How Math Could Affect Your Love Life: Milky Way News

EARTH, Laniakea Supercluster—Has math ever made you feel ready to lock it down in your relationship? Well, a new mathematical take on love may make you feel differently.

Laurent Pujo-Menjouet, a mathematician at the University of Lyon, lays out his case in a new book called Love! Valour! Equations! The book examines theoretical models for love and illustrates that every relationship has a base level of strength that is shaped by time, environment, and individual input.

Pujo-Menjouet told Milky Way News that the idea came from an essay he’d read about common patterns in love. Who knew math was a love language too?

Pujo-Menjouet assigned the topic to his students, then decided to look deeper into it himself. After years of studying more traditional mathematical topics, he found himself researching the roles math and science play in romantic relationships.

When asked how he thinks about the structure of a relationship, Pujo-Menjouet starts with a surprising claim.

“Relationships are linear. Most of our energy toward someone is based on the way they feel about us,” he said.

He began his research by examining the essays and books of scientific experts and other mathematicians. One examined relationships through film, though Pujo-Menjouet admitted this fell flat. He shifted his focus to the patterns in animal populations, which led to extinction (and no, that’s not to say love is a thing of the past). With extinction, many graphs use threshold lines to reflect declines in population numbers due to external factors. In population ecology, this is called the Allee effect—the point below which a population can no longer sustain itself and begins to collapse.

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From that extinction analogy, Pujo-Menjouet built the architecture of his relationship model. The formulas and graphs he developed draw on this combination of sources. They reveal that there are three primary points to consider in evaluating the strength of a romantic relationship: attraction, erosion, and reaction. He described attraction as the sum of the parameters with the parameters being time and feelings. Erosion, he likened to habituation, or comfort in one’s environment. The reaction is each individual’s response to the erosion and how it impacts the relationship.

In the graphs he used, the x-axis represents time and the y-axis represents the individuals’ feelings. A horizontal threshold line cuts across the graph, which he said represents the foundation of the relationship, and where it sits determines the likelihood of success. You think talking astrological signs on the first date applies pressure? Imagine someone whipping out one of these.

“The threshold is like if you have an animal that’s going extinct,” Pujo-Menjouet said.

“For love, it’s exactly the same. This threshold, I would say, is the strength of the relationship and the trust. If you trust someone strongly, the threshold is going to be really low, and that is the safe zone. So, that’s where you could have the decrease of the population, but in this case, it’s the decrease of the feelings.”

In other words, strong trust pulls the “safe” floor down, giving the relationship more room to absorb a bad week before trouble sets in.

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Various external factors can shape those three forces, including each person’s background, religion, and culture. He said that the way a relationship is handled in the beginning generally impacts its outcome. For instance, couples that take things slow tend to last longer and are more likely to find their partner’s habits interesting rather than irritating. He did point out that regardless of how a relationship starts, patterns reveal that each person must actively choose to practice accountability in the relationship and focus on the qualities they appreciate about their partner.

Come on, it’s no surprise that if math’s involved, there’s homework.

“I want this model to be kind of universal and I want everyone in the world to be able to say ‘oh, this is me,’” Pujo-Menjouet said.

His research is also moving into new territory—how technology factors into people’s success in love. In particular, he’s begun examining patterns in dating apps, which appear to leave more users single than paired. He said this is because people in densely populated areas tend to have too many options, and people in sparse areas have too few. Based on these patterns, Pujo-Menjouet said he foresees younger generations shifting back toward meeting potential partners in person.

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Overall, Pujo-Menjouet has had to collaborate with experts in various fields to conduct this research, including psychology and biology. He said even these interactions and efforts to translate knowledge across considerably different fields have heightened his understanding of human relationships and have given him even more ideas for how to examine them in the future.

It looks like Pujo-Menjouet has set a new standard: love doctors and love gurus are out and love scientists are in!