While reporting the speed dating story for the Tribune, one of the more interesting things that didn’t make it into the article was the idea of different kinds of love. Romantic, sexual, selfless, and all other sorts of it. The concept wasn’t entirely new to me, but I hadn’t really thought of these activities/states/relationships as entirely distinct from each other. They all just seemed to be different ways of understanding the same general idea.
But during an interview with Stonybrook’s Art Aron, the professor started talking about the fact that 5-year-olds are as likely to develop passionate, romantic (and totally non-sexual) love as teens are. Which makes sense anecdotally: I remember my own brother had a sort of relationship like this with a neighbor of ours during early elementary school. But what that means is that these different types of love are separate emotions. What interests me is whether the same brain functions are occurring among young children as occur in 18 year olds (at least within the realm of this romantic attachment).
Here’s one reference from a paper by Aron in an early-’90s textbook if you want to read more about these ideas.
