Love tends to be somewhat complicated. Most people would probably agree, in fact, that even “complicated” is putting it mildly.
In one experiment, researchers asked a total of 111 university students (45 female, 66 male) two questions about their current or most recently ended romantic relationship:
Even the act of falling in love can mean different things to different people – or at different points in your life. If you’ve fallen in love a time or two before, you might have some firsthand knowledge of its complexities. You might even find it a slippery thing to define, no matter how many times you’ve experienced it.
Is it that first rush of powerful attraction that leaves you dizzy, breathless, and feeling like you’re about to literally fall over? That spark of absolute certainty that you’ve finally met your match? That moment when you can no longer imagine a life without that person in it?
If you already know people typically don’t fall in love at exactly the same time, in exactly the same way, it may not surprise you to learn that researchers find it somewhat challenging to pinpoint the time it takes to fall in love.
Basically, it’s tough to measure a process that doesn’t fall within any defined parameters. There’s no set test that can determine whether you’re in love or not. You might not dominicancupid sign up even know with any certainty exactly what your own feelings mean.
But researchers have tried to measure how long it takes people to feel like confessing their love. Using this as a litmus test for falling in love makes sense, when you think about it.
You might choose to wait before saying those three (not-always-little) words, sure. But chances are, you wouldn’t start to consider saying them unless you actually had started to fall for someone.
- Who confessed their love first?
- About how long did it take before you started to consider saying you were in love?