Khaberni- Romantic love is described in popular culture as an exceptional experience that changes a human's life, and decades of psychological research have documented its profound impacts on behavior and mental health.
However, the irony is that for decades, science has been unable to answer a fundamental question: how many times do humans actually experience this kind of love in their lives?
Movies like "Titanic" and "The Notebook" have ingrained the idea that great love happens only once in a lifetime and that there is just one soulmate for every person. However, a recent study from the Kinsey Institute suggests that reality is quite different.
The researchers revealed that most people fall in romantic love twice on average during their lives, not just once as cinema suggests.
The study, published in the journal Interpersona: An International Journal on Personal Relationships, is the first of its kind on a broad scale that counts the number of times people experience romantic love. It involved more than 10,000 single adults of various ages, ranging from 18 to 99 years old, and directly asked them: How many times have you fallen in romantic love in your life?
The results showed that 14% of the participants had never experienced it, while 28% experienced it once, 30% twice, 17% three times, and 11% four times or more.
Dr. Amanda Giesterman, who led the study, said that talking about falling in love occupies a significant space in our daily lives, but this is the first time researchers have actually asked people how many times they go through this experience. She added that the results suggest that romantic love occurs only a few times for most people.
Older adults recorded slightly more romantic love experiences than younger individuals, implying that romantic love might occur at later stages in life although most experiences happen at an early age. Men reported slightly more experiences than women. Yet, all differences were minor, indicating that romantic love is a common human experience.
These findings may particularly help doctors and therapists in contextualizing romantic experiences, highlighting the rarity of romantic love and the value of other forms of love.
The study considered romantic love a common phenomenon in the sense that most people experience it at least once, but it occurs infrequently on an individual level. It described it as an incidental and sometimes elusive experience.
