Can You Make Yourself Fall In Love? Relationship Experts Weigh In
Sometimes you can't help but fall in love with someone, but can you make yourself love someone?
Mila Supinskaya Glashchenko / Shutterstock Sometimes you can't help but fall in love with someone — but can you make yourself love someone?
When it comes to making yourself fall in love with someone, that can be difficult. However, it's not impossible.
In order to make yourself love your partner, you have to establish intimacy and have an emotional connection to build off of.
If you're able to convince yourself that this person has outstanding and desirable traits that you find attractive or admirable, the odds of you falling in love with them are higher.
You need to be willing and able to learn things about your partner that no one else knows.
So is falling in love a choice?
Not exactly. It's more like a seemingly irrational chain of events that contribute to falling in love with someone — but a chain of events that you can intentionally create.
How to Make Yourself Love Someone
1. Make sure you want this and are ready to fall in love.
Before you even go off trying to make yourself love someone, you need to make sure you're in the right headspace and mindset to be falling in love.
According to Marriage and Family Therapist Frances Patton, if you want to fall in love in a serious way, it can be done intentionally.
"You won’t be able to develop this feeling with everyone. Some people aren’t interested in sharing emotions," she explains. "But with someone you are attracted to, who is safe to trust with your deepest feelings, and who is compatible with you, you can fall in love on purpose."
According to Keya Murthy, a clinical hypnotherapist and relationship coach, when you are trying to find ways and reasons to love someone it is more like a conscious choice you are making.
"Others tell you how good this person is and over time, you notice the good in them and tell yourself this is good for you, so the person must be good for you and you begin to love them," she says. "When you choose to fall in love with someone for the person and the way you feel when in their presence or you think of them, that is deeper. It is more than mere attraction, it is love. You love the person for who he or she is and not just what he or she represents."
Sometimes understanding the science of love and its intense feelings of attraction and attachment can help as well.
When you're actively choosing to understand how and why people feel the way they do when they are in love, you can then learn how to trigger the dopamine and serotonin receptors in your brain to make you feel love more easily.
2. Learn how to make yourself open to love.
You need to give yourself a chance to open up to this person that you want to fall in love with. Notice whenever you show them affection and try to appreciate this person slowly over time and not confuse lust with love.
According to Patton, the secret to falling in love intentionally is to develop emotional intimacy.
"Relationships are all about emotions, sharing your own feelings, and empathizing with your partner. You eventually fall in love with the person you have grown to trust with your feelings, and who has grown to trust you with theirs," says Patton.
You have to make sure you're letting yourself be vulnerable and share your dreams, fears, and trauma with your partner so they can connect and develop empathy and love for you and you will do the same. By opening yourself up to someone you can feel more free and very comfortable with this person.
When getting to know someone you also want to make sure you're focussing on the positives that you know about them and see how and if you love one thing or more about them. Find little things to love about them.
Sometimes you also just have to make yourself love them by faking it till you make it. Much like the movie "The Proposal," sometimes faking to love someone can actually make you realize what you love about that person and trigger feelings of intimacy and connection and this works if the other person does the same.
3. Work on building intimacy through exercises.
The easiest way to teach yourself to love someone is to notice all that the person does for you and others.
"If you like the way the person treats others especially the older and the weaker who may not be older, then you know this person is a person worth admiring, loving, and being with," Murthy suggests. "Also, notice if this person has characteristics like standing up for him/herself and defending what he/she believes in while remaining open to others. These are attributes worth appreciating in someone and both falling in and being in love with them.
According to Lisa Rabinowitz, a couples counselor and therapist, research shows that you can make yourself fall in love with someone through intimacy exercises.
Make sure when trying intimacy exercises that there is always a strong level of eye contact as sustained eye contact can establish intimate feelings between two people, as it's definitely a contributor to falling in love.
If you want to feel even closer to each other, try this exercise of staring into each other's eyes for four minutes straight.
"In 1997, Dr. Arthur Aron 'made' 2 strangers fall in love. You may ask: how did he do it? He asked the couple for four minutes to gaze into each other's eyes and then asked them to have a 90-minute intimate conversation with predetermined questions. We learned from this experiment and research that being eye-gazing creates closeness and connection," says Rabinowitz.
By asking the person you want to fall in love with these questions, the two of you can kindle a romance and spark a connection and maybe even a long-term relationship.
In order to teach yourself how to love someone, you need to feel close to your partner as, according to Rabinowitz, this is when the likelihood of falling in love is accelerated.
"True love is usually different from romantic love or 'love at first sight.' Dr. Gottman researched what makes a successful relationship, indicates there are 3 stages of love: falling in love, building trust, and building commitment and loyalty," says Rabinowitz.
This method can also help in staying in love.
First, ask the person you want to fall in love with if the two of you can commit to sitting down together answer 36 questions in three stages.
To begin, start with the first 12 questions:
1. Given the choice of anyone in the world, whom would you want as a dinner guest?
2. Would you like to be famous? In what way
3. Before making a telephone call, do you ever rehearse what you are going to say? Why?
4. What would constitute a “perfect” day for you
5. When did you last sing to yourself? To someone else?
6. If you were able to live to the age of 90 and retain either the mind or body of a 30-year-old for the last 60 years of your life, which would you want?
7. Do you have a secret hunch about how you will die?
8. Name three things you and your partner appear to have in common.
9. For what in your life do you feel most grateful?
10. If you could change anything about the way you were raised, what would it be?
11. Take four minutes and tell your partner your life story in as much detail as possible.
12. If you could wake up tomorrow having gained any one quality or ability, what would it be?
If the two of you still feel comfortable after the first round of questions, then the two of you can move on to the next round of questions.
The two of you should suspect deeper and more personal answers this time.
13. If a crystal ball could tell you the truth about yourself, your life, the future, or anything else, what would you want to know?
14. Is there something that you’ve dreamed of doing for a long time? Why haven’t you done it?
15. What is the greatest accomplishment of your life?
16. What do you value most in a friendship?
17. What is your most treasured memory?
18. What is your most terrible memory?
19. If you knew that in one year you would die suddenly, would you change anything about the way you are now living? Why?
20. What does friendship mean to you?
21. What roles do love and affection play in your life?
22. Alternate sharing something you consider a positive characteristic of your partner. Share a total of five items.
23. How close and warm is your family? Do you feel your childhood was happier than most other people’s?
24. How do you feel about your relationship with your mother?
After the second round of questions, you and your partner should be on a very deep and personal level with each other and the two of you feel a connection already forming between each other.
If the two of you want to finish it off, then you can answer the last round of questions.
25. Make three true “we” statements each. For instance, “We are both in this room feeling ... “
26. Complete this sentence: “I wish I had someone with whom I could share ... “
27. If you were going to become a close friend with your partner, please share what would be important for them to know.
28. Tell your partner what you like about them; be very honest this time, saying things that you might not say to someone you’ve just met.
29. Share with your partner an embarrassing moment in your life.
30. When did you last cry in front of another person? By yourself?
31. Tell your partner something that you like about them already.
32. What, if anything, is too serious to be joked about?
33. If you were to die this evening with no opportunity to communicate with anyone, what would you most regret not having told someone? Why haven’t you told them yet?
34. Your house, containing everything you own, catches fire. After saving your loved ones and pets, you have time to safely make a final dash to save any one item. What would it be? Why?
35. Of all the people in your family, whose death would you find most disturbing? Why?
36. Share a personal problem and ask your partner’s advice on how they might handle it. Also, ask your partner to reflect back to you, how you seem to be feeling about the problem you have chosen.
Megan Hatch is a writer at YourTango who covers zodiac, love and relationships, and pop culture.