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

Summary

Podcast Summary: "The Surprising Science Behind Falling—and Staying—in Love" (#255)

Host: Lynne Thoman
Guest: Dr. Arthur Aron
Release Date: June 24, 2025
Podcast: 3 Takeaways

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Introduction

In episode #255 of 3 Takeaways, host Lynne Thoman delves into the intricate science of love and relationships with renowned psychologist Dr. Arthur Aron. The discussion centers around Aron's groundbreaking research, including his famed 36 questions designed to foster intimacy among strangers. This episode not only explores the mechanisms behind forming close bonds but also provides actionable insights to help listeners cultivate and maintain meaningful relationships.

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The Power of the 36 Questions

[00:02]
Lynne Thoman introduces Dr. Arthur Aron, highlighting his 1997 study at the State University of New York at Stony Brook. Aron developed 36 questions aimed at sparking intimacy between strangers, a concept later popularized by a New York Times column. These questions have since been utilized in various settings, from dating apps to classrooms, facilitating unexpected emotional connections that can lead to lasting friendships or even marriages.

Why Do the 36 Questions Work?
[01:40] Dr. Aron explains that the effectiveness of the 36 questions stems from combining three crucial elements:

1. Reciprocal Communication:
   “The questions are set up to be consecutive, allowing for back-and-forth exchanges,” Aron notes at [01:44]. This reciprocity ensures that both parties feel heard and understood, fostering a sense of responsiveness crucial for relationship building.

2. Mutual Liking and Perceived Similarity:
   The questions incorporate elements that encourage individuals to express admiration for each other and recognize commonalities.
   “We name some things we like about the other person... and discuss things we have in common,” Aron explains at [03:11]. Although perceived similarity may not be as critical for long-term relationships as previously thought, it plays a significant role in the initial stages of connection.

3. Gradual Depth Progression:
   The questions are designed to progressively delve deeper, allowing individuals to reveal aspects of themselves incrementally. “The logic is to gradually get them deeper and deeper,” Aron states at [04:15], ensuring that the conversation remains engaging without becoming overwhelming.

Notable Questions Highlighted:
Lynne shares examples of the 36 questions to illustrate their depth and impact:

• “What would constitute a perfect day?”
• “Is there something that you've dreamed of doing for a long time? Why haven't you done it?”
• “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?”
  [03:32]

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Deepening and Sustaining Relationships

[06:04]
The conversation shifts to strategies for maintaining and deepening relationships over time. Dr. Aron introduces the Self-Expansion Model, which posits that individuals are motivated to grow and expand through their relationships. To keep the relationship thriving, Aron suggests:

1. Engage in Novel and Exciting Activities Together:
   “Regularly do new, interesting, challenging things with your partner,” Aron advises at [12:53]. This could involve taking classes, traveling, or trying new hobbies to create fresh and stimulating experiences that reinforce the bond.

2. Cultivate Close Couple Friends:
   Establishing friendships with other couples who engage in deep, meaningful conversations can provide additional support and enrichment for the primary relationship.

3. Celebrate Each Other's Successes:
   Acknowledging and celebrating even minor achievements fosters a positive and supportive environment. Aron shares a personal anecdote about celebrating his wife's successful paper publication, emphasizing the importance of recognizing each other's accomplishments.
   “Celebrate your partner's successes,” he reiterates at [12:53].

Long-Term Love Insights:
Dr. Aron reveals intriguing findings from his research on long-term relationships. In couples married for 10 years or more, 40% reported being "very intensely in love," a higher percentage than anticipated. Furthermore, brain scans (fMRI studies) showed that long-term partners exhibited activation in the dopamine reward area, similar to those newly in love. This neurological evidence suggests that intense love can persist well into long-term relationships.
“The people in long-term relationships... their brains look like people we've studied who've just fallen in love,” Aron explains at [10:14].

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Common Relationship Mistakes

[11:07] Dr. Aron identifies the most prevalent mistake individuals make in relationships: neglecting to nurture the relationship actively. Many assume that being in a relationship requires minimal effort, treating it as a passive state rather than an active partnership.
“People don't do any effort to make the relationship strong,” Aron states at [11:07]. He emphasizes that contrary to popular belief, relationships require continuous attention and effort to thrive.

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Key Scientific Insights on Love and Relationships

When summarizing the scientific understanding of love, Dr. Aron highlights three surprising and impactful insights:

1. Centrality to Health and Longevity:
   “It's more important than smoking or obesity,” Aron asserts at [12:15]. Strong relationships significantly influence overall health and lifespan, underscoring the profound impact of social connections on well-being.

2. Importance of Responsiveness:
   Being responsive and making the other person feel understood and valued is foundational to building and maintaining closeness.

3. Potential for Long-Term Thriving Relationships:
   Contrary to the belief that intense love diminishes over time, research shows that relationships can not only endure but also flourish and remain deeply loving for decades.

