It’s been a year since we’ve been in lockdown, and it’s made me reflect on what relationships are important to me. What “love” means to me. We all aspire to find that one someone, but that’s not all there is. There’s familial love, platonic love, and all sorts of others we as a society just don’t seem to value quite as much as romantic love. What makes romantic love so much more important?
In a study by Arthur Aron, he asks participants 36 questions of varying intrusion into their personal lives. He wanted to see if intimacy can be accelerated between them. In the end, it wasn’t the time they spent together or the way they were sitting, it was a mutual vulnerability that really connected people. When asked to look into the eyes of each other for two minutes, the participants could do it and said it helped their bond. In the end, the study proved. Mutual vulnerability does lead to a form of connection.
While in quarantine, I’ve lost touch with people, but I have become a lot closer with others. Even my pen-pals, I feel incredibly connected to, more than before. It made me wonder, Aron’s study never mentioned “love” in the way people think does. Those who know of this study often reference it like 36 questions to fall in love but that not what it offers. It does offer love, but not necessarily romantic love. It connects people and makes them familiar with each other. It creates a platonic connection. And so, I wonder if I’ve inadvertently answered these 36 or likeness with these people. Even if I only see them twice a year, I still know them, because I understand their fears.
So, when I was reminded about this study, I wasn’t surprised that people took it in such a romantic context. Who wouldn’t want love in two hours? However, I just feel like some people were cheated out of a great friendship. Maybe these questions could repair families. Why does everything have to center around romantic relationships? 
The greeks had six words for love: Eros, Philia, Ludus, Agape, Pragma, and Philautia. As a civilization, they valued Phila, or friendship, more than eros, or romance. I always found it strange that we always know that our friends have our back, yet we have an inherent mistrust in love. When we are young, we do value Philia. But as we grow older and move into adulthood, that value falls away. Its no longer treated as a form of love. I find that really sad.
We’ve been stuck indoors for a year now. Think about who you’ve stayed in touch with. You survived a once-in-a-century pandemic with them. We are all soon to embark on our own paths, whether that be college, vocational school, military, or otherwise. Don’t give up on philia. Eros is important but no more important than our friends. Keep them close.
Study:https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/0146167297234003
NYT article: https://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/09/style/no-37-big-wedding-or-small.html?auth=link-dismiss-google1tap
description of the grecian loves: https://www.yesmagazine.org/health-happiness/2013/12/28/the-ancient-greeks-6-words-for-love-and-why-knowing-them-can-change-your-life/
Hello Asha! I think your blog topic is really interesting and I’ve been reflecting on it a little bit myself recently. When I was in the car driving, I noticed that almost all of the songs playing on the radio were centered around the eros type of love. I guess that would be another testament to what you mentioned about society’s infatuation with romantic relationships. I wonder if the mutual vulnerability that individuals feel in a connection spur certain emotions or sensations that platonic relationships don’t necessarily include? I hadn’t heard about Aron’s study before you mentioned it, but it sounds like those 36 questions are effective at establishing an authentic connection between two people! I’m intrigued to find out more about the study. When you mentioned the anecdote about the pandemic, it was interesting to reflect on the connections I have with those around me, specifically how some of those have strengthened and others have weakened during the last year. Thank you for the food for thought. I’m glad that you have pen-pals that you can depend on for their understanding and support!
Hi Asha!
I had not heard of this study, but if there is one thing that I like to a fault, it is turning interpersonal relationships and behaviors into statistics and data. I found Aron’s research fascinating. I’m certainly missing the whole point of your blog post, but I have questions about it, and am quite curious about the answers. I’m sure anyone who has read the study would want to know if the effects of these 36 questions can actually lead to the development of stronger long-term effects, as Aron and his co-authors even note that their goal was to simply “develop a temporary feeling of closeness, not an actual ongoing relationship.” Is going through these questions with my friends now still worth my while, or is it a waste of a couple hours? Additionally, I’m curious how these results carry over into other situations, particularly with more different types of people. Sure, Study 2 looked at the condition in which students disagreed on something important, but I have to imagine that a class of college psychology students is a pretty homogenous group and that these disagreements did not change the fact that they were relatively similar people. And maybe I missed this in the study, but I’m also interested to learn the differences in effects between question Sets 1, 2, and 3 independently rather than all together.
Anyway, moving on to the more important part, I definitely started to recognize the importance of philia once I did not have it. During the initial months of the pandemic, I was still relatively in touch with my friends, and during the summer I made friends at work. However, once the new school year started, I didn’t really reach out to people as much as I should have, and I was pretty miserable. Getting back together with the software team when robotics started in January breathed new life into my struggling pandemic self, and I can’t put into words the value of becoming friends with the new members of the team and really learning about them and their interests in and out of robotics. I definitely love every single person on my subteam, and I definitely agree with you that we can’t ever forget about philia.
Hi Asha,
As someone who hasn’t been able to see his friends for well over a year now, I couldn’t agree more that our society severely undervalues Philia as a type of love. I feel as if there is such a heavy emphasis on Eros in the world we live in—that you somehow haven’t lived if you’ve never had a cute high school relationship, or that you must find a soulmate, get married, and have children by the time you’re around 30—that it seems to throw all the other forms of love out the window. I think it’s important that we know that it’s OK to take life slow, and that romantic love isn’t an automatic gateway to happiness. Happiness can come from our friends and family too. Look out for the people that truly matter to you, and the rest of your life will take care of itself.