research on love story

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Love is a Story: A New Theory of Relationships

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In this groundbreaking work, Robert Sternberg opens the book of love and shows you how to discover your own story—and how to read your relationships in a whole new light. What draws us so strongly to some people and repels us from others? What makes some relationships work so smoothly and others burst into flames? Sternberg gives us new answers to these questions by showing that the kind of relationship we create depends on the kind of love stories we carry inside us. Drawing on extensive research and fascinating examples of real couples, Sternberg identifies 26 types of love story—including the fantasy story, the business story, the collector story, the horror story, and many others—each with its distinctive advantages and pitfalls, and many of which are clashingly incompatible. These are the largely unconscious preconceptions that guide our romantic choices, and it is only by becoming aware of the kind of story we have about love that we gain the freedom to create more fulfilling and lasting relationships. As long as we remain oblivious to the role our stories play, we are likely to repeat the same mistakes again and again. But the enlivening good news this book brings us is that though our stories drive us, we can revise them and learn to choose partners whose stories are more compatible with our own. Quizzes in each chapter help you to see which stories you identify with most strongly and which apply to your partner. Are you a traveler, a gardener, a teacher, or something else entirely? Love is a Story shows you how to find out.

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What's Your Love Story?

In your relationship, are you a cop, a comedian, a prince or a martyr robert j. sternberg reveals how you can use your "love story" to find your perfect match..

By Robert J. Sternberg published July 1, 2000 - last reviewed on June 9, 2016

In your relationship, are you a cop, a comedian, a prince or a martyr? Robert J. Sternberg, Ph.D., reveals how you can use your "love story" to find your perfect match.

Relationships can be as unpredictable as the most suspense-filled mystery novel. Why do some couples live happily ever after, while others are as star-crossed as Romeo and Juliet? Why do we often seem destined to relive the same romantic mistakes over and over, following the same script with different people in different places, as if the fate of our relationships, from courtship to demise, were written at birth?

Perhaps because, in essence, it is. As much as psychologists have attempted to explain the mysteries of love through scientific laws and theories, it turns out that the best mirrors of the romantic experience may be Wuthering Heights, Casablanca and General Hospital. At some level, lay people recognize what many psychologists don't: that the love between two people follows a story. If we want to understand love, we have to understand the stories that dictate our beliefs and expectations of love. These stories, which we start to write as children, predict the patterns of our romantic experiences time and time again. Luckily, we can learn to rewrite them.

I came up with the theory of love as a story because I was dissatisfied not only with other people's work on love, but also with my own. I had initially proposed a triangular theory of love, suggesting that it comprises three elements: intimacy, passion and commitment. Different loving relationships have different combinations of these elements. Complete love requires all three elements. But the theory leaves an important question unanswered: What makes a person the kind of lover they are? And what attracts them to other lovers? I had to dig deeper to understand the love's origins. I found them in stories.

My research, which incorporates studies performed over the past decade with hundreds of couples in Connecticut, as well as ongoing studies, has shown that people describe love in many ways. This description reveals their love story. For example, someone who strongly agrees with the statement "I believe close relationships are like good partnerships" tells a business story; someone who says they end up with partners who scare them -- or that they like intimidating their partner -- enacts a horror story.

Couples usually start out being physically attracted and having similar interests and values. But eventually, they may notice something missing in the relationship. That something is usually story compatibility. A couple whose stories don't match is like two characters on one stage acting out different plays -- they may look fine at first glance, but there is an underlying lack of coordination to their interaction.

This is why couples that seem likely to thrive often do not, and couples that seem unlikely to survive sometimes do. Two people may have similar outlooks, but if one longs to be rescued like Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman and the other wants a partnership like the lawyers on the television show The Practice, the relationship may not go very far. In contrast, two people with a war story like the bickering spouses in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf may seem wildly incompatible to their friends, but their shared need for combat may be what keeps their love alive.

More than anything, the key to compatibility with a romantic partner is whether our stories match. To change the pattern of our relationships, we must become conscious of our love stories, seek people with compatible tales, and replot conclusions that aren't working for us.

The Beginning of the Story

We start forming our ideas about love soon after birth, based on our inborn personality , our early experiences and our observations of our parents' relationships, as well as depictions of romance in movies, television and books. We then seek to live out these conceptions of love ourselves.

Based on interviews I conducted in the 1990s, asking college students to write about their romantic ideals and expectations, I have identified at least 25 common stories which people use to describe love. (There are probably many more.)

Some stories are far more popular than others. In 1995, one of my students, Laurie Lynch, and I identified some of the most common tales by asking people to rate, on a scale of one to seven, the extent to which a group of statements characterized their relationships. Their highest-ranked statements indicated their personal love story. Among the most popular were the travel story ("I believe that beginning a relationship is like starting a new journey that promises to be both exciting and challenging"), the gardening story ("I believe any relationship that is left unattended will not survive") and the humor story ("I think taking a relationship too seriously can spoil it"). Among the least popular were the horror story ("I find it exciting when I feel my partner is somewhat frightened of me," or "I tend to end up with people who frighten me"), the collectibles story ("I like dating different partners simultaneously; each partner should fit a particular need") and the autocratic government story ("I think it is more efficient if one person takes control of the important decisions in a relationship").

Another study of 43 couples, conducted with Mahzad Hojji, Ph.D., in 1996, showed that women prefer the travel story more than men, who prefer the art ("Physical attractiveness is the most essential characteristic I look for in a partner"), collectibles and pornography ("It is very important to be able to gratify all my partner's sexual desires and whims," or "I can never be happy with a partner who is not very adventurous in his or her sex life") stories. Men also prefer the sacrifice story ("I believe sacrifice is a key part of true love"). Originally, we had expected the opposite. Then we realized that the men reported sacrificing things that women did consider significant offerings.

No one story guarantees success, our study showed. But some stories seem to predict doom more than others: the business, collectibles, government, horror, mystery, police ("I believe it is necessary to watch your partner's every move" or "My partner often calls me several times a day to ask what I am doing"), recovery ("I often find myself helping people get their life back in order" or "I need someone to help me recover from my painful past"), science fiction ("I often find myself attracted to individuals who have unusual and strange characteristics") and theater stories ("I think my relationships are like plays" or "I often find myself attracted to partners who play different roles").

How Stories Spin Our Relationships

When you talk to two people who have just split up, their breakup stories often sound like depictions of two completely different relationships. In a sense, they are. Each partner has his or her own story to tell.

Most important to a healthy, happy relationship is that both partners have compatible stories -- that is, compatible expectations. Indeed, a 1998 study conducted with Mahzad Hojjat, Ph.D., and Michael Barnes, Ph.D., indicated that the more similar couples' stories were, the happier they were together.

Stories tend to be compatible if they are complementary roles in a single story, such as prince and princess, or if the stories are similar enough that they can be merged into a new and unified story. For example, a fantasy story can merge with a gardening story because one can nourish, or garden, a relationship while dreaming of being rescued by a knight on a white steed. A fantasy and a business story are unlikely to blend,however, because they represent such different ideals -- fate-bound princes and princesses don't work at romance!

Of course, story compatibility isn't the only ingredient in a successful relationship. Sometimes, our favorite story can be hazardous to our well-being. People often try to make dangerous or unsatisfying stories come true. Thus, someone who has, say, a horror or recovery story may try to turn a healthy relationship into a Nightmare on Elm Street. People complain that they keep ending up with the same kind of bad partner, that they are unlucky in love. In reality, luck has nothing to do with it: They are subconsciously finding people to play out their love stories, or foisting their stories on the people they meet.

Making Happy Endings

Treating problems in relationships by changing our behaviors and habits ultimately won't work because crisis comes from the story we're playing out. Unless we change our stories, we're treating symptoms rather than causes. If we're dissatisfied with our partner, we should look not at his or her faults, but at how he or she fits into our expectations.

To figure out what we want, we need to consider all of our past relationships, and we should ask ourselves what attributes characterized the people to whom we felt most attracted, and what attributes characterized the people in whom we eventually lost interest. We also need to see which romantic tale we aim to tell -- and whether or not it has the potential to lead to a "happily ever after" scenario (see quiz below).

