3 Takeaways - The Surprising Science Behind Falling—and Staying—in Love (#255)

Episode Date: June 24, 2025

Love isn’t just a feeling—it’s a science. Arthur Aron, the psychologist behind the 36 questions that went viral, shares what really makes people fall and stay in love. You’ll hear why new experiences matter, how to deepen intimacy, and what most couples get wrong.Whether you’re looking to strengthen a relationship, connect more deeply with friends, or understand human bonding, this is a conversation you won’t want to miss. 

In a 1997 study at the State University of New York at Stony Brook, psychologist Arthur Aaron discovered a way to spark intimacy between strangers. 36 questions designed to build closeness. Popularized in a New York Times modern love column, these questions have ignited friendships and even led to love and marriage. How do you actually strengthen relationships? And also, how do you rekindle the spark in long term friendships and relationships? Hi, everyone, I'm Lynn Toman, and this is Three Takeaways. On Three Takeaways, I talk with some of the world's best thinkers,

business leaders, writers, politicians, newsmakers, and scientists. Each episode ends with three key takeaways to help us understand the world and maybe even ourselves a little better. Today, I'm excited to be with psychologist Arthur Aaron. His now-famous 36 questions have been used everywhere, from dating apps to classrooms to

spark unexpected emotional connection. But behind the viral story lies decades of powerful research on what truly brings people closer. I'm excited to look at love and relationships through the lens of science and find out what actually brings people closer together and keeps them close. Welcome Art and thanks so much

for joining Three Takeaways today. Thank you, Lynn. Art, why do the 36 questions work? They combine three things we know from other research into a context where we could create closeness in 45 minutes. So one of them is going back and forth, exchanging things, not just speaking, but hearing and speaking. A huge one that gives an opportunity for the other person to feel

heard, for responsiveness, which is really important in all relationships, letting the person know you understand, you understand where it's coming from, you care for them. Also, the research is very clear on how to create closeness, how to be close, is not to reveal too much too fast, but over time reveal one thing then the next. If someone reveals too much too fast at the beginning you don't know them, it puts you off a little and it makes it hard for you to do it. The questions are set up to be consecutive and then we threw in two other things that are known to be important for a relationship formation.

One is thinking the other person likes you. And that's very important. So ways into the questions we say name some things you like about the other person. And the other one is thinking the other person is similar. Again a little ways in we have some items on what are some things you've noticed you have in common. It turns out that's not that important in most cases for actually being in a relationship, but it's important for thinking it'll work out.

Do people need to equally share? Does it need to be reciprocal? Yes, I reveal and then the other person can listen, but if they never get a chance to speak they're going to sort of lose track. I mean, if you've known someone for a long time that's not an issue but when you're forming a relationship it's really important to go back and forth. It's so interesting to me most of the time when people meet it's hi nice to meet you, where are you from, what do you do, but your questions to me

are surprising and fascinating. To give our listeners some idea of the questions, three of them are what would constitute a perfect day? Is there something that you've dreamed of doing for a long time and why haven't you done it? And if you were to die this evening with no opportunity to communicate with anyone, what would you most regret not having told someone and why haven't you told them yet? Art, I'm curious, what is the logic behind the questions? Well, the logic is to gradually get them deeper and deeper and they should have an opportunity for the other person to respond to it, but to feel you're revealing things at the beginning, not too deep, but a little bit of interesting stuff, enough for the other person to respond to it, but to feel you're revealing things at the beginning, not too deep, but a little bit of interesting stuff, enough for the

other person to be able to respond to it, and then it gets deeper and deeper. If you were to generalize, what can people learn from the 36 questions to have more meaningful conversations in their own lives? Once you've formed a relationship, talking about things that are somewhat deep, again, you don't want to, even if you're in a relationship, you don't want to suddenly sit down with someone and ask about the deepest things in their life. But if you have time to talk about relatively deep things and not just

superficial. You mentioned that it helps if somebody thinks the other person likes them. How can somebody show that in a conversation? You can mention something you have in common that wasn't obvious at the beginning. There's a few things that are better not to have in common, but most things you want to have in common. Sometimes being the same is not ideal. Also, you know, one of the main motivations for a relationship is feeling some expansion, some growth.

And if you're gonna form a relationship with someone who is different in a way that's not threatening, not problematic, that can be a good thing. So if it's likely you could get along with this person for other reasons, and you discover that they have different interests, one of you is a scientist, and one of you is a musician, that you're actually

more likely to be attracted to them, because it would be more interesting to have them as a partner. So people don't need to be that similar, especially in their areas of knowledge or interest? Having similar backgrounds is an advantage, but in most cases it just doesn't matter that much if your personalities are different or this or that. But it feels like it does when you're choosing someone. So interesting. So it really doesn't matter how similar two people are for them to develop a close relationship then?

