Having a relationship does not exempt you from falling in love with another person. In fact, the longer you’re committed, the more likely you are to find a potential alternative partner at work, the gym, or a coffee shop. A study from the University of Hamburg has observed 542 volunteers who maintain a relationship based on romantic love and apparently monogamous to determine under what circumstances they fall in love with other people and to what extent they can affect the main bond.
The conditions to participate in the sample were to have a relationship with a commitment of at least three months and to be in love with a third person. The volunteers, aged between 22 and 35, filled out an online questionnaire in which they were asked about their level of satisfaction with their relationship with their partner and whether they had had the opportunity to strengthen the bond with the person they liked. After four months, they completed another survey to see what percentage of the sample had committed infidelity over that time.
Regarding the results of the first survey, the most striking thing is that two thirds of the volunteers confessed to being in love with more than one person other than their partner. Specifically, 24.2% liked two other people, 14.7% liked three other people, and 27.1% claimed to have four or more people. The average among the participants was two people outside the relationship to whom they felt attracted, which shows that once you fall in love with a third person, you are likely to fall in love again.
Another not so curious aspect that the survey revealed was that two-thirds of the volunteers’ partners were unaware of their attraction to a person outside the relationship. The prototypical crush is someone they have known for two years and began to be attracted to a year ago. Almost 40% of the participants recognized that this someone was part of their work environment.
The responses to the second questionnaire determined that only 3% of the volunteers had been unfaithful to their partner in the last four months. This data reveals that most of these crushes outside the couple are harmless. However, the probability of being unfaithful increased as the levels of happiness and satisfaction with the main relationship decreased. The reasons for deception also included the perception of a higher quality relationship with the person the volunteers liked.
In short, it is normal to fall in love with someone outside of your relationship. Likewise, it is unlikely that we will be unfaithful to our partner with any of these people, unless we are unhappy and dissatisfied with them.
