WHY DO WE FALL IN LOVE..........??

Falling in love is a magical experience that happens between two people.  So why do people fall in love? What happens when two people are falling in love? 

Our primary motivation as human beings is to expand the sel and to increase our abilities and our effectiveness. One of the ways we accomplish this is through our relationships with other people.  We have learned in our research that it is important to feel that you have the ability to be an effective person, especially in our relationship.

Usually we fall in love with a person that we find attractive and appropriate for us, but also someone who demonstrates that they are attracted to us.  This creates a situation where a great opportunity is open to us for self-expansion.   The fact that they are attracted to us offers a significant opportunity when we perceive this, we feel a surge of exhilaration.

An interesting exception to this occurs if we feel badly about ourselves.  The process gets thrown off if we can’t believe that another person finds us attractive – where we don’t want to belong to a club that would have us for a member.  We tend to miss out on opportunities for falling in love if we don’t feel good about ourselves.

When you meet someone under conditions that are highly arousing – a political demonstration, turbulence on a plane, a stimulating performance – a time when the body is stirred up and excited, we tend to experience attraction at a heightened level. This effect is well documented but the explanations for it are very controversial.  We come to associate the arousal of the situation with this person and our own self-expansion

What most people think, the statistics show that most people fall in love with someone that they have known for a while.  People only report falling in love quickly about 1/3 to 40% of the time.  Of course this varies from culture to culture.  Falling in love happens differently between cultures but it does occurs in most cultures.

Another interest appearance matters a lot or not.  This is interesting. We have found that if you are very unattractive, it can hurt you a lot in forming romantic relationship.  However, being attractive does not help that much. 

Two important characteristics.

*KINDNESS

*INTELLIGENCE

Are extremely important in the process of falling in love.  And attractive is not connected to these things.  These two attributes are things that people learn about about some one from knowing them over time.  Intelligence is important in all aspects of life, especially in love

BUT KINDNESS IS THE STRONGEST INDICATOR FOR A SUCCESSFUL LONG TERM RELATIONSHIP