Not on most things, yeah. to people are for them to develop a close relationship then? Not on most things, yeah. So Art, how can people deepen relationships and make them thrive over time? Well, to make them thrive, one of our major lines of research is the self-expansion model. When you form a relationship, you include the other person in the self, you become connected with them. And that's very exciting. One of the main human motivations is to grow, to be excited, to have new things and forming a relationship

is a huge one for them. But once you're with them for a while, you get used to them. So doing new exciting interesting novel things with the other person, they become associated with it and that re-enlivens it. So we strongly recommend that once a week or something, you do something new and exciting with your partner. New, interesting, exciting. It doesn't have to be heart-throbbing. It can be taking a music class or art class

or a dance class with your partner. But the point is, if you've never done that before, it's sort of interesting, exciting. It could also be going on a trip or, you know, scuba diving or whatever you want to do to do that regularly. Another one is having close couple couple friends. It's really important to keep your relationship thriving, to have close, not just couple couple friends, but couple couple friends you really feel deeply connected with and you have deep conversations and you really connect. So those are two of the ones we've shown in our research, as well as other people have

replicated it's well known. A third one is not from my own research, but it's pretty important and that is celebrating your partner's successes. I mean, not over the top if they find their glasses, you don't say you're the most amazing person in the world, you know, but when they have something good happen, even relatively minor, to celebrate it with them, for them, you know, it's really a central thing. It's even more important than supporting them when things go badly, which is also important. My wife and I, you know, I do research and she does research.

We collaborate with each other. Her research is on something called the highly sensitive person. And we always apply everything new that we see in the relationship research to our relationship. And we had submitted a paper, she was the author and I was a co-author, but it was 90% for a paper, to one of the very top journals in the field, scientific journals. And we thought it had a poor chance of being accepted. We thought it'd be accepted in some journal, but we didn't think this one would have a

chance. And I was home when the email came in saying the editor and the reviewers loved it. They're going to publish it, you know, just a few little tiny changes. So she was out for the day. So I made a poster of that and put it on the front door. I just that day read about doing exciting activities to do, you know, celebrating your partner's successes. And so we had a great night. Worked very well. I mean, there's a few others showing gratitude. And of course,

there's your sex life that matters a lot. One of the big studies we did ran a sample of American couples. We found that of those who've been married 10 years or longer, 40 percent claim to be very intensely in love. That surprised us. That was a bigger number than we expected. We've done some fMRI studies to showing that, yes, the people in long-term relationships, you look at their brains who claim to be very intensely in love, their brains look like

people we've studied who've just fallen in love. It's really quite striking. We call it the dopamine reward area. So those are some of the things we know really can make a relationship thrive. That is wonderful to hear that people, even if they've been together or married for a very long time, can be deeply in love with their partners. Oh yes, it's amazing. We took these people who'd all been married at least 20 years, many much longer. And when we looked at their partner versus a familiar other person, attractive other

person, you see this activation, the dopamine reward area, and these people showed exactly that same activation. There were a couple of differences. People who had just fallen in love show a lot of anxiety. You know, is this person going to die? Are they going to run away? We didn't see that activation in the long term couples. And the other one was that in the long term couples, we also saw something in our connection, an area of connection that

we actually see in animals who made it for life, pair bonding, that people who've just fallen in love don't show that yet. What are the most common mistakes that you see people making? I think the biggest mistake is not to pay attention to it, to just, you know, say, oh, it's a relationship. I don't have to do much, but you can make a relationship thrive. Lots of people think you can't. In fact, it used to be 100 years ago when we lived in a more, you know, simple, a different situation. Except for the aristocracy, people did not consider love as a basis for marriage. Marriage was a partnership where you had a nice partnership and you raised

children, people feel a lot, but our research shows that you can have, people don't always want to hear that their relationship could be thriving. One of the ways we sometimes feel good about a relationship is by thinking we're doing better than others. We leave a party and say, oh, look, they always fight. But no, you can make it better and it's worth trying. I think that's the biggest one is people don't do any effort to make the relationship strong.

Good to know. Art, if I ask you to summarize, what are the most surprising and important things that we know about love and relationships from looking at them through the lens of science? Well, we know it's really central, your health and how long you live. I mean, that's a huge one. I mean, it's more important than smoking or obesity. I mean, it's really a central thing in one's life. People didn't always realize that and how important it was. Another one is how important responsiveness is.

And I think a third one is that, as I was saying, a marital relationship or any sort of romantic relationship can be not just okay, but can really thrive over many years. And that is wonderful. Art, what are the three takeaways you'd like to leave the audience with today? Number one is regularly do new, interesting, challenging things with your partner.

Number two is have close couple couple friends, really close ones. And the third is to celebrate your partner's successes. Art, this has been wonderful. Thank you. Thank you for your time today and thank you for your research on love and on making relationships thrive. My pleasure. Thank you.

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