Special thanks to Kirsten, Nathalie, Corinne, Alexis, David, Liz, Michael, Jen, Clif, Jess, Kristin, Richard, Celita, Kerry, Katie, Joel, Spencer, Nathan, Claire, Ellis, Gillian, Jeff, Justin, everyone at the Banff Writing Studio in 2010, and the members of A Drift Collective.
To my fellow members of the Vancouver Love Triangl
e, Marina and Carrie, I am so delighted to have found such smart peers in the world of writing about love.
For all manner of logistical and emotional support, I am so thankful for the Binders.
Thank you to Dan Jones for giving my career a big (big!) boost. And to Barbara Kingsolver, the first person I ever called “my favorite writer,” who offered such essential advice without ever having met me (Hi, Barbara! Call me!). And thank you, thank you to everyone who agreed to be interviewed for this book, and to Art Aron and SAGE Publications for allowing me to share your research.
Finally, I am awed by the continual love and support of my family. You have been so generous with your stories and your willingness to let me share them. To Mom and Dad and Casey: I am the luckiest daughter and sister. I feel this every day. Thank you to my many aunts and uncles (to Cindy and Dan, in particular, my “stylist and chauffeur”). And thank you to Mamaw, who always believed her life would be in a book one day.
To the Sweet Guys: Roscoe, you are the best writing companion—snoring happily on the floor while I read each essay aloud more times than I can count, and then forcing me out of the house. Mark Bondyra, you continue to help me figure out how to be a writer and a person in the world over breakfast and dinner and dog walks and long drives and in the shower and late at night when you are very sleepy. I know you already know this, but I love you. For real.
about the author
© JENNILEE MARIGOMEN
Originally from Appalachian Virginia, Mandy Len Catron now lives in Vancouver, British Columbia. Her writing has appeared in the New York Times, the Washington Post, and The Walrus, as well as literary journals and anthologies. She writes about love and love stories at The Love Story Project (TheLoveStoryProject.ca), and teaches English and creative writing at the University of British Columbia. Her essay “To Fall in Love with Anyone, Do This” was one of the most popular pieces published by the New York Times in 2015.
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notes
the exploded star
1. John Gottman and Nan Silver, The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work: A Practical Guide from the Country’s Foremost Relationship Expert (New York: Three Rivers Press, 1990), 4–6.
2. Lori Gottlieb, “Marry Him! The Case for Settling for Mr. Good Enough,” Atlantic (March 2008).
3. Helen Fisher, Why We Love: The Nature and Chemistry of Romantic Love (New York: Holt Paperbacks, 2005), 69–76.
4. Helen E. Fisher, Arthur Aron, and Lucy L. Brown, “Romantic Love: A Mammalian Brain System for Mate Choice,” Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society: Biological Sciences (December 2006): 2173.
the football coach and the cheerleader
1. Maria Popova, “Kurt Vonnegut on the Shapes of Stories and Good News vs. Bad News,” Brain Pickings, https://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2012/11/26/kurt-vonnegut-on-the-shapes-of-stories.
2. Brokeback Mountain, directed by Ang Lee, 2005.
3. Alexa Junge, “The One with the Prom Video,” Friends, season 2, episode 14, directed by James Burrows.
4. “Nicholas Sparks’ DOs and DON’Ts for Writing a Love Story,” Glamour, August 24, 2012, http://www.glamourmagazine.co.uk/article/nicholas-sparks-writing-tips.
5. Titanic, directed by James Cameron, 1997.
6. Alain de Botton, Essays in Love (London: Picador, 2006), 119.
7. Kurt Vonnegut, Palm Sunday (New York: Dial Press Trade Paperbacks, 2009), 286.
coal miner’s daughter
1. Loretta Lynn, Still Woman Enough: A Memoir (New York: Hyperion, 2002), xvii.
2. Marina Adshade, Dollars and Sex: How Economics Influences Sex and Love (San Francisco: Chronicle Books, 2013), 113.
3. Stephanie Coontz, Marriage, a History: How Love Conquered Marriage (New York: Penguin Books, 2006), 15–23.
4. Andrew J. Cherlin, “The Deinstitutionalization of American Marriage,” Journal of Marriage and Family 66, no. 4 (November 2004), 851.
5. Eli J. Finkel, “The All-or-Nothing Marriage,” New York Times, February 14, 2014.
6. Sandra L. Murray, John G. Holmes, and Dale W. Griffin, “The Self-Fulfilling Nature of Positive Illusions in Romantic Relationships,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 71, no. 6 (1996).
7. Todd May, “Love and Death,” New York Times, February 26, 2012.
girl meets boy
1. Roger C. Schank and Robert P. Abelson, “Knowledge and Memory: The Real Story,” in Knowledge and Memory: The Real Story, ed. Robert S. Wyer (Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1995), 4.
the problem of deservingness
1. There is some debate about the material of the slippers in Perrault’s version of the story. For more on this, check out linguist Mark Liberman’s notes on the Language Log at the University of Pennsylvania: http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/002886.html.
