Want to Reconnect With Your Partner?

"In the late 1990s, psychologist Arthur Aron and his colleagues developed a simple experiment to see whether intimacy could be created through conversation.They brought college students into the lab, paired them up with people they did not know, and asked them to take turns answering a series of 36 questions that became increasingly personal, followed by four minutes of sustained eye contact. The goal was to understand whether it was possible to use self-disclosure as a tool for building intimacy between strangers."

"At the end of the essay, she revealed that they fell in love that night. It went viral, launching widespread public interest in the 36 questions. Many readers don't realize that the questions from the essay were from Aron's study above, which was never designed to make people fall in love. Catron's essay struck a chord that the original study never could because it was sexier and more accessible - even if the original study was not about romantic love."

A late-1990s laboratory experiment used a set of 36 progressively personal questions and four minutes of sustained eye contact to test whether self-disclosure could build intimacy between strangers. A later widely shared account claimed a romantic outcome after using the same questions on a first date, which increased public interest and led many to assume the questions were designed to make people fall in love. Decades of research shows that reciprocal self-disclosure fosters closeness and helps partners update knowledge of each other's inner worlds. Structured, intentional conversations can help long-term couples reconnect, refresh their 'love maps,' and cultivate curiosity even during busy life stages.

Read at Psychology Today