January 11th 2010

Velcro and the Dopamine Effect

Why do White House party crashers Tareq and Michaele Salahi keep showing up in places where they aren’t invited?

One possible reason: It revs up their love life.

Research going back decades shows that doing unusual things together helps keep a couple going strong - and boosts a relationship that’s sagging. This idea was examined recently on a PBS special, “This Emotional Life.”

In one study conducted by Arthur Aron, a social psychologist at SUNY-Stony Brook, 28 couples – 24 dating, 4 married – were divided into two groups. Prior to the experiment, each individual was asked to complete a short questionnaire on how satisfying and passionate their relationship was.

Participants in one group were then bound to their partners with Velcro and asked to crawl down a mat and back within a couple of minutes, crossing over obstacles along the way. Couples in the other group, free of restraints, were given the easier task of rolling a ball to and from the center of the room. Once they completed their assignments, all participants were asked to fill out another survey measuring relationship satisfaction and passion, worded differently from the earlier one.

The result? The Velcroed couples were significantly more satisfied with, and passionate about, their mates than they had been prior to the exercise. The ordinary task-ers showed less of an increase.

Perhaps, according to Aron, those who were Velcroed associated the exercise’s challenge, and the exhilaration they felt, with their relationship. Novelty surely played a part as well – most people love doing new things and new things spur the production of dopamine, a chemical associated with romantic love.
In his book, “The Brain That Changes Itself,” psychiatrist Norman Doidge writes, “When a couple go on a romantic vacation or try new activities together, or wear new kinds of clothing or surprise each other, they are using novelty to turn on the pleasure centers, so that everything they experience, including each other, excites and pleases them. Once the pleasure centers are turned on…, the new image of the beloved again becomes associated with unexpected pleasures….”

This desire for the unconventional challenge helps explain, I think, why hooking up with new partners can be seductive. It also suggests why – other than the fear of getting caught or being afraid of getting caught - illicit love affairs eventually end. Without the freedom to go to new places, and explore new sides of themselves and their relationship, partners simply get bored.

Remember the scheme concocted by young lovers Chuck and Blair earlier this season on CW’s “Gossip Girl?” They had known each other for (what seemed to them) a very long time. So they decided to pick a girl for Chuck to bed so that Blair could get upset, Chuck could dump the girl and Blair and Chuck would then have supposedly great sex.

That’s certainly not everyone’s idea for spicing up a relationship; in fact it’s not clear that it worked for Chuck and Blair. But there are plenty of other alternatives.

When Jennifer, a blogger on the health site Wellsphere, asked readers for ways to restart the fire, she got a bunch of suggestions including:

-Join or start a band.
-Sign up for Dodge ball
-Learn to scuba dive
-Take an aerials class

These ideas share traits that scientists say are particularly effective at improving closeness:

1) They’re intensely interactive (aerials, for example), as opposed to passive (eating out)
2) They’re somewhat risky
3) They involve cooperation, which improves closeness.

They also keep a couple away from 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.