How fast it takes to fall in love

Your upbringing, your mental health, your values — all of these things can affect your ability to fall in love. And often, says relationship therapist Aimee Hartstein , L. We can have lust and passion at first sight, but it takes longer than that to really get to know someone and figure out who they are and how the two of you connect.

Love is definitely something longer term," she says. Patience is a virtue when it comes to assessing a budding relationship, and Hartstein says each person deserves feel free to fall at their own pace. Everyone is different.

Or, at least think they have. Here are some things that can affect influence how long it takes to love someone:. Generally, positive people might find it easier to talk themselves into a more optimistic mindset, and that includes their feelings toward someone else. Also, if you typically tend to engage in positive thinking, you are likely to be a more open-hearted person in general, as well as towards your partner, than someone who tends to be more of a negative or even neutral kind of thinker.

Psychologist Arthur Aron devised a set of questions that can accelerate this process and potentially help couples to fall in love quicker. With the rise of dating apps, particularly during the coronavirus pandemic lockdowns, people have been finding love without even being in the same place.

So maybe the length of time it takes to fall in love is simply about how quickly you can respond to text messages. What could account for a person falling in love more or less quickly? In fact, researchers found that men thought about confessing love six weeks earlier, on average, than women.

The general consensus among studies on love is that men fall in love faster than women. But do the facts bear that out? Lesbian relationships have been under-researced compared to heterosexual ones. A study of 38 lesbians found that women reported exchanging verbal declarations of love and commitment an average of six months into a relationship. The articles were inspired by a study by psychologist Arthur Aron, and they sparked a craze—it felt like, finally, a definitive short cut to love had been reached.

Moving from a loving attachment to what we know as falling in love can depend on many factors. For one, we know that two people have a greater chance of falling in love if they live close to each other, and if they frequently see each other. This close proximity makes people more likely to form and build romantic relationships.