The “Love” Equation …

The Love Equation actually is supposed to describe all human relationships. Specifically it describes one person's feelings for another person in terms of four basic components and their relative importance.

The components are Attraction, Trust, Fondness, and Emotional Attachment. Attraction is the obvious one, it is the person's desire to mate with the other. Trust is how much you feel you can depend on the other person to act a certain way. This encompasses things like whether the person expects the other to tell the truth, keep a secret, or even respond in a predictable manner to an event. Fondness is the comfort of familiarity with the other person. It is the component that is most directly related to the amount of time the two people have spent together. The last component, Emotional Attachment, is what some people might call the "X Factor," or that "special something." We defined it as how much your feeling of well-being depends on the other person. Being constantly worried about the other person, or finding joy in their happiness and being particularly affected by their despair--these are the things that are included in this component.

The coefficients in front of the four components are supposed to represent how many people think different components have different levels of importance.

To look at it like an actual mathematical formula, when the sum of all the components times the coefficients reaches some high threshold, that is what we call Love.