Once we understand the ideas and beliefs behind the stories we accept as our own, we can do some replotting. We can ask ourselves what we like and don't like about our current story, what hasn't been working in our relationships, and how we would like to change it. How can we rewrite the scenario? This may involve changing stories, or transforming an existing story to make it more practical. For example, horror stories may be fantasized during sexual or other activity, rather than actually physically played out.

We can change our story by experimenting with new and different plots. Sometimes, psychotherapy can help us to move from perilous stories (such as a horror story) to more promising ones (such as a travel story). Once we've recognized our story -- or learned to live a healthy one of our choosing -- we can begin to recognize elements of that story in potential mates. Love mirrors stories because it is a story itself. The difference is that we are the authors, and can write ourselves a happy ending.

Find Your Love Story

Rate each statement on a scale from 1 to 9, I meaning that it doesn't characterize your romantic relationships at all, 9 meaning that it describes them extremely well. Then average your scores for each story. In general, averaged scores of 7 to 9 are high, Indicating a strong attraction to a story, and 1 to 3 are low, indicating little or no interest in the story. Moderate scores of 4 to 6 Indicate some interest, but probably not enough to generate or keep a romantic interest. Next, evaluate your own love story. (There are 12 listed here; see the book for more.)

1. I enjoy making sacrifices for the sake of my partner.

2. I believe sacrifice is a key part of true love.

3. I often compromise my own comfort to satisfy my partner's needs.

Score: _____.

The sacrifice story can lead to happy relationships when both partners are content in the roles they are playing, particularly when they both make sacrifices. It is likely to cause friction when partners feel compelled to make sacrifices. Research suggests that relationships of all kinds are happiest when they are roughly equitable. The greatest risk in a sacrifice story is that the give-and-take will become too out of balance, with one partner always being the giver or receiver.

1. I believe that you need to keep a close eye on your partner.

2. I believe it is foolish to trust your partner completely.

3. I would never trust my partner to work closely with a person of the opposite sex.

1. My partner often calls me several times a day to ask exactly what I am doing.

2. My partner needs to know everything that I do.

3. My partner gets very upset if I don't let him or her know exactly where I have been.

Police stories do not have very favorable prognoses because they can completely detach from reality. The police story may offer some people the feeling of being cared for. People who are very insecure relish the attention that they get as a "suspect," that they are unable to receive in any other way. But they can end up paying a steep price. As the plot thickens, the suspect first begins to lose freedom, then dignity, and then any kind of self-respect. Eventually, the person's mental and even physical well-being may be threatened.

1. I believe that, in a good relationship, partners change and grow together.

2. I believe love is a constant process of discovery and growth.

3. I believe that beginning a relationship is like starting a new journey that promises to be both exciting and challenging.

Travel stories that last beyond a very short period of time generally have a favorable prognosis, because if the travelers can agree on a destination and path, they are already a long way toward success. If they can't, they often find out quite quickly that they want different things from the relationship and split up. Travel relationships tend to be dynamic and focus on the future. The greatest risk is that over time one or both partners will change the destination or path they desire. When people speak of growing apart, they often mean that the paths they wish to take are no longer the same. In such cases, the relationship is likely to become increasingly unhappy, or even dissolve completely.

1. The truth is that I don't mind being treated as a sex toy by my partner.

2. It is very important to me to gratify my partner's sexual desires and whims, even if people might view them as debasing.

3. I like it when my partner wants me to try new and unusual, and even painful, sexual techniques.

1. The most important thing to me in my relationship is for my partner to be an excellent sex toy, doing anything I desire.

2. I can never be happy with a partner who is not very adventurous in sex.

3. The truth is that I like a partner who feels like a sex object.

There are no obvious advantages to the pornography story. The disadvantages are quite clear, however. First, the excitement people attain is through degradation of themselves and others. Second, the need to debase and be debased is likely to keep escalating. Third, once one adopts the story, it may be difficult to adopt another story. Fourth, the story can become physically as well as psychologically dangerous. And finally, no matter how one tries, it is difficult to turn the story into one that's good for psychological or physical well-being.

Terrorizer:

1. I often make sure that my partner knows that I am in charge, even if it makes him or her scared of me.

2. I actually find it exciting when I feel my partner is somewhat frightened of me.

3. I sometimes do things that scare my partner, because I think it is actually good for a relationship to have one partner slightly frightened of the other.

1. I believe it is somewhat exciting to be slightly scared of your partner.

2. I find it arousing when my partner creates a sense of fear in me.

3. I tend to end up with people who sometimes frighten me.

The horror story probably is the least advantageous of the stories. To some, it may be exciting. But the forms of terror needed to sustain the excitement tend to get out of control and to put their participants, and even sometimes those around them, at both psychological and physical risk. Those who discover that they have this story or are in relationship that is enacting it would be well-advised to seek counseling, and perhaps even police protection.

Co-dependent :

1. I often end up with people who are facing a specific problem, and I find myself helping them get their life back in order.

2. I enjoy being involved in relationships in which my partner needs my help to get over some problem.

3. I often find myself with partners who need my help to recover from their past.

Person in recovery:

1. I need someone who will help me recover from my painful past.

2. I believe that a relationship can save me from a life that is crumbling around me.

3. I need help getting over my past.

The main advantage to the recovery story is that the co-dependent may really help the other partner to recover, so long as the other partner has genuinely made the decision to recover. Many of us know individuals who sought to reform their partners, only to experience total frustration when their partners made little or no effort to reform. At the same time, the co-dependent is someone who needs to feel he or she is helping someone, and gains this feeling of making a difference to someone through the relationship. The problem: Others can assist in recovery, but the decision to recover can only be made by the person in need of recovery. As a result, recovery stories can assist in, but not produce, actual recovery.

1. I believe a good relationship is attainable only if you spend time and energy to care for it, just as you tend a garden.

2. I believe relationships need to be nourished constantly to help weather the ups and downs of life.

3. I believe the secret to a successful relationship is the care that partners take of each other and of their love.

The biggest advantage of a garden story is its recognition of the importance of nurture. No other story involves, this amount of care and attention. The biggest potential disadvantage is that a lack of spontaneity or boredom may develop. People in garden stories are not immune to the lure of extramarital relationships, for example, and may get involved in them to generate excitement, even if they still highly value their primary relationship. In getting involved in other relationships, however, they are putting the primary relationship at risk. Another potential disadvantage is that of smothering -- that the attention becomes too much. Just as one can overwater a flower, one can overattend a relationship. Sometimes it's best to let things be and allow nature to take its course.

1. I believe that close relationships are partnerships.

2. I believe that in a romantic relationship, just as in a job, both partners should perform their duties and responsibilities according to their "job description."

3. Whenever I consider having a relationship with someone, I always consider the financial implications of the relation ship as well.

A business story has several potential advantages, not the least of which is that the bills are more likely to get paid than in other types of relationships. That's because someone is always minding the store. Another potential advantage is that the roles tend to be more dearly defined than in other relationships. The partners are also in a good position to "get ahead" in terms of whatever it is that they want. One potential disadvantage occurs if only one of the two partners sees their relationship as a business story. The other partner may quickly become bored and look for interest and excitement outside the marriage . The story can also turn sour if the distribution of authority does not satisfy one or both partners. If the partners cannot work out mutually compatible roles, they may find themselves spending a lot of time fighting for position. It is important to maintain the option of flexibility.

1. I think fairy tales about relationships can come true.

2. I do believe that there is someone out there for me who is my perfect match.

3. I like my relationships to be ones in which I view my partner as something like a prince or princess in days of yore.

The fantasy story can be a powerful one. The individual may feel swept up in the emotion of the search for the perfect partner or of developing the perfect relationship with an existing partner. It is probably no coincidence that in literature most fantasy stories take place before or outside of marriage: Fantasies are hard to maintain when one has to pay the bills, pack the children off to school and resolve marital fights. To maintain the happy feeling of the fantasy, therefore, one has to ignore, to some extent, the mundane aspects of life. The potential disadvantages of the fantasy relationship are quite plain. The greatest is the possibility for disillusionment when one partner discovers that no one could fulfill the fantastic expectations that have been created. This can lead partners to feel dissatisfied with relationships that most others would view as quite successful If a couple can create a fantasy story based on realistic rather than idealistic ideals, they have the potential for success; if they want to be characters in a myth, chances are that's exactly what they'll get: a myth.

