Thursday, November 02, 2006

Theoretical Models of Love



There are various ways in which two people fall in love with each other.
My research into this allowed me to develop two models for how a girl and boy fall for each other. There may be many others but this is what I came up with....

MODEL ONE: SLOW AND STEADY WINS THE RACE

MODEL TWO: STRIKE THE IRON WHILE IT'S HOT


SLOW AND STEADY WINS THE RACE (Figure 1)
This is more common that is why I call it MODEL ONE. In Figure 1 we can see that the Girl and Boy start out as strangers and over time they become friends and converge towards Intimacy. Maybe the Boy and Girl were childhood friends or met in college or even at a marriage! The convergence rate is usually slower and many factors can destroy the relation or stop it at a certain level of closeness.
But if this relation continues it will enter a period (blue region) where a long term permanent relation can be formed which may or may not end in marriage.
This period doesn't last forever though. Once it ends the relations usually diverge a bit and come to rest at a lower level of friendship.


STRIKE WHILE THE IRON IS HOT (Figure 2)
This kind of opportunity is based a bit on the luck of the Boy and the Girl. Usually the two are not that close but an EVENT (light green line) brings them closer, that too pretty rapidly. The closeness is much more intense in this case. Many things can trigger this kind of a situation but usually the triggering event is something quite drastic.
The response time is very very short and usually both the sides have to capitalize on the opportunity. The response time in this case is usually much less as compared to MODEL ONE. Also once the good time (blue shaded area) is over the relations diverge pretty rapidly.

Both the models are of course not the final word. The actual model of interaction can be a combination of either of the two models. For example the starting could be like MODEL ONE and the ending could be like MODEL TWO.


There are two other factors which can influence the shape of the 'Love Curves'.
The first one is, how keen (or desperate) the Boy and Girl are to fall in love (the Acceptance Factor). The second one is the Rate of Convergence (the slope) for the two curves. If the Rate of Convergence for Girl's curve (Cg) is different from the Rate of Convergence (Cb) for Boy's curve, it can lead to major issues.


If Cg == Cb
- Perfect situation both converge to same state almost at same time.

If Cg > Cb
- Girl will enter the blue zone quickly but the boy wont be ready... can lead to frustration on girls part.

If Cg < Cb
- Boy will enter the blue zone quickly but the girl wont be ready... this will of course lead to frustration on boys part.


:)
A.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

In which journal is this highly scientific work going to be published? :p