FALLING IN LOVE AND TRUE LOVE - A QUESTIO NNAIRE AND IMPLICATIONS FORCOUPLE THERAPY

Although romantic love plays an important role for many people, empiri cal studies on romantic love have only been carried out recently. This article describes the results of a questionnaire on romantic love com pleted by 606 volunteers. The results show that nearly everyone has ha d the personal experience of falling in love at least once. According to the reports in the questionnaire, men and women do not differ with respect to the frequency and to the velocity with which they fall in l ove. Women, however, more often believe that their respective partner has fallen in love at a relatively early stage, whilst men believe tha t their respective partner has fallen in love only later. Both men and women exhibit distinct physical and emotional phenomena when they hav e fallen in love - women more pronouncedly than men. The quality of th e relationship between men and women appears to be better if the partn ers have initially fallen in love with each other. From the point of v iew of couple therapy, the quality and quantity of being in love appea r to be less important than the methods of coping with it, i.e. accept ing that the initial romantic love period may not stay forever but mus t be replaced by another type of love, or accepting that a couple can also have a highly satisfactory relationship, although there was no in itial period of romantic love.