1. I think it is more interesting to argue than to compromise.

2. I think frequent arguments help bring conflictive issues into the open and keep the relationship healthy.

3. I actually like to fight with my partner.

The war story is advantageous in a relationship only when both partners clearly share it and want the same thing. In these cases, threats of divorce and worse may be common, but neither partner would seriously dream of leaving: They're both having too much fun, in their own way. The major disadvantage, of course, is that the story often isn't shared, leading to intense and sustained conflict that can leave the partner without the war story feeling devastated much of the time. People can find themselves in a warring relationship without either of them having war as a preferred story. In such cases, the constant fighting may make both partners miserable. If the war continues in such a context, there is no joy in it for either partner.

1. I like a partner who is willing to think about the funny side of our conflicts.

2. I think taking a relationship too seriously can spoil it; that's why I like partners who have a sense of humor .

3. I like a partner who makes me laugh whenever we are facing a tense situation in our relationship.

1. I admit that I sometimes try to use humor to avoid facing a problem in my relationship.

2. I like to use humor when I have a conflict with my partner because I believe there is a humorous side to any conflict.

3. When I disagree with my partner, I often try to make a joke out of it.

The humor story can have one enormous advantage: Most situations do have a lighter side, and people with this story are likely to see it. When things in a relationship become tense, sometimes nothing works better than a little humor, especially if it comes from within the relationship. Humor stories also allow relationships to be creative and dynamic. But the humor story also has some potential disadvantages. Probably the greatest one is the risk of using humor to deflect important issues: A serious conversation that needs to take place keeps getting put off with jokes. Humor can also be used to be cruel in a passive-aggressive way. When humor is used as a means of demeaning a person to protect the comedian from responsibility ("I was only joking"), a relationship is bound to be imperiled. Thus, moderate amounts are good for a relationship, but excessive amounts can be deleterious.

1. I think it is okay to have multiple partners who fulfill my different needs.

2. I sometimes like to think about how many people I could potentially date all at the same time.

3. I tend and like to have multiple intimate partners at once, each fulfilling somewhat different roles.

There are a few advantages to a collection story. For one thing, the collector generally cares about the collectible's physical well-being, as appearance is much of what makes a collection shine. The collector also finds a way of meeting multiple needs. Usually those needs will be met in parallel -- by having several intimate relationships at the same time -- but a collector may also enter into serial monogamous relationships, where each successive relationship meets needs that the last relationship did not meet. In a society that values monogamy, collection stories work best if they do not become serious or if individuals in the collection are each viewed in different lights, such as friendship or intellectual stimulation. The disadvantages of this story become most obvious when people are trying to form serious relationships. The collector may find it difficult to establish intimacy, or anything approaching a complete relationship and commitment toward a single individual. Collections can also become expensive, time-consuming, and in some cases illegal (as when an individual enters into multiple marriages simultaneously).

Adapted from Love Is A Story

by Robert J. Sternberg. Ph.D.

Adapted by Ph.D.

Robert J. Sternberg is IBM Professor of Psychology and Education in the department of psychology at Yale University.

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• Published: 07 March 2022

The cultural evolution of love in literary history

• Nicolas Baumard   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-1439-9150 1 ,
• Elise Huillery 2 ,
• Alexandre Hyafil   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-0566-651X 3 &
• Lou Safra   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0001-7618-6735 1 , 4  

Nature Human Behaviour volume  6 ,  pages 506–522 ( 2022 ) Cite this article

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• Human behaviour

Since the late nineteenth century, cultural historians have noted that the importance of love increased during the Medieval and Early Modern European period (a phenomenon that was once referred to as the emergence of ‘courtly love’). However, more recent works have shown a similar increase in Chinese, Arabic, Persian, Indian and Japanese cultures. Why such a convergent evolution in very different cultures? Using qualitative and quantitative approaches, we leverage literary history and build a database of ancient literary fiction for 19 geographical areas and 77 historical periods covering 3,800 years, from the Middle Bronze Age to the Early Modern period. We first confirm that romantic elements have increased in Eurasian literary fiction over the past millennium, and that similar increases also occurred earlier, in Ancient Greece, Rome and Classical India. We then explore the ecological determinants of this increase. Consistent with hypotheses from cultural history and behavioural ecology, we show that a higher level of economic development is strongly associated with a greater incidence of love in narrative fiction (our proxy for the importance of love in a culture). To further test the causal role of economic development, we used a difference-in-difference method that exploits exogenous regional variations in economic development resulting from the adoption of the heavy plough in medieval Europe. Finally, we used probabilistic generative models to reconstruct the latent evolution of love and to assess the respective role of cultural diffusion and economic development.

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Data availability.

The data, as well as the the Ancient Literary Fictions Values Survey and the Ancient World Values Survey ( Romantic Love and Attitudes toward Children ), are available on OSF ( https://osf.io/ud35x ).

Code availability

The code that supports the findings of this study is available on OSF ( https://osf.io/ud35x ). A detailed description of the model for study 4 as well as MATLAB code to fit and run such models can be found on https://github.com/ahyafil/Evoked_Transmitted_Culture .

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Acknowledgements

We thank P. Boyer, C. Chevallier, L. Cronk, H. Mercier, O. Morin and M. Singh for their comments and feedback on the draft. We thank S. Joye, M. White-Le Goff, M. Daumas, W. Reddy, K. Zakharia, E. Feuillebois-Pierunek, D. Struve and C. Svatek for their feedback on the design of the project, and S. Joye for her help in kickstarting the project. We thank T. Ansart for his help and advice in designing the figures. For their expertise in history of literature and their reading the Ancient Literary Fictions Values Survey, we thank M. Balda-Tillier, G. Barnes, B. Brosser, S. Brocquet, J.-B. Camps, N. Cattoni, M. Childs, C. Cleary, B. Cook, H. Cooper, M. Eggertsdóttir, W. Farris, E. Francis, H. Frangoulis, H. Fulton, G. Fussman, D. Goodall, I. Hassan, L. Haiyan, D. Hsieh, A. Inglis, C. Jouanno, R. Keller Kimbrough, J. D. Konstan, R. Lanselle, R. Luzi, M. Luo, R. Martin, D. Matringue, K. McMahon, G. Nagy, P. Nagy, H. Navratilova, D. Negers, P. Orsatti, F. Orsini, S. Ríkharðsdóttir, F. Schironi, S. Valeria, C. Starr, R. Torrella and S. Torres Pietro. Funding: This study was supported by the Institut d’Études Cognitives (ANR-17-EURE-0017 FrontCog and ANR-10-IDEX-0001-02 PSL) for N.B. and L.S., and by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness (RYC-2017-2323) for A.H.

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N.B. conceived the project, supervised the creation of the Ancient Literary Fictions Database and wrote the Ancient Literary Fictions Values Survey. L.S. and A.H. designed the analyses for study 1. L.S. designed the analyses for study 2. E.H. designed the difference-in-difference for study 3. A.H. designed the latent probabilistic generative models for study 4. All authors wrote the paper.

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It turns out there might be some scientific proof to the claim that love is blind. According to one Stanford study , love can mask feelings of pain in a similar way to painkillers. Research by scientist Sean Mackey found intense love stimulates the same area of the brain that drugs target to reduce pain. 

“When people are in this passionate, all-consuming phase of love, there are significant alterations in their mood that are impacting their experience of pain,” said Mackey , chief of the Division of Pain Medicine. “We’re beginning to tease apart some of these reward systems in the brain and how they influence pain. These are very deep, old systems in our brain that involve dopamine – a primary neurotransmitter that influences mood, reward and motivation.”  

