The Science of Love

Recently as I was scrolling through my Facebook feed I found a link to the article, To Fall In Love With Anyone, Do This. This may be the best article ever because who doesn't want to know how to make someone fall in love with you. I'm looking at you Adam Levine. That's not just me, right?
Moving on. This article references a study by Dr. Arthur Aron. He proposed that he could take two people who started off as complete strangers and have them fall in love with each other in just 45 minutes with the help of 36 questions. Seems crazy, right? Maybe it is.
The questions start off pretty innocent, "If you had your choice of anyone as your dinner guest who would it be? Why?" or "Do you ever rehearse what you're going to say before making a phone call?". As the list goes on the questions start getting more intimate.
This got me thinking to the past couple of months, also known as my first semester of college. The past four months of my life have been a totally new adventure. I've met new people who have become some of my closest friends and my biggest supporters. The weird thing about that, I didn't know they existed a few months ago. Which leads to the question, how did we become so close in such a short amount of time?
If you ask me why I think that is, I would attribute it to Dr. Aron's 36 questions to find love. I didn't fall in love with my friends, we did however, ask many of these questions in our few months of friendship. Together we have been through one of the biggest changes of our lives. We experienced leaving our homes, our families, and our friends. We also experienced crazy roommates, community bathrooms, and the joys of college life. There have been many nights spent lying on the floor/futon/twin-xl bed of our dorm rooms eating ice cream/mozzarella sticks/apple rings and talking about nothing and everything. We know each other's hopes and dreams, our pasts and what we want our futures to be like. We have held each other when we cried and we have celebrated our victories together. We've seen each other in our most vulnerable states, and yet we still love each other.
We've asked each other about our best (and our worst) memories, we were the last people we cried in front of, and we've asked each other advice on our problems. We may not have followed Dr. Aron's questions in order, or word for word. But we've answered many of the questions that he has decided provoke love. And while we may not be falling in love with each other, we love each other. We love each other enough to get in our cars and drive hundreds of miles to see each other. We love each other enough to get up at 8 AM to help study for a test over breakfast, and if you know how much I love sleep you know that this is a an act of true love.
Love is not a one size fits all. It comes in all shapes and sizes. Its not limited to just people we've known our entire life. Love is what makes you crazy, love is what makes you sane, and love is that warm fuzzy feeling you get when you look around at the people you're surrounded with and can't help but smile and think that this is where you belong.