Falling in Love

by Panchamee Hewavissenti

Everyone falls in love at least once in his or her lifetime, provided the person is in his proper senses. It's very hard to find a person who has never fallen in love, whereas some people have fallen in love that they themselves cannot remember how many times.

Though everyone falls in love, do you know why and how people fall in love? Love is an important emotion that could be studied scientifically.

How do we fall in love?

That's true, it happens without even our knowledge. We don't know when , where and how we fall in love. Psychologists suggest that for a person to fall in love, three conditions must be met. First we must learn through our culture what love is. We can gather that knowledge through films, books ,magazines, newspapers and songs.

A person should learn what to expect from that strong emotion and how to give the other person the similar excitement. A person can't fall in love until he or she meets the appropriate stimulus.

The prospective love partner should have all the requirements such as proximity, similarity and physical attractiveness. What are the requirements to fall in love? The first thing is interpersonal attraction, which includes liking, friendship and love. When we like someone we have the desire to approach the person. When we want to approach someone or we like someone, mostly we tend to see only the positive sides of the person.

What is love?

As two psychologists Schachter and Singer suggested, " If you are with someone who is attractive and if your heart is suddenly beating fast, you might very well call it Love."

Literature and music have given the immortality to love. When a person intimately like someone and develops a kind of intense and passionate relationship, it can be simply defined as ' Love'.

Love consists of three components. Intimacy ,passion and commitment. Intimacy means to stay together and closer to each other. Respect towards each partner, happiness, understanding, support and intimate communication are highly required in a love relationship.

Passion includes physical attraction which leads to sexual desire. In a love affair, first the passion is required to attract lovers and then intimacy develops over time in order to sustain the relationship.

Commitments should be made to keep the relationship for a long time. Committed couples are together with each other during ups and downs of their lives, which strengthen the bond between the couple.

Social psychologists have done researches to help people understand the feeling of love. They have developed some theories which may help people understand the feeling of love, when they fall in love.

Ericc Fromm, one of the prominent social psychologists believes that we are lonely until we relate to other people socially. But the most complete relationship is the interpersonal union called love. Fromm defined love as the active concern for the life and growth of another person.

He described four characteristics of love: knowledge, responsibility and respect. Love grows when we understand and have concern for the other person, and accept the responsibility to help him or her everyway we can. We must respect the other person and acknowledge his or her unique qualities. According to From, only through unselfish giving can we experience love.

Another psychologist who conducted researches was Zick Rubin. According to Rubin, love involves caring, attachment and intimacy. In these stages lovers often seem to say some cuddly sentences like, "I would do almost anything for you, If I could never be with you, I would feel miserable, I can't think of a life without you."

Rubin also found in his researches that eye contact is one of the most valuable predictors of love. In one of his researches he found that the couples who looked into each others eyes remained together than those who didn't look at one another.

If you observe people who claimed to be in love, they spend great deal of time looking at each other than the rest.

Human beings by their very nature are social beings. People need to be with others. Social psychologists have done researches and tried to find out why are we attracted to other people? Research indicates three major influences such as proximity, similarity and physical attractiveness.

We tend to like people who we see and meet very often or who live closer to us. We get friendly with people who we see everyday at school, work place, in the train etc. Researchers found that friendship is developed between people who live closer to one another. The next door person most likely to be a friend. The reason for that is we become more familiar with those people whom we see on a regular basis.

People like others who have similar interests, intellectual abilities and activity preferences. We often like to be with people who do things that we like and it's very easy to communicate with them. People who enjoy doing similar things and who have similar attitudes are more likely to become friends.

Because we feel comfortable in their company. Likewise if two people have similar interests tend to fall in love very often.

Physically attractive people are often loved by others. Physical attractiveness plays a major role in a person. Others tend to seek after them as friends. Why is it very important in a relationship ? That is because we enjoy beauty and believe that good looking people have a good character and positive attitude.

People increase their status when they associate with attractive people. People very often tend to find partners with attractive personalities, and fall in love with them.

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