While love can dull some experiences, it can also heighten other feelings such as sociability. Another Stanford study found that oxytocin, also known as the love hormone because of its association with nurturing behavior, can also make people more sociable. Here is some of that research. 

Looking for love in all the wrong hormones

A study involving prairie vole families challenges previous assumptions about the role of oxytocin in prosocial behavior.

Give your sweetheart mushrooms this Valentine’s Day, says Stanford scientist

A romantic evening of chocolate and wine would not be possible without an assist from fungi, says Stanford biology professor Kabir Peay. In fact, truffles might be the ultimate romantic gift, as they exude pheromones that can attract female mammals.

Love takes up where pain leaves off, brain study shows

Love-induced pain relief was associated with the activation of primitive brain structures that control rewarding experiences.

Come together: How social support aids physical health

A growing body of research suggests that healthy relationships with spouses, peers and friends are vital for not just mental but also physical health.

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Love story: Australian researchers becoming world leaders in the study of romantic love

It feels instinctive but research reveals that many aspects of romantic love we take for granted are socially constructed

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Is romantic kissing a fetish? How long does love last? Are dick pics the modern-day version of showing off your hunting prowess with a bison carcass? What is love?

For all the books, poems and lyrics about it, we know very little about love, actually.

Love is an emotion; it can be thought of as a motivation (like hunger, or thirst); a product of evolution (all the better to reproduce); a hormonal, neural and chemical reaction (with dopamine, oxytocin and others lighting up the brain); it has a physical outcome (horniness, an adrenaline-fuelled heart rate increase). Its expression is culturally constructed (in different times and places); and it evolves (from being “gaga” in love to something more companionable).

Adam Bode, a love researcher, PhD student and biologist from Australian National University, says scientists have been “disinclined” to study it.

“There’s a feeling of being embarrassed about it, that you won’t be taken seriously,” he says. Despite that, he says, “Australia is fast becoming the world leader” in the study of “romantic love”.

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Elizabeth Reid Boyd, a Edith Cowan University senior lecturer, co-edited Contemporary Love Studies in the Arts and Humanities: What’s love got to do with it?, which was published last year.

She says love was seen as “still a little cheesy, cringeworthy, intimate – a more intense thing to speculate about” than sexual desire, but that was changing along with expanding ideas about love and family.

“Particularly generation Z and the millennials, they’re very embracing of many different forms of love,” she says. “And also we’re widening our ideas of what’s possible with love … The love of the planet, love of humanity … all other kinds of love, new family forms, families chosen not by blood, but by friendship.”

Love studies is a relatively new field, but there are now dedicated conferences, journals and academics across more disciplines than you might think: philosophy, psychology, biology, literary studies, anthropology, law, social work and gender studies. It draws in robotics and popular culture and looks at a darker side – stalking, coercion, harassment and violence.

And yet, for something so complicated, it can feel entirely instinctive, natural, and for some, mystical.

“It’s an idea, as well as something we think is natural, something that is physical as well as psychological, spiritual and creative,” Reid says. “The creativity part of it is where social construction comes in – we’re creating ideas of love.”

Clare Davidson, an Australian Catholic University research fellow and author of Love in Late Medieval England, says historians of emotions also engage with the scientific aspects, while anthropologists canvass the spiritual and mystical dimensions. She takes any evolutionary perspectives on love “with a grain of salt”.

“There are biological aspects, things that can be imaged in the brain, but they have developed through someone’s life,” she says. “So someone in a different culture might not get the same images from the same stimulus.

“A fact I really love from the more anthropological comparative cultural perspective is that less than 50% of cultures in the world do romantic kissing.

“It makes kissing seem like a fetishistic thing … but [to us] it seems natural.”

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Bode says part of the reason Australia is ahead in the love studies stakes is that he and his colleague, associate professor Phil Kavanagh (from the University of South Australia and the University of Canberra), have the best data – by which he means the Romantic Love Survey 2022. It’s a longitudinal study of 1,556 young people in the first flush of love (which, for this purpose, is the first two years or less).

Bode was the lead researcher on a study recently published in Behavioral Sciences based on that data. It looked at the link between the behavioural activation system (BAS) and romantic love, using their survey. The BAS, he says, is an ancient “biopsychological system that’s deep at the bottom [of] our brain that directs our behaviour … It affects our behaviour by creating emotions, thoughts and movements to achieve goals”.

He speculates that the same system that once prompted men to demonstrate their hunting prowess might now lead them to send dick pics to the objects of their desire.

They have used the BAS to develop a tool to measure “specific bio-psychological mechanisms that likely contribute to romantic love”, which they hope can be used in future neurological and psychological studies.

The article speaks of the rosy nature of reciprocal love and of its potential darker side. The loved one is idealised and put on a pedestal. Lovers are willing “to expend effort to gain reward” through courtship, and to shift their appearances or behaviour to be more desirable – and they might obsessively monitor social media pages.

The researchers write that people in romantic love may have “learning deficits”.

“The most cogent example of this is the instances of obsessive pursuit (usually committed by men), which occurs in the absence of rewarding interaction from the loved one,” they write.

“Men, in particular, but not exclusively, have a tendency to misinterpret politeness or friendliness for sexual interest.”

Bode says it’s clear that feelings of love on one side can lead to unhealthy, harmful activities, including love-bombing and partner surveillance. Reid describes it as a “continuum”.

“Sometimes love can become tyrannical – that’s when it can go into those problematic issues around consent and interpersonal violence,” she says.

“That idea sits alongside the fact that many people would still describe romantic love as a mystical experience that alters their reality in some way. Those two things are happening at the same time.”

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The Research on Love: A Psychological, Scientific Perspective on Love

Dr. Nina Mikirova

And now here is this topic about love, the subject without which no movie, novel, poem or song can exist. This topic has fascinated scientists, philosophers, historians, poets, playwrights, novelists, and songwriters. I decided to look at this subject from a scientific point of view. It was very interesting to research and to write this article, and I am hoping it will be interesting to you as a reader.

Whereas psychological science was slow to develop active interest in love, the past few decades have seen considerable growth in research on the subject.  The following is a comprehensive review of the central and well-established findings from psychologically-informed research on love and its influence in adult human relationships as presented in the article: “Love. What Is It, Why Does It Matter, and How Does It Operate?”  by H. Reis and A. Aron. A brief summary of the ideas from this article is presented below.

A BRIEF HISTORY OF LOVE RESEARCH

Most popular contemporary ideas about love can be traced to the classical Greek philosophers. Prominent in this regard is Plato’s Symposium. It is a systematic and seminal analysis whose major ideas

have probably influenced contemporary work on love more than all subsequent philosophical work combined. However, four major intellectual developments of the 19th and 20th centuries provided key insights that helped shape the agenda for current research and theory of love.

The first of these was led by Charles Darwin, who proposed that reproductive success was the central process underlying the evolution of species. Evolutionary theorizing has led directly to such currently popular concepts as mate preference, sexual mating strategies, and attachment, as well as to the adoption of a comparative approach across species.

A second important figure was Sigmund Freud. He introduced many psychodynamic principles, such as the importance of early childhood experiences, the powerful impact of motives operating outside of awareness, the role of defenses in shaping the behavioral expression of motives, and the role of sexuality as a force in human behavior.

A third historically significant figure was Margaret Mead. Mead expanded awareness with vivid descriptions of cultural variations in the expression of love and sexuality. This led researchers to consider the influence of socialization and to recognize cultural variation in many aspects of love.

The emerging women’s movement during the 1970s also contributed to a cultural climate that made the study of what had been traditionally thought of as ‘‘women’s concerns’’ not only acceptable, but in fact necessary for the science of human behavior. At the same time, a group of social psychologists were beginning their work to show that adult love could be studied experimentally and in the laboratory.

WHAT’S PSYCHOLOGY GOT TO DO WITH LOVE

What is Love?  According to authors, Reis and Aron, love is defined as a desire to enter, maintain, or expand a close, connected, and ongoing relationship with another person. Considerable evidence supports a basic distinction, first offered in 1978, between passionate love (“a state of intense longing for union with another”) and other types of romantic love, labeled companionate love (“the affection we feel for those with whom our lives are deeply entwined”).

