Quantifying Love

Can you put a number on how much you love someone? If so, how would you do it? Would you count kisses? Hugs? Times you thought of someone? On "This American Life," they explored the method of quantifying love and it's affects on the people who did it. One revelation is that it takes the emotion out of it, making it easier to deal with any perceived failures.

I think this episode is less about quantifying love and more about our reluctance of allowing love to make us vulnerable. There was a study recently published about how romantic comedies ruin love lives by setting unrealistic expectations for real life relationships. If we model our lives under meticulously scripted examples, we'll always fail and it hurts. But we believe the payoff is so good that we keep trying.