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krosania's picture

I’m sorry I missed our

Submitted by krosania on Sat, 02/23/2008 - 5:28pm.
I’m sorry I missed our discussion on Tuesday night but I have been traveling for a series of graduate school interviews and was not able to make it. I want to start by agreeing with the point that Paul made about the need to implement restrictions on the use of the term “scientific” in the field of dating websites. I think it is unethical to lead people to believe that there is perfect recipe for love by calling it scientifically proven. This will cause those for whom the recipe doesn’t work to believe that it is their own fault and something is wrong with them since it cannot possibly be the fault of the system. Also, and I know this may sound terrible, but I don’t know that I believe that everyone is capable of falling in love in the way that websites like eHarmony mean it. Many people have emotional limitations, and many people are simply too independent or unstable to permanently be in long-term relationships. Alternately there are many others who enjoy being in monogamous relationships for the sense of security it provides, and don’t necessarily value being emotionally or intellectually satisfied by their partner on a continual basis. I am not at all saying that everyone falls into one of these two categories, but am trying to provide an example of how there are many different kinds of romantic love that serve multiple purposes. Trying to analyze the neural basis of love in a general way is probably impossible because love means something different to many different people. Any scientific data that does come out about the neural basis of love needs to specify exactly what kind of emotion or relationship they are talking about.
I also think the debate of whether “opposites attract” versus matching on eHarmony’s core personality traits is an interesting one. In my view there is a big difference between the things that attract you to someone and the things that keep you together. I would guess that people’s relationships last longer if they are similar to one another in terms of values and sense of humor and maybe personality too, but it seems to me that initial attraction is usually based on differences. People feel that initial sense of excitement in a relationship when the person they are with challenges them in some way. If this is true that what attracts you to a person and what keeps you together are totally different things, than it’s no wonder that people have a difficult time making romantic relationships last.
Finally, I think that in modern times, the status of a relationship is affected by much more than just the interaction between the two people involved in a relationship. Culture plays an important role in many ways. People’s family’s expectations can greatly contribute to what a person is looking for in a relationship, usually in terms of values or religious beliefs. I also think culture is responsible for setting up people’s expectations about what love is supposed to be like, and I think many people just assume their partner is not “the one” when things are not wonderful all the time. I was never taught that a long-term romantic relationship is supposed to make you happy every second of every day, but I think many people do believe this is supposed to be true and are perpetually disappointed by relationships as a result. For this reason I think no matter what scientists find out about what makes people fall in love, there will always be people for whom it doesn’t apply, or who are not going to be satisfied by the results.

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