The evidence for this distinction comes from a variety of research methods, including psychometric techniques, examinations of the behavioral and relationship consequences of different forms of romantic love, and biological studies, which are discussed in this article.  Most work has focused on identifying and measuring passionate love and several aspects of romantic love, which include two components: intimacy and commitment.  Some scholars see companionate love as a combination of intimacy and commitment, whereas others see intimacy as the central component, with commitment as a peripheral factor (but important in its own right, such as for predicting relationship longevity).

In some studies, trust and caring were considred highly prototypical of love, whereas uncertainty and butterflies in the stomach were more peripheral.

Passionate and companionate love solves different adaptation problems. Passionate love may be said to solve the attraction problem—that is, for individuals to enter into a potentially long-term mating relationship, they must identify and select suitable candidates, attract the other’s interest, engage in relationship-building behavior, and then go about reorganizing existing activities and relationships so as to include the other. All of this is strenuous, time-consuming, and disruptive. Consequently, passionate love is associated with many changes in cognition, emotion, and behavior. For the most part, these changes are consistent with the idea of disrupting existing activities, routines, and social networks to orient the individual’s attention and goal-directed behavior toward a specific new partner.

Considerably less study has been devoted to understanding the evolutionary significance of the intimacy and commitment aspects of love. However, much evidence indicates that love in long-term relationships is associated with intimacy, trust, caring, and attachment; all factors that contribute to the maintenance of relationships over time.  More generally, the term companionate love may be characterized by communal relationship; a relationship built on mutual expectations that oneself and a partner will be responsive to each other’s needs.

It was speculated that companionate love, or at least the various processes associated with it, is responsible for the noted association among social relatedness, health, and well-being. In a recent series of papers, it was claimed that marriage is linked to health benefits. Having noted the positive functions of love, it is also important to consider the dark side. That is, problems in love and love relationships are a significant source of suicides, homicides, and both major and minor emotional disorders, such as anxiety and depression. Love matters not only because it can make our lives better, but also because it is a major source of misery and pain that can make life worse.

It is also believed that research will address how culture shapes the experience and expression of love. Although both passionate and companionate love appear to be universal, it is apparent that their manifestations may be moderated by culture-specific norms and rules.

Passionate love and companionate love has profoundly different implications for marriage around the world, considered essential in some cultures but contraindicated or rendered largely irrelevant in others. For example, among U.S. college students in the 1960s, only 24% of women and 65% of men considered love to be the basis of marriage, but in the 1980s this view was endorsed by more than 80% of both women and men.

Finally, the authors believe that the future will see a better understanding of what may be the quintessential question about love: How this very individualistic feeling is shaped by experiences in interaction with particular others.

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Why Your Brain Loves Good Storytelling

• Paul J. Zak

Studying the neuroscience of compelling communication.

It is quiet and dark. The theater is hushed. James Bond skirts along the edge of a building as his enemy takes aim. Here in the audience, heart rates increase and palms sweat.  I know this to be true because instead of enjoying the movie myself, I am measuring the brain activity of a dozen viewers. For me, excitement has a different source: I am watching an amazing neural ballet in which a story line changes the activity of people’s brains.

• Paul J. Zak is the founding director of the Center for Neuroeconomics Studies and a professor of economics, psychology, and management at Claremont Graduate University, and the CEO of Immersion Neuroscience. He is the author of Trust Factor: The Science of Creating High-Performance Companies .

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The 20 Greatest Real Life Love Stories from History

In anticipation of Valentine's Day, we take a spin through history's greatest lovers—star crossed, cursed, life-long, and everything in between.

Love is a powerful emotion. Throughout history couples in love have caused wars and controversy, created masterpieces in writing, music, and art, and have captured the hearts of the public with the power of their bonds. From the allure of Cleopatra to the magnetism of the Kennedy's, these love affairs have stood as markers in history. Prepare to swoon over these love stories of the centuries.

Paris and Helen

She was another man's wife, but when Paris, the "handsome, woman-mad" prince of Troy, saw Helen, the woman whom Aphrodite proclaimed the most beautiful in the world, he had to have her. Helen and Paris ran off together, setting in motion the decade-long Trojan War. According to myth, Helen was half-divine, the daughter of Queen Leda and the God Zeus, who transformed into a swan to seduce the queen. Whether Helen actually existed, we'll never know, but her romantic part in the greatest epic of all time can never be forgotten. She will forever be "the face that launched a thousand ships."

Cleopatra and Mark Antony

" Brilliant to look upon and to listen to, with the power to subjugate everyone." That was the description of Cleopatra, queen of Egypt. She could have had anything or anyone she wanted, but she fell passionately in love with the Roman General Mark Antony. As Shakespeare depicts it, their relationship was volatile ("Fool! Don't you see now that I could have poisoned you a hundred times had I been able to live without you," Cleopatra said) but after they risked all in a war on Rome and lost, they chose to die together in 30 BC. "I will be a bridegroom in my death, and run into it as to a lover's bed," said Antony. And Cleopatra followed, by clasping a poisonous asp to her breast.

Hadrian and Antinous

We've heard of the Wall—no, not that one, the 2nd Century AD one stretching across England—but what about Emperor Hadrian's heart? He lost it to Antinous (far left), an intelligent and sports-loving Greek student. The emperor displayed "an obsessive craving for his presence." The two traveled together, pursuing their love of hunting; Hadrian once saved his lover's life during a lion hunt. The emperor even wrote erotic poetry. While visiting the Nile, Antinous drowned mysteriously, but some say he was murdered by those jealous of the emperor's devotion. The devastated Hadrian proclaimed Antinous a deity, ordered a city be built in his honor, and named a star after him, between the Eagle and the Zodiac.

Henry II and Rosamund Clifford

The first Plantagenet king of England had a rich, royal wife in Eleanor of Aquitaine and mistresses galore, but the love of his life was "Fair Rosamund," also called the "Rose of the World." To conceal their affair, Henry built a love nest in the innermost recesses of a maze in his park at Woodstock. Nonetheless, the story has it that Queen Eleanor did not rest until she found the labyrinth and traced it to the center, where she uncovered her ravishing rival. The queen offered her death by blade or poison. Rosamund chose the poison. Perhaps not coincidentally, Henry kept Eleanor confined in prison for 16 years of their marriage.

Dante and Beatrice

Rarely has a woman served as such profound inspiration for a writer—and yet he barely knew her. The Italian poet Dante Alighieri wrote passionately of Beatrice in the Divine Comedy and other poems, but only met the object of his affection twice. The first time, he was nine years old and she was eight. The second time, they were adults, and while walking on the street in Florence, Beatrice, an emerald-eyed beauty, turned and greeted Dante before continuing on her way. Beatrice died at age 24 in 1290 without Dante ever seeing her again. Nonetheless, she was "the glorious lady of my mind," he wrote, and "she is my beatitude, the destroyer of all vices and the queen of virtue, salvation."

Anne Boleyn and Henry VIII

When the Tudor king fell for a young lady-in-waiting, Anne Boleyn, who possessed eyes "black and beautiful," he was long married to a Spanish princess. But Anne refused to be a royal mistress, and the king rocked the Western world to win his divorce and make Anne queen. Ambassadors could not believe how enslaved the king was by his love for Anne. "This accursed Anne has her foot in the stirrup," complained the Spanish emissary. To comprehend the king's passion, one need only read his 16th century love letters, revealing his torment over how elusive she remained: "I beg to know expressly your intention touching the love between us…having been more than a year wounded by the dart of love, and not yet sure whether I shall fail or find a place in your affection." (Their love affair ended when he had her beheaded.)

Louis XV of France and Madame de Pompadour

In 1730, a Parisian prophetess told a nine-year-old girl she would rule the heart of a king. Years later, at a masked ball, Jeanne Antoinette Poisson, dressed as a domino, danced with King Louis XV, dressed as a tree. Within weeks, the delicate beauty was maîtresse-en-titre , given the title Marquise de Pompadour. "Any man would have wanted her as his mistress," said another male admirer. The couple indulged in their love of art, furniture, and porcelain, with Madame de Pompadour arranging for her jaded royal lover small dinner parties and amateur theatricals in which she would star (of course). While watching one play, Louis XV declared, "You are the most delicious woman in France," before sweeping her out of the room.

