The scientist managed to analyze the feelings of tens of thousands of people as their relationships developed. Here are some (sometimes unexpected) conclusions he came to.

Love is a very complex and multifaceted feeling that is difficult to study experimentally. Nevertheless, Sourabh Bhargava from Carnegie Mellon University (USA), whose article was published in the journal Psychological Science, devised a way to find out what happens to love as relationships develop. He obtained several interesting results, one of which disproves the myth that love and passion in marriage fade faster for men.

Bhargava conducted two surveys. In the first one, nearly four thousand people agreed to answer several questions every half hour while awake for ten days and fill out a more extensive questionnaire at the end of each day. The questions mainly concerned emotional experiences and mood.

In the second survey, over seven thousand people answered questions online about whether they had felt feelings of anxiety, love, joy, or anger during the previous hour. Those who felt love were asked to answer an extended list of questions on this topic.

Here are the conclusions Bhargava reached by analyzing the responses of participants in both experiments.

When people talk about love, they most often mean love for their partner. In second place is love for their children, other relatives, any other people, places, or objects.

Women, in general, experience love much more often than men.

Men usually say they feel love when their beloved is nearby, not their children. At the same time, women admit to experiencing a surge of love for their children much more often than men.

The longer couples are married, the less romantic love they feel for each other.

Married women generally lose romantic love for their husbands faster than men.

The same can be said about passion — married women experience a 55% decrease in the desire to have sex with their husbands after marriage.

Separation benefits love — partners only need to be apart for eight hours for their feelings towards each other to revive.

Love improves mood and makes both men and women equally happier.