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Three Key Takeaways

As the episode concludes, Dr. Aron encapsulates his insights into three actionable takeaways for listeners:

1. Regularly Engage in New and Exciting Activities with Your Partner:
   “Regularly do new, interesting, challenging things with your partner,” ensures continuous growth and excitement in the relationship.

2. Maintain Close Couple Friends:
   Building and nurturing friendships with other couples provides additional layers of support and connection.

3. Celebrate Your Partner's Successes:
   “Celebrate your partner's successes,” no matter how small, fosters a positive and supportive relational environment.

These takeaways aim to equip listeners with practical strategies to enhance and sustain their relationships, ensuring lasting love and connection.

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Conclusion

In this enlightening episode of 3 Takeaways, Dr. Arthur Aron offers a scientifically grounded exploration of love, intimacy, and relationship sustainability. By understanding the mechanisms that foster closeness and implementing practical strategies, listeners are empowered to build deeper, more fulfilling relationships. Whether seeking to ignite new connections or rejuvenate long-term bonds, the insights shared provide valuable guidance for enhancing personal and professional relationships alike.

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Notable Quotes:

• Arthur Aron [01:44]:
  “They combine three things we know from other research into a context where we could create closeness within 45 minutes.”

• Arthur Aron [04:15]:
  “The logic is to gradually get them deeper and deeper.”

• Arthur Aron [12:15]:
  “It's more important than smoking or obesity.”

• Arthur Aron [12:53]:
  “Regularly do new, interesting, challenging things with your partner.”
  “Have close couple friends, really close ones.”
  “Celebrate your partner's successes.”

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This summary captures the essence of episode #255, providing a comprehensive overview of the discussions on the science of love and relationships. For more insights, listeners are encouraged to tune into the full episode of 3 Takeaways.*

Transcript

[Lynne Thoman]

In a 1997 study at the State University of New York at Stony Brook, psychologist Arthur Aron 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 Lynne Thoman 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 Aron. 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. Together and keeps them close. Welcome, Art, and thanks so much for joining three takeaways today.

[Arthur Aron]

Thank you, Lynn.

[Lynne Thoman]

Art, why do the 36 questions work?

[Arthur Aron]

They combine three things we know from other research into a context where we could create closeness within 45 minutes. So one of them is going back and forth, exchanging things, not just speaking, but hearing him and speaking a huge one. It gives an opportunity for the other person to feel heard for responsiveness, which is really important in all relationships, is 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. And 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. Their 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. They each do that 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. Turns out that's not that important in most cases for actually being in a relationship, but it's important for thinking it'll.

[Lynne Thoman]

Work out do people need to equally share? Does it need to be reciprocal?

[Arthur Aron]

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.

[Lynne Thoman]

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?

[Arthur Aron]

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. To respond to it, and then it gets deeper and deeper.

[Lynne Thoman]

If you were to generalize, what can people learn from the 36 questions to have more meaningful conversations in their own lives?

[Arthur Aron]

Once you 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.

[Lynne Thoman]

Superficial ones, you mentioned that it helps if somebody thinks the other person likes them. How can somebody show that in a conversation?

[Arthur Aron]

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 going to 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.

[Lynne Thoman]

So people don't need to be that similar, especially in their areas of knowledge or interest.

[Arthur Aron]

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.

[Lynne Thoman]

So it really doesn't matter how similar two people are for them to develop a close relationship then?

[Arthur Aron]

Not on most things, yeah.

[Lynne Thoman]

So art, how can people deepen relationships and make them thrive over time?

[Arthur Aron]

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 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, you know, heart throbbing. It needs to be, you know, 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, than 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 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. 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, 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, random sample of American couples, we found that of those who've been married 10 years or longer, 40% claim to be very intensely in love. That surprised us. That was a bigger number than we expected. We've done some FMRI studies too, 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.

[Lynne Thoman]

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.

[Arthur Aron]

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 in the dopamine reward area. And these people showed exactly that same activation. There were a couple differences. People who've just fallen in love show a lot of anxiety. You know, is this person going to die? Are they going to run away? You know, 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, you know, a connection, an area of connection that we actually see in animals who needed for life pair bonding, that people just fallen in love don't show that yet.

[Lynne Thoman]

Art, what are the most common mistakes that you see people making?

[Arthur Aron]

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 relationship thrive. Lots of people think you can't. In fact, it used to be 100 years ago, 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.

[Lynne Thoman]

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?

[Arthur Aron]

Well, we know it's really central. Your health and how long you'll 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.

[Lynne Thoman]

And that is wonderful. Art, what are the three takeaways you'd like to leave the audience with today?

[Arthur Aron]

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.

[Lynne Thoman]

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.

[Arthur Aron]

My pleasure. Thank you.

[Lynne Thoman]

If you're enjoying the podcast, and I really hope you are, please review us on Apple Podcasts or Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. It really helps get the word out. If you're interested, you can also sign up for the Three Takeaways newsletter at 3takeaways.com, where you can also listen to previous episodes. You can also follow us on LinkedIn, X Instagram and Facebook. I'm Lynne Thoman, and this is three Takeaways. Thanks for listening.