John and Abigail Adams

Abigail Smith married the Founding Father at age 20, gave birth to five children (including America's fifth president, John Quincy Adams), and was John Adams's confidante, political advisor, and First Lady. The more than 1,000 letters they wrote to each other offer a window into John and Abigail's mutual devotion and abiding friendship. It was more than revolutionary political ideals that kept them so united; they shared a trust and abiding tenderness. Abigail wrote: "There is a tye more binding than Humanity, and stronger than Friendship ... and by this chord I am not ashamed to say that I am bound, nor do I [believe] that you are wholly free from it." As for John, he wrote: "I want to hear you think, or see your Thoughts. The Conclusion of your Letter makes my Heart throb, more than a Cannonade would. You bid me burn your Letters. But I must forget you first."

Mary Godwin Shelley and Percy Shelley

When the young Romantic poet Percy Shelley met Mary Godwin, she was the teenage daughter of a famous trailblazing feminist, the long-dead Mary Wollstonecraft. The two of them shared a love of the mind—"Soul meets soul on lovers' lips," he wrote—but physical desire swept them away too, consummated near the grave of Mary's mother. When they ran away to Europe, it caused a major scandal, but the couple proclaimed themselves indifferent to judgment. "It was acting in a novel, being an incarnate romance," she later said. They traveled together to visit the debauched Lord Byron, and Mary wrote Frankenstein during two weeks in Switzerland. After Percy died in a boating accident in 1822, Mary never remarried. She said having been married to a genius, she could not marry a man who wasn't one.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Robert Browning

Elizabeth Barrett was an accomplished and respected poet in poor health (and nearly 40 years old) when Robert Browning wrote to her: "I love your verses with all my heart, dear Miss Barrett," and praising their "fresh strange music, the affluent language, the exquisite pathos and true new brave thought." They courted in secret because of her family's disapproval. She wrote, "I am not of a cold nature, & cannot bear to be treated coldly. When cold water is thrown upon a hot iron, the iron hisses." They married in 1846, living among fellow writers and artists for the rest of her life. When she died, it was in Robert Browning's arms.

John Keats and Fanny Brawne

The celebrated young poet's romance with his neighbor, Fanny Brawne, sparked what is probably his most famous poem "Bright Star", though the relationship was fraught with jealousy. Brawne was a precocious and flirtatious young woman, Keats a fiercely overzealous bard. The two clashed as often as they coalesced, but the full requisition of their love was hindered by Keats' lack of money and his illness. Bedridden by tuberculosis, which he contracted from his late brother and mother, Keats yearned in envy over his coquettish Brawne, whose frivolous nature marred her love for the young poet and subsequently aggravated his wellbeing. Though engaged to Brawne, Keats had to end the engagement in an effort to get well in Rome. He died there not long after his arrival, his romance to remain unrequited.

Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas

For nearly 40 years, Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas were inseparable, famous for their literary salon in Paris, which was frequented by Picasso, T.S. Eliot, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, and many more. When Toklas (far left) first met Stein, she wrote, "It was Gertrude Stein who held my complete attention, as she did for all the many years I knew her until her death, and all these empty ones since them. She was a golden brown presence, burned by the Tuscan sun and with a golden glint in her warm brown hair." Their love gained international fame after Stein published The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas . Wrote Stein, "One must dare to be happy."

Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo

The talented young Mexican painter Kahlo paid a visit to the studio of famous muralist Rivera in search of career advice. "She had unusual dignity and self-assurance and there was a strange fire in her eyes," he said. Theirs was a volatile relationship, yet Rivera knew from early on that Kahlo "was the most important fact in my life and she would continue to be until she died 27 years later." As for Kahlo, she said, "You deserve a lover who listens when you sing, who supports you when you feel shame and respects your freedom; who flies with you and isn't afraid to fall. You deserve a lover who takes away the lies and brings you hope, coffee, and poetry."

Wallis Simpson and King Edward VIII

When Edward VIII fell in love with American divorcée Wallis Simpson it was an affair shocked a nation and threw Britain's monarch into a constitutional crisis. Due to strong opposition from the church and government over their marriage, Edward chose to abdicate the throne. He famously proclaimed his love for Simpson as he addressed the nation in 1936. "I have found it impossible to carry the heavy burden of responsibility and to discharge my duties as king as I would wish to do without the help and support of the woman I love," he said in his abdication speech. Choosing love over kingship, the Duke of Windsor spent most of his life outside the royal family as the couple married and settled in France. Note: Years later it was revealed in previously hidden German Documents that not only did Simpson and the Duke of Windsor have Nazi associations, but there were also plans for the Germans to re-install him as King after they invaded the U.K.

Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward

Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward met during the production of Picnic and shortly married after filming the movie The Long, Hot Summer. Unlike most on-set Hollywood romances, Newman and Woodward were happily devoted to one another for fifty years. When asked about his marriage to Woodward and infidelity, Newman was famously responded, "I have a steak at home. Why should I go out for hamburger?" The couple traded the California spotlight for Westport, Connecticut, where they raised their family and remained until Paul Newman's death in 2008.

Grace Kelly and Prince Rainier of Monaco

In the wedding of the century, American film star Grace Kelly left Hollywood behind at the height of her career to wed Prince Rainier and become Princess of Monaco. Prince Rainier was immediately taken with Grace, whom he met when she filmed To Catch a Thief in the French Riviera. He courted her through letters for some time before the couple announced their engagement in the Kelly family's Philadelphia home and married in 1956. Prince Rainier never remarried after Grace's tragic death in 1982.

Johnny Cash and June Carter

There isn’t a more iconic country music love story than that between Johnny Cash and June Carter. Both stars in their own right, the two met backstage at the famed Grand Ole Opry. When first meeting Cash, Carter supposedly told him, “I feel like I know you already.” The couple went on to tour together and fell in love, eventually marrying in 1968. Cash credited Carter with helping him recover from drug addiction, further solidifying their bond. The couple shared two Grammys, along with two solo Grammys for Carter and 11 for Cash. The both had storied careers and welcomed one son. The happy couple stayed together their whole lives and died within just four months of each other. It’s clear that this love was true - when once asked for his definition of paradise, Cash stated plainly, “this morning, with her, having coffee.”

MORE: The Love Story of Johnny Cash and June Carter

Carolyn Bessette and John F. Kennedy Jr.

Carolyn Bessette and John F. Kennedy Jr. married in a secret ceremony on a small island in Georgia, indicative of their desire to keep their relationship private from the feigning press and public attention. The couple tried as much as they could to live a normal life out of their Tribeca apartment and with any normal marriage they had ups and downs. "They would love hard, and they would fight hard," said a friend of the couples, Ariel Paredes. It was evident the love was there and as public attention mounted Carolyn and JFK Jr. became an iconic duo. Sadly, their love was cut short when the couple tragically died on July 16, 1999 in a plane crash over the Atlantic ocean.

MORE : Inside the Turbulent Final Days of JFK Jr.'s Marriage to Carolyn Bessette MORE : Who Was Carolyn Bessette Kennedy?

Amal and George Clooney

George Clooney was Hollywood's self-proclaimed bachelor of many decades, making his whirlwind love story with British human rights lawyer even more sweet. The two were introduced by a friend and soon after began exchanging emails that George comically penned as his dog Einstein. After six months of dating George proposed to the song, 'Why Shouldn't I?' while making dinner. "It's a really good song about why can't I be in love?," said George. The couple balances Amal's career as a human rights lawyer, George's acting, and their two twins, Ella and Alexander.

Meghan Markle and Prince Harry

It was a love story that captured hearts around the world when Meghan Markle and Prince Harry wed in May 2018. Their life as a couple began in November 2017, when Harry popped the question while the two were roasting a chicken at their apartment in Kensington Palace. Since then, their fairytale has been untraditional, to say the least, but the love shared between the happy couple is clear. As they begin to carve out their new royal roles , amid much controversy , it remains certain that the couple cares deeply about each other and their adorable son, Archie. It’s hard to know what the future holds, but it seems like Meghan and Harry will take it all on together.

