WEBVTT

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I published this article

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in the New York Times Modern Love column
in January of this year.

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"To Fall in Love With Anyone, Do This."

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And the article is about
a psychological study

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designed to create romantic love
in the laboratory,

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and my own experience
trying to study myself

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one night last summer.

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So the procedure is fairly simple:

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two strangers take turns asking each other
36 increasingly personal questions

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and then they stare into each other's eyes

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without speaking for four minutes.

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So here are a couple of sample questions.

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Number 12: If you could wake up tomorrow
having gained any one quality or ability,

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what would it be?

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Number 28: When did you last cry
in front of another person?

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By yourself?

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As you can see, they really do
get more personal as they go along.

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Number 30, I really like this one:

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Tell your partner
what you like about them;

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be very honest this time,

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saying things you might not say
to someone you just met.

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So when I first came across this study
a few years earlier,

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one detail really stuck out to me,

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and that was the rumor
that two of the participants

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had gotten married six months later,

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and they'd invited the entire lab
to the ceremony.

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So I was of course very skeptical

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about this process of just
manufacturing romantic love,

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but of course I was intrigued,

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and when I got the chance
to try this study myself,

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with someone I knew
but not particularly well,

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I wasn't expecting to fall in love.

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But then we did, and --

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(Laughter) --

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and I thought it made a good story,
so I sent it to the Modern Love column

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a few months later.

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Now, this was published in January,

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and now it is August,

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so I'm guessing that some of you
are probably wondering,

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are we still together?

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And the reason I think
you might be wondering this

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is because I have been asked this question

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again and again and again
for the past seven months,

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and this question is really
what I want to talk about today.

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But let's come back to it.

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(Laughter)

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So the week before the article came out,

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I was very nervous.

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I had been working on a book
about love stories

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for the past few years,

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so I had gotten used to writing
about my own experiences

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with romantic love on my blog.

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But a blog post might get
a couple hundred views at the most,

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and those were usually
just my Facebook friends,

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and I figured my article
in the New York Times

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would probably get a few thousand views.

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And that felt like a lot of attention

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on a relatively new relationship.

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But as it turned out, I had no idea.

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So the article was published online

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on a Friday evening,

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and by Saturday, this had happened
to the traffic on my blog,

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and by Sunday, both the Today Show
and Good Morning America had called.

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Within a month, the article
would receive over 8 million views,

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and I was, to say the least,

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underprepared for this sort of attention.

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It's one thing to work up
the confidence to write honestly

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about your experiences with love,

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but it is another thing to discover

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that your love life
has made international news --

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(Laughter) --

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and to realize that people
across the world

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are genuinely invested in the status
of your new relationship.

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(Laughter)

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And when people called or emailed,
which they did every day for weeks,

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they always asked the same question first:

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are you guys still together?

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In fact, as I was preparing this talk,

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I did a quick search of my email inbox

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for the phrase "Are you still together?"

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and several messages
popped up immediately.

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They were from students and journalists

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and friendly strangers like this one.

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I did radio interviews and they asked.

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I even gave a talk, and one woman
shouted up to the stage,

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"Hey Mandy, where's your boyfriend?"

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And I promptly turned bright red.

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I understand that this
is part of the deal.

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If you write about your relationship
in an international newspaper,

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you should expect people to feel
comfortable asking about it.

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But I just wasn't prepared
for the scope of the response.

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The 36 questions seem
to have taken on a life of their own.

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In fact, the New York Times
published a follow-up article

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for Valentine's Day,

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which featured readers' experiences
of trying the study themselves,

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with varying degrees of success.

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So my first impulse in the face
of all of this attention

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was to become very protective
of my own relationship.

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I said no to every request
for the two of us

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to do a media appearance together.

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I turned down TV interviews,
and I said no to every request

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for photos of the two us.

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I think I was afraid that we would become

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inadvertent icons for the process
of falling in love,

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a position I did not at all
feel qualified for.

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And I get it:

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people didn't just want to know
if the study worked,

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they wanted to know if it really worked:

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that is, if it was capable of producing
love that would last,

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not just a fling, but real love,
sustainable love.

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But this was a question I didn't feel
capable of answering.

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My own relationship
was only a few months old,

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and I felt like people were asking
the wrong question in the first place.

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What would knowing whether or not
we were still together really tell them?

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If the answer was no,
would it make the experience

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of doing these 36 questions
any less worthwhile?

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Dr. Arthur Aron first wrote
about these questions

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in this study here in 1997,

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and here, the researcher's goal
was not to produce romantic love.

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Instead, they wanted to foster

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interpersonal closeness
among college students,

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by using what Aron called

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"sustained, escalating, reciprocal,
personalistic self-disclosure."

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Sounds romantic, doesn't it.

