Love

I wonder what criteria they used in the study to determine which couples were actually "in love" and which ones contained at least one person whose interest was based in the "wrong" reasons - sex, money, prestige, etc. What about the traditional questions such as love vs. infatuation? "romantic love" vs the "real thing"? I also wonder what couples they used as control subjects and how they could tell that they were not in love.

I don't have the answers to these questions, but I'm highly suspicious that the only information revealed by this study is whether or not a person is "excited" by another's presence. And, if most people are like me, they have experienced this feeling when dating many people - both their future spouse, for whom they continue to feel a deeper and more complete love, and those for whom they felt little after a short or long dating period. The NGF-bolstered first year may have made each initially exciting, but only one of the relationships produced enough lasting feeling to warrant the commitment of marriage.

Even if this is the case, NGF readers may still be valuable in determining if someone "really loves" you, but not in the way suggested in the news. Instead of indicating love, positive NGF levels would indicate infatuation. Once this protein returned to pre-infatuation levels and the person's interest in the relationship persisted, their "true love" could be confirmed.

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