Nancy Bilyeau, a former staff editor at InStyle, Rolling Stone and Entertainment Weekly, has written a thriller set in the 18th century art and porcelain world titled 'The Blue.' For more information, see www.nancybilyeau.com.

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A cubic millimeter of brain tissue may not sound like much. But considering that that tiny square contains 57,000 cells, 230 millimeters of blood vessels, and 150 million synapses, all amounting to 1,400 terabytes of data, Harvard and Google researchers have just accomplished something stupendous.   

Led by Jeff Lichtman, the Jeremy R. Knowles Professor of Molecular and Cellular Biology and newly appointed dean of science , the Harvard team helped create the largest 3D brain reconstruction to date, showing in vivid detail each cell and its web of connections in a piece of temporal cortex about half the size of a rice grain.

Published in Science, the study is the latest development in a nearly 10-year collaboration with scientists at Google Research, combining Lichtman’s electron microscopy imaging with AI algorithms to color-code and reconstruct the extremely complex wiring of mammal brains. The paper’s three first co-authors are former Harvard postdoc Alexander Shapson-Coe, Michał Januszewski of Google Research, and Harvard postdoc Daniel Berger.

The ultimate goal, supported by the National Institutes of Health BRAIN Initiative , is to create a comprehensive, high-resolution map of a mouse’s neural wiring, which would entail about 1,000 times the amount of data the group just produced from the 1-cubic-millimeter fragment of human cortex.  

“The word ‘fragment’ is ironic,” Lichtman said. “A terabyte is, for most people, gigantic, yet a fragment of a human brain — just a minuscule, teeny-weeny little bit of human brain — is still thousands of terabytes.”  

Jeff Lichtman.

Kris Snibbe/Harvard Staff Photographer

The latest map contains never-before-seen details of brain structure, including a rare but powerful set of axons connected by up to 50 synapses. The team also noted oddities in the tissue, such as a small number of axons that formed extensive whorls. Because the sample was taken from a patient with epilepsy, the researchers don’t know whether such formations are pathological or simply rare.

Lichtman’s field is connectomics, which seeks to create comprehensive catalogs of brain structure, down to individual cells. Such completed maps would unlock insights into brain function and disease, about which scientists still know very little.

Google’s state-of-the-art AI algorithms allow for reconstruction and mapping of brain tissue in three dimensions. The team has also developed a suite of publicly available tools researchers can use to examine and annotate the connectome.

“Given the enormous investment put into this project, it was important to present the results in a way that anybody else can now go and benefit from them,” said Google collaborator Viren Jain.

Next the team will tackle the mouse hippocampal formation, which is important to neuroscience for its role in memory and neurological disease.

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Acacia Research: Q1 Earnings Snapshot

NEW YORK — NEW YORK — Acacia Research Corp. (ACTG) on Thursday reported a first-quarter loss of $186,000, after reporting a profit in the same period a year earlier.

The New York-based company said it had a loss of less than 1 cent on a per-share basis. Earnings, adjusted for non-recurring costs, came to 6 cents per share.

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The Plot of a Rom-Com, In Real Life

Rober Lawrence and Shawna Rodrigues, high school crushes, waited until the third act to make their love story official.

By Stephanie Cain

Rober Lawrence had seen Shawna Rodrigues around Phoenix High School in Phoenix, Ore., for a couple of years, but hadn’t approached her until his junior year in May 1991, when she was at her locker talking with a friend. The night before, Mr. Lawrence said, he had a dream about Ms. Rodrigues and wanted to tell her about it.

Unbeknown to Mr. Lawrence, now 49, Ms. Rodrigues, 47, had long thought he was a “hot jock.”

“When he and I met eyes, there was definitely lightning for me,” Ms. Rodrigues said. “I just never would have imagined that he had the same connection.”

The locker conversation sparked a short-lived high school romance that Ms. Rodrigues said felt like a rom-com, or, as she put it, the “theater nerd” with the “prom king.”

During their time together, Mr. Lawrence made her a mixtape full of songs by the Cure and “Wicked Game” by Chris Isaak. And the couple shared a passionate kiss while on a school camping trip.

But in June 1991, Ms. Rodrigues said she was both heartbroken and stunned to find out from his mother that he was away for the summer on a wrestling scholarship.

Mr. Lawrence explained that without cellphones and the prevalence of emails, the two had lost touch. He said he left a message for Ms. Rodrigues on the answering machine at her home, though she said she never received it. He returned for his senior year, and the two awkwardly avoided each other.

He then left for his freshman year at Brown, where he graduated with a bachelor’s degree in modern U.S. history. Ms. Rodrigues returned to finish her junior and senior years of high school.

The romance rekindled two years later, as Ms. Rodrigues was preparing for college at what was then known as Northeast Louisiana University, where she ultimately earned a bachelor’s degree in social work. She also has a master’s degree in social work from Boston University.

The two went to dinner at the Old Spaghetti Factory near Phoenix, where Ms. Rodrigues said they felt the romance but “we were both scared of each other because it was so real and so right. Neither of us were ready for that.”

The pair once again parted ways, but this time it would be 25 years before they would see each other in person again. Ms. Rodrigues married and divorced, living in various cities including Washington, D.C., and Durham, N.H. Mr. Lawrence, who lived in Medford, Ore., and Portland, Ore., never married.

Then, in November 2018, Ms. Rodrigues was at a Home Depot near their hometown, while visiting her family from her residence in Portland. She was shocked to look over and see Mr. Lawrence, who was helping a neighbor pick up a new water heater. He didn’t see her.

The next day, Mr. Lawrence, who then lived in Medford, ran into Ms. Rodrigues’s younger sister, Kricket Sturdevant, at a local sandwich shop. (Ms. Rodrigues also has an older sister.) “At the end of the conversation, I was like, ‘Next time you see Shawna, give her my number,’” he said.

Ms. Rodrigues texted shortly thereafter, and the two began hanging out. Over the holidays, they went to a happy hour with mutual friends and wine tasting at a local winery.

Mr. Lawrence made another big move romantically in January 2019. She had just purchased a home in Bend, Ore., and he volunteered to help her settle in.

“He was saying he was good at moving boxes and he would come help,” Ms. Rodrigues said. “So he came to hang cabinets.”

[Click here to binge read this week’s featured couples.]

The two hung and painted cabinets, ordered Thai food, watched favorite movies and stayed up late “talking about everything.”

“I told her I couldn’t let her go,” Mr. Lawrence said.

“It was always you,” he recalled telling her.

Three months later, Mr. Lawrence, a surgical technician at Central Oregon Surgery Center in Bend, moved in with Ms. Rodrigues, who is the founder of Authentic Connections Podcast Network. He proposed in January 2021. They later made a Spotify playlist of that high school mixtape.

The couple married April 27 at the Riverhouse, an events space in Shady Cove, Ore., officiated by Mr. Lawrence’s nephew, Caleb Lawrence, who was ordained through the Universal Life Church for the occasion.

The wedding date is meaningful, Ms. Rodrigues said. It’s a palindrome that also nods to the importance of the number 27 in their decades-long relationship, including the date of their first kiss in 27 years: Jan. 27, 2019.

Ms. Rodrigues said she has no regrets about the couple not committing to each other when they were younger. “We bring so much more into our relationship now that we never could have done at those ages and stages.”

Weddings Trends and Ideas

Keeping Friendships Intact: The soon-to-be-married couple and their closest friends might experience stress and even tension leading up to their nuptials. Here’s how to avoid a friendship breakup .

‘Edible Haute Couture’: Bastien Blanc-Tailleur, a luxury cake designer based in Paris, creates opulent confections for high-profile clients , including European royalty and American socialites.

Reinventing a Mexican Tradition: Mariachi, a soundtrack for celebration in Mexico, offers a way for couples to honor their heritage  at their weddings.

