How to fall back in love with your partner, psychologists reveal

It's possible to make yourself fall out of love too

Wednesday 21 December 2016 11:43 EST

(Getty Images)

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The saying goes that you can’t help who you fall in love with, and sometimes you just fall out of it too.

But a new study has found that we can in fact control our hearts with our heads more than we thought - psychologists from the University of Missouri-St. Louis and Erasmus University Rotterdam found that it’s possible to wilfully increase or decrease how much you love someone.

It’s called ‘love regulation’.

The researchers studied 40 people, twenty of whom were in a long-term relationship, and the other half having recently come out of one - the average time since the break-up was three months.

Each participant was asked to bring in 30 pictures of their current or ex-partner. First, they were asked how infatuated with and attached to the person they felt and had their brainwaves measured - the researchers particularly looked at the Late Positive Potential (LPP) brainwave, which becomes stronger when we focus on something emotionally relevant.

The participants were then told to look at the pictures and think positive thoughts about their partner, their relationship and their future together, before their brain waves and feelings were measured again.

For a second time, the participants were asked to look at their photos but to think negative thoughts. Their feelings and brain waves were then assessed once again.

The study found that after thinking positive thoughts, people reported feeling much more attached to their partners and their LPP brainwaves were stronger.

In contrast, after focusing on negatives, the participants “down-regulated” their feelings, reporting less attachment and weaker LPP brainwaves.

But can we really control love? “Control implies suppressing it and being king or queen of it,” Harvard Medical School psychologist Susan David told The Wall Street Journal.

So even if we can’t actually control love, we can shape it.