2. Julia R. Lippman, “I Did It Because I Never Stopped Loving You: The Effects of Media Portrayals of Persistent Pursuit on Beliefs About Stalking,” Communication Research (February 16, 2015).
3. Chloe Angyal, “I Spent a Year Watching Rom-Coms and This Is the Crap I Learned,” Jezebel, February 14, 2012, http://jezebel.com/5884946/the-crappy-lessons-of-romantic-comedies.
4. Laurie A. Rudman and Jessica B. Heppen, “Implicit Romantic Fantasies and Women’s Interest in Personal Power: A Glass Slipper Effect?” Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 29, no. 11 (July 2010).
5. Marco Iacoboni, Mirroring People: The Science of Empathy and How We Connect with Others (New York: Picador, 2009), 4–5.
6. Jonathan Gottschall, The Storytelling Animal: How Stories Make Us Human (New York: Mariner, 2013), 10–11.
7. Gottschall, Storytelling Animal, 102.
8. Jonathan Gottschall, “Why Fiction Is Good for You,” Boston Globe, April 29, 2012, https://www.bostonglobe.com/ideas/2012/04/28/why-fiction-good-for-you-how-fiction-changes-your-world/nubDy1P3viDj2PuwGwb3KO/story.html.
9. Linda Holmes, “A Girl, a Shoe, a Prince: The Endlessly Evolving Cinderella,” NPR, March 13, 2015, http://www.npr.org/sections/monkeysee/2015/03/13/392358854/a-girl-a-shoe-a-prince-the-endlessly-evolving-cinderella.
10. Kate Erbland, “The True Story of Pretty Woman’s Original Dark Ending,” Vanity Fair, March 23, 2015, http://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2015/03/pretty-woman-original-ending.
11. Darren Franich, “Pretty Woman: 25 Thoughts After Watching It for the First Time,” Entertainment Weekly, September 11, 2015, http://ew.com/article/2015/09/11/pretty-woman-4.
12. Susan Ostrov Weisser, The Glass Slipper: Women and Love Stories (New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 2013), 11.
13. Morgan Parker, “Love Poems Are Dead,” Harriet (blog for the Poetry Foundation), December 10, 2015, https://www.poetryfoundation.org/harriet/2015/12/love-poems-are-dead.
14. Rebecca Traister, All the Single Ladies: Unmarried Women and the Rise of an Independent Nation (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2016), 150.
15. Council on Contemporary Families, “Myths About College-Educated Women and Marriage,” January 26, 2010, https://contemporaryfamilies.org/myths-about-college-educated-women-and-marriage-release.
the black box
1. Abigail Tucker, “What Can Rodents Tell Us About Why Humans Love?,” Smithsonian magazine, February 2014, http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/what-can-rodents-tell-us-about-why-humans-love-180949441.
3. For a thoughtful critique of these ideas, check out philosopher Carrie Jenkins’s book What Love Is: And What It Could Be (New York: Basic Books, 2017).
4. “I Get a Kick Out of You: The Science of Love,” Economist, February 12, 2004, http://www.economist.com/node/2424049.
5. Larry Young and Brian Alexander, The Chemistry Between Us: Love, Sex, and the Science of Attraction (New York: Current, 2014), 198–203.
6. Rainer Maria Rilke, “Requiem for a Friend,” trans. Stephen Mitchell, http://www.paratheatrical.com/requiemtext.html.
i’m willing to lie about how we met
1. Sharon Sassler and Amanda Jayne Miller, “The Ecology of Relationships: Meeting Locations and Cohabitors’ Relationship Perceptions,” Journal of Social and Personal Relationships 33, issue 2 (2015).
2. Moira Weigel, Labor of Love: The Invention of Dating (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2016).
3. James Linville, “Billy Wilder, The Art of Screenwriting No. 1,” Paris Review, issue 138 (Spring 1996), http://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/1432/billy-wilder-the-art-of-screenwriting-no-1-billy-wilder.
4. Paul Monaco, A History of American Movies: A Film-by-Film Look at the Art, Craft, and Business of Cinema (Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 2010), 39–41.
5. Claude Brodesser-Akner, “Can the Romantic Comedy Be Saved?” Vulture, December 27, 2012, http://www.vulture.com/2012/12/can-the-romantic-comedy-be-saved.html.
6. Tatiana Siegel, “R.I.P. Romantic Comedies: Why Harry Wouldn’t Meet Sally in 2013,” Hollywood Reporter, September 26, 2013, http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/rip-romantic-comedies-why-harry-634776.
7. Amy Nicholson, “Who Killed the Romantic Comedy?” LA Weekly, February 27, 2014, http://www.laweekly.com/news/who-killed-the-romantic-comedy-4464884.
How to Fall in Love with Anyone Page 21