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But the study did work.

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The participants did feel
closer after doing it,

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and several subsequent studies have also
used Aron's fast friends protocol

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as a way to quickly create trust
and intimacy between strangers.

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They've used it between members
of the police and members of a community,

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and they've used it between people
of opposing political ideologies.

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The original version of the story,

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the one that I tried last summer,

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that pairs the personal questions
with four minutes of eye contact,

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was referenced in this article,

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but unfortunately it was never published.

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So a few months ago, I was giving a talk

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at a small liberal arts college,

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and a student came up to me afterwards

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and he said, kind of shyly,

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"So, I tried your study,
and it didn't work."

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He seemed a little mystified by this.

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"You mean, you didn't fall in love
with the person you did it with?" I asked.

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"Well..." He paused.

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"I think she just wants to be friends."

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"But did you become
better friends?" I asked.

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"Did you feel like you got to really
know each after doing the study?"

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He nodded.

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"So, then it worked," I said.

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I don't think this is the answer
he was looking for.

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In fact, I don't think this the answer
that any of us are looking for

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when it comes to love.

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I first came across this study
when I was 29

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and I was going through
a really difficult breakup.

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I had been in the relationship
since I was 20,

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which was basically my entire adult life,

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and he was my first real love,

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and I had no idea how or if
I could make a life without him.

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So I turned to science.

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I researched everything I could find
about the science of romantic love,

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and I think I was hoping that it might
somehow inoculate me from heartache.

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I don't know if I realized this

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at the time --

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I thought I was just doing research
for this book I was writing --

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but it seems really obvious in retrospect.

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I hoped that if I armed myself
with the knowledge of romantic love,

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I might never have to feel
as terrible and lonely as I did then.

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And all this knowledge
has been useful in some ways.

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I am more patient with love.
I am more relaxed.

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I am more confident
about asking for what I want.

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But I can also see myself more clearly,

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and I can see that I what I want
is sometimes more

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than can reasonably be asked for.

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What I want from love is a guarantee,

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not just that I am loved today

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and that I will be loved tomorrow,

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but that I will continue to be loved
by the person I love indefinitely.

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And maybe it's this possibility
of a guarantee

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that people were really asking about

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when they wanted to know
if we were still together.

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So the story that the media told
about the 36 questions

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was that there might be
a shortcut to falling in love.

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There might be a way to somehow mitigate
some of the risk involved,

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and this is a very appealing story,

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because falling in love feels amazing,

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but it's also terrifying.

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The moment you admit to loving someone,

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you admit to having a lot to lose,

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and it's true that these questions
do provide a mechanism

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for getting to know someone quickly,

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which is also a mechanism for being known,

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and I think this is the thing
that most of us really want from love:

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to be known, to be seen, to be understood.

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But I think when it comes to love,

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we are too willing to accept
the short version of the story,

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the version of the story that asks
"Are you still together?"

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and is content with a yes or no answer.

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So rather than that question,
I would propose we ask

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some more difficult questions,

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questions like:

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How do you decide who deserves your love

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and who does not?

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How do you stay in love
when things get difficult,

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and how do you know
when to just cut and run?

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How do you live with the doubt

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that inevitably creeps
into every relationship,

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or even harder,

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how do you live with your partner's doubt?

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I don't necessarily know
the answers to these questions,

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but I think they're an important start
at having a more thoughtful conversation

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about what it means to love someone.

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So, if you want it,

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the short version of the story
of my relationship is this:

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a year ago, an acquaintance
and I did a study

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designed to create romantic love,

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and we fell in love,

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and we are still together,

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and I am so glad.

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But falling in love is not
the same thing as staying in love.

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Falling in love is the easy part.

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So at the end of my article, I wrote,
"Love didn't happen to us.

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We're in love because we each
made the choice to be."

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And I cringe a little
when I read that now,

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not because it isn't true,

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but because at the time,
I really hadn't considered

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everything that was contained
in that choice.

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I didn't consider how many times
we would each have to make that choice,

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and how many times I will continue
to have to make that choice

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without knowing whether or not
he will always choose me.

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I want it to be enough to have asked
and answered 36 questions,

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and to have chosen to love someone
so generous and kind and fun

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and to have broadcast that choice
in the biggest newspaper in America.

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But what I have done instead
is turn my relationship

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into the kind of myth
I don't quite believe in.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
And what I want, what perhaps
I will spend my life wanting,

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
is for that myth to be true.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
I want the happy ending implied
by the title to my article,

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which is, incidentally,

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the only part of the article
that I didn't actually write.

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(Laughter)

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
But what I have instead is the chance
to make the choice to love someone,

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and the hope that he will choose
to love me back,

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and it is terrifying,

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
but that's the deal with love.

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Thank you.

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(Applause)