Understanding bonds, your own included

Becoming a couple also means entering into a relationship with people one has not chosen. Expectations towards them vary a great deal, and they are rarely put into words.

People readily say that we pair up with someone who resembles us. Sociology has been measuring this for a long time, and the difficulty lies less in the finding than in its interpretation.

The French Civil Code neither defines nor regulates engagement. The courts have nonetheless drawn a few rules from it, on breaking off as well as on gifts.

The way a couple gets through difficulties has long been studied. Part of the research has looked at the reverse: what happens when one of the two announces some good news.

Two people can want the same thing and separate because they do not want it at the same moment. It is one of the most frequent disagreements, and the worst formulated.

The one who shuts down in the middle of an argument looks like the calmer of the two. The physiological measurements say exactly the opposite.

A spouse who is sole owner cannot sell the family home without the other's agreement. This little-known rule is one of the most protective in family law, and it does not apply to everyone.

Marrying the person you love looks like the natural order of things. It is a young idea, a minority one on the scale of history, and long held to be unreasonable.

Cohabitation has been defined by French law since 1999, and creates almost no rights between the parties. That freedom has precise consequences, generally discovered at the worst possible moment.

The preferences people state before an encounter predict very poorly the people they then choose. The result is solid, and it unsettles the identikit portraits.

The best-established factor in attraction is neither charm nor affinity: it is the probability of crossing paths. A result from 1950 that seventy-five years have not refuted.

Four labels circulate everywhere, drawn from a theory that stopped using them long ago. What the research actually says is more interesting, and far less definitive.

The word covers at least three different experiences, which do not call for the same responses. Confusing them is a regular source of conversations that go nowhere.

One waits for words, the other produces few and compensates with deeds. Both are attached in the same way, and each finds the other distant.