Romantic thoughts could keep love alive

Sending love letters or going for romantic strolls can not only win over the object of your desire, it can also make you like them more.

Thinking passionate thoughts about the one you love makes you less likely to stray, a new study shows, because you find others less attractive.

The research could prove that love truly makes us blind, scientists believe.

Researchers asked 113 students in long term relationships to look at photographs of 60 different people, who ranged in looks from the average to the highly attractive.

Before being shown the pictures half of the group were asked to write an essay detailing their strong feelings of love for their partner.

The other students were asked to write about a time when they felt extremely happy.

When they were shown the photographs those who had just written about their loved one spent less time looking at the pictures and automatically rejected the most attractive people, the scientists found.

Dr Jon Maner, a psychologist from Florida State University, who led the study, said: "Their attention was repelled, rather than captured, by attractive alternatives to their current partner.

"Romantic love for a current partner, therefore, may inhibit the basic perceptual processing of attractive relationship alternatives.

"In this sense, love truly does appear to be blind."

The results of the study could suggest one reason why humans commit to long term partnerships with only one mate, according to the findings published in the journal Evolution and Human Behaviour.

The process could have evolved because of the strong social benefits of a stable, committed relationship.

The researchers believe that our response to triggers such as writing about the one we love could be linked to a hormone called oxytocin, the so-called "cuddle" hormone, which works to bond people together and can increase when strong feelings of desire are created.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/2505019/Romantic-thoughts-could-keep-love-alive.html