Culture is full of examples of young people falling in love for the first time. These episodes are often portrayed as particularly intense. Nothing is known empirically, however, about the factors associated with the first episode of romantic love. This study used data from the Romantic Love Survey 2022 to investigate factors associated with the first episode of romantic love. A binary logistic regression revealed that when participants fell in love relative to when they started their romantic relationship, obsessive thinking about their loved one, and commitment were positively associated with the first episode of romantic love. These findings provide evidence which can inform future studies on factors associated with the first episode of romantic love.
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Bode et al. (2024) studied this question.
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