In life, we often encounter people who fall in love after just a few weeks of meeting, but there are also many cases where individuals spend months together without the relationship progressing. So, how long does it take to recognize the budding affection and realize you’re in love with someone?
The Elusive Timeline of Love
We all know that two people have a greater chance of falling in love when they have frequent contact – “familiarity breeds affection.” This closeness fosters the potential for forming and building romantic relationships. But to precisely measure the time it takes is an incredibly difficult question to answer. This is a rare area
where even experts cannot agree on a definitive answer.
While we can measure the degree of love in couples or married pairs over time, it’s very challenging to pinpoint the exact moment this emotion first forms. For animals, however, scientists have discovered that quickly formed romantic bonds can create lifelong pair-bonds in voles.
If you’re wondering why you can’t fall in love as quickly as others, it might be time to give yourself a break. It’s not that you can’t have intense feelings for someone, but often, those strong initial feelings are mere infatuation, not necessarily love. Therefore, when trying to determine how long it takes you to fall in love, you need to take ample time to assess your own emotions.
According to relationship therapist Aimee Hartstein: “While there’s no precise answer, I’ve observed that the average time for someone to fall in love is typically after 4 to 8 weeks. They might have intense feelings at first glance, but it takes more time to enter a true relationship. Love is something more certain and lasting.”
Therefore, the time it takes to fall in love varies for everyone and depends on many factors such as context, personality, environment, catalysts, etc. So, if it takes you a little longer, that’s perfectly normal and not unusual; you might just be keeping a clear head, or perhaps it’s simply not the right person. Below are some factors that influence the speed of falling in love, though these are just general observations and will vary for different individuals.
Factors Influencing the Speed of Falling in Love
Positive Thinkers Tend to Fall in Love Faster
Positive people generally feel more at ease with themselves and when interacting with others. Dr. Yvonne Thomas, a psychologist in Los Angeles, states: “Positive thinking can increase affection for another person for several reasons. Firstly, if you generally have a positive mindset, you tend to look for and appreciate the good qualities in others more. Additionally, people with a tendency towards positive thinking are often more open and extroverted than those with negative or neutral thoughts.”
Men Often Fall in Love Faster Than Women
One study indicated that men tend to fall in love and express it faster than women: “Men are often seen as less emotional and less inclined to question their own feelings than women. In contrast, women often analyze their own emotions extensively and hesitate before saying ‘I love you.’ Therefore, a man might not truly be in love with you, but he will easily say ‘I love you’ when his emotions are so intense that his brain deceives him into believing he is in love. Men may fall in love faster, but whether that love lasts depends on the individual.”
If You Want To, You Can Practice Falling in Love Faster
If you genuinely want to fall in love, you can even train yourself to do so, as demonstrated by Arthur Aron’s “36 Questions” experiment. In this experiment, two paired individuals ask each other personal questions for 45 minutes and conclude by staring intently into each other’s eyes. The result was that after 6 months, some couples even got married. So, it seems this method can indeed be somewhat effective; the most important thing is to share with a comfortable and sincere mindset.
According to Dr. Margaret Clark: “Once we accept expressing and sharing our vulnerabilities with each other, if things still go well, we tend to be more open to continuing to show those imperfections. Because everyone loves the feeling of being understood and accepted.”