Something Thrifted: Focused on recycled clothing , some brides are finding their wedding attire on vintage sites and at resale stores.

Brand Your Love Story: Some couples are going above and beyond to personalize their weddings, with bespoke party favors and custom experiences for guests .

Going to Great Lengths : Mega wedding cakes are momentous for reasons beyond their size — they are part of an emerging trend of extremely long cakes .

Fast fashion is a faux-pas: Aussies’ growing love for pre-loved fashion soaring to new heights

Press Release

New research from eBay Australia has revealed pre-loved fashion is a dominant trend in the nation’s style landscape, with 70 per cent of Australians surveyed owning a pre-loved fashion item 1 and nine in ten (87%) likely to buy the same or more pre-loved fashion items in the future 2 . Indicating fashion consumption behaviour has shifted, two in five (40%) Australians surveyed say they now try to buy most of their clothes pre-loved 3 .

eBay’s research, released ahead of Australian Fashion Week, found Aussies are transitioning away from fast fashion and becoming more mindful shoppers, opting for quality items that last. One in five surveyed (21%) have decreased their fast fashion purchases over the past three years 4 , with one in ten (10%) reporting these had been reduced significantly 5 .

Among the motivations for purchasing pre-loved clothes, almost one-third of Aussies (31%) surveyed cite a desire to avoid joining the fast fashion movement 6 , while over half (53%) state the superiority of the quality of pre-loved, over brand-new items of the same value 7 .

eBay Australia’s Fashion lead, Anne-Marie Cheney, said , “True taste never goes out of style and with a pre-loved women’s dress sold every two minutes 8 on eBay, it’s great to see Aussies increasingly experience the joy of wearing pre-loved fashion and opting for more mindful consumption. It’s clear the nation is both finding and embracing its own unique style and eBay is at the heart of it, with luxury designers such as Aje, Scanlan Theodore and Zimmermann searched every two minutes on eBay Australia 9 .”

When it comes to wardrobe staples, Aussies are adopting the timelessness and versatility of the Capsule Wardrobe, with one in four (26%) saying it’s the trend they’re most likely to partake in 10 . However, Aussies are also fans of revisiting past trends that express their individual style, with the survey revealing animal prints (20%), denim pieces like low-rise jeans (23%) and long denim skirts (23%), bucket hats (24%), double-breasted jackets (25%), tweed garments (16%), and kitten heels (11%) are the nation’s favourite comeback fashion trends 11 .

To mark the third year of eBay’s sponsorship of Australian Fashion Week and inspire Aussies to shop pre-loved, eBay has created a Pre-Loved Fashion Covet List —a style guide forecasting the biggest fashion trends of 2024 as seen on international runways, paired with expert tips and advice on how Aussies can sport them wearing entirely pre-loved, proving that if your thing is pre-loved fashion, you can find it on eBay.

The guide has been expertly curated by leading stylists Elliot Garnaut and Jessica Peroraro, alongside pre-loved fashion enthusiasts Jessica Alizzi and Maggie Zhou.

The Covet List explores four key trends for 2024:

• Elliot Garnaut’s ‘Elevated Outdoor’: A versatile trend that leans heavily into utility and performance wear. Think cargo pants, spray jackets and waterproof outerwear, “pieces that are lived in feel more authentic to the trend.”
• Maggie Zhou’s ‘Patterns Galore’: The clashing and layering of polka dots, plaid and animal prints, “because fashion is itching to be loud again.”
• Jessica Pecoraro’s ‘Classic Dressing’: “High-quality staples that stand the test of time in any wardrobe” such as boxy blazers, trench coats, crisp white shirts and classic denim.
• Jessica Alizzi’s ‘Cuffed Denim’: Take a piece of denim and cuff it. It never goes out of style, and there are options from every era that suit your personal style. “Vintage cuts and style often fit better, and the quality is unmatched.”

Designer items can be highly coveted, including in the pre-loved world, with one in five (22%) Aussies surveyed stating they have purchased a luxury pre-loved item in the last 12 months 12 . The motivations for purchasing pre-loved designer goods include saving money on buying it ‘new’ (53%) or finding hidden gems and unique pieces that express their style (45%) 13 .

The research found the nation’s passion for pre-loved fashion doesn’t stop with purchases, with eBay’s research revealing an increase in the number of people selling items. According to eBay research, the average yearly returns for pre-loved fashion sellers have soared by 25% between 2022 and 2023, with Aussies now making $1,538 14 versus $1,231 in 2022 15 .

Cheney continued, “There’s no better place to buy and sell pre-loved pieces than on eBay. Cherished pieces that may no longer suit your style find new homes to be loved by someone else, ensuring that the love affair with fashion continues.”

This year at Australian Fashion Week, eBay Australia and Australian designer ANNA QUAN have partnered, marking the first time pre-loved styles have been shown on a major runway as part of a new collection. To highlight the brand's timeless approach to design, ANNA QUAN will showcase pre-loved fashion styles and archival pieces alongside the designer’s Resort 2025 collection at Australian Fashion Week.

Designer, Anna Hoang, said, “I am excited to be aligning with eBay on providing a second life to timeless classics. In keeping with my design ethos, clothes should be made with longevity of workmanship and style in mind.

eBay offers an easily accessible and thoughtful gateway for like-minded individuals to rewear and repurpose pre-loved pieces in a more sustainable way.”

eBay Australia is also partnering with Liandra Gaykamangu in her debut show for Australian Fashion Week, with unique accessories crafted from pre-loved vintage jewellery on eBay featured in the Liandra resort collection show.

As part of eBay’s partnership with Australian Fashion Week, from 13 - 17 May, Australians will have the opportunity to visit eBay’s Pre-loved Runway and try on and buy pre-loved luxury pieces from a range of designer and vintage items. Guests can simply scan the QR code attached to select items, purchase the item via ebay.com.au, and take home an iconic pre-loved piece.

For Australian Fashion Week, eBay is encouraging Australians to join the pre-loved fashion movement by removing seller fees on the first five listings between 1 - 31 May ( T&Cs apply) or by taking 15% off eligible pre-loved fashion purchases between 13 - 26 May ( T&Cs apply ).

For more information and to shop the brands you love on eBay visit: https://www.ebay.com.au/vlp/preloved-fashion

About eBay eBay Inc. (Nasdaq: EBAY) is a global commerce leader that connects millions of buyers and sellers in more than 190 markets around the world. We exist to enable economic opportunity for individuals, entrepreneurs, businesses and organizations of all sizes. Founded in 1995 in San Jose, California, eBay is one of the world's largest and most vibrant marketplaces for discovering great value and unique selection. In 2023, eBay enabled nearly $73 billion of gross merchandise volume. For more information about the company and its global portfolio of online brands, visit www.ebayinc.com .

1. YouGov research commissioned by eBay Australia surveying 1,042 Australians 16+, April 2024 2. Kantar research commissioned by eBay Australia surveying 3,001 Australians 18+, December 2023 3. Kantar research commissioned by eBay Australia surveying 3,001 Australians 18+, December 2023 4. YouGov research commissioned by eBay Australia surveying 1,042 Australians 16+, April 2024 5. YouGov research commissioned by eBay Australia surveying 1,042 Australians 16+, April 2024 6. YouGov research commissioned by eBay Australia surveying 1,042 Australians 16+, April 2024 7. YouGov research commissioned by eBay Australia surveying 1,042 Australians 16+, April 2024 8. eBay Australia data 2023 9. eBay Australia data 2023 10. YouGov research commissioned by eBay Australia surveying 1,042 Australians 16+, April 2024 11. YouGov research commissioned by eBay Australia surveying 1,042 Australians 16+, April 2024 12. YouGov research commissioned by eBay Australia surveying 1,042 Australians 16+, April 2024 13. YouGov research commissioned by eBay Australia surveying 1,042 Australians 16+, April 2024 14. Lonergan research commissioned by eBay Australia surveying 1,100 Australians 18+. April 2023. 15. YouGov research commissioned by eBay Australia surveying 1,042 Australians 16+, April 2024

Topics: Announcements , Trends and Data

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