Raj Persaud: Romance survey

Raj Persaud sifts through the intriguing results of our online survey into relationships and how to make them last

One of the largest experiments ever conducted about love - involving more than 10,000 visitors to the Telegraph’s website - has provided startling new insights into the science of romance.

	Maintaining the passion is the real challenge in a relationship

Those taking the survey were subjected to an online grilling about their psyche and love lives, based on the latest developments in personality testing, which provided psychologists with new insights into how to put a relationship on a firm footing - including the key personality attributes that determine how successful your relationship will be, and proof of an "eight-year itch" that drains the passion from a pairing.

The experiment, constructed and run by Dr Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic, a senior lecturer at Goldsmiths and Professor Adrian Furnham of University College London, investigated a theory that the key components in relationships are intimacy (warm feelings of closeness), passion (sexual/physical attraction) and commitment (long-term intentions to love and maintain love).

They started with the assumption that the ultimate experience of romance is being in a relationship which scores highly on all three - intimate, passionate and committed.

This is described by experts as a "consummate" relationship, one even the characters in Mills & Boon novels or Hollywood movies would struggle to match.

Everyone wants this ideal relationship, but, unfortunately, it's very rare - only 15 per cent of those taking part in this experiment had high enough scores in all three areas to reach this Holy Grail, of a relationship conventionally understood to be the deepest, longest-lasting and most fulfilling.

Respondents tended to be 30 years old, who had been in a relationship lasting at least four years but no more than eight years.

These figures are intriguing, because they suggest not only that you have to be in a relationship for a certain time to begin to feel confident about commitment, but also that after a certain period, a levelling out of or even decline in passion starts to erode the possibility of having a consummate relationship.

In fact, the secret once you have made it to eight years - by which time you're fairly confident about commitment - is to maintain the passion.

It's the plummet in mutual attraction beyond this milestone that this research suggests is the major obstacle to achieving and maintaining a consummate relationship.

This supports the idea of a "seven-year itch", a crucial tipping point at which relationships start to cool, or at least stop simmering.

Up until this point, our study found that every additional year spent in a relationship made a big contribution to the sense of commitment. The research also found that the key determinant of the quality of your relationship is not - as might have been expected - your age, the length of your relationship or your gender.

In fact, it's your personality. If you are a woman, the key attribute that seemed to predict longer relationships was - amazingly - neuroticism: women who were emotionally unstable tended to be in longer relationships.

Perhaps this is because those women who worry more, and are more pessimistic about the future, become dependent on the security of a relationship, and end up rendering their partners indispensable.

The opposite of neurotic is stable, adjusted and resilient - so maybe those women need men less and are more willing to shed them if they think the relationship is not working.

For men, by contrast, it was the more extroverted who appeared to find themselves in longer relationships. This could be because these men have more social confidence to choose the right mate in the first place rather than settle for second best.

This finding appears counterintuitive, because the more extroverted are more likely to meet new people and have more opportunity to stray.

Yet they seem more satisfied with their current relationships; this may be because women seem to prefer socially confident men. However, the key personality attribute which most strongly predicted whether you were in a consummate relationship or not was agreeableness - out-performing extraversion, emotional stability, conscientiousness and openness to experience all put together.

The lay term for agreeableness might be friendliness, but the "disagreeable" are in fact those most often rewarded in the workplace: they are more interested in getting ahead of rather than getting on with others.

As a result, they tend to be competitive, prefer not to trust others and are rather argumentative and straight-talking. The disagreeable may end up having higher status and earning more, but the very personality attribute that helps them climb the greasy pole renders them less successful in longer-term romantic relationships - no matter how flashy a car they drive.

Remember: successful, tough and competitive people frequently trade off power and prestige for love and affection.

One final sobering thought for Valentine’s Day: according to our findings, the most passionate relationships of all tend not to last as long. Those who erred on the side of friendship, rather than acted like Casanova, had the better relationships over the longer term.

Science has delivered an answer which is counterintuitive, and more boring than Hollywood would like - but perhaps all the more useful for that, particularly given the length of the average Hollywood marriage.

FIVE SCIENTIFIC TIPS FOR THE PERFECT VALENTINES DAY

(1) Do something stressful or challenging - research suggests that stress heightens attraction, so get the adrenaline flowing by going to see a horror film or ride a roller coaster rather than just having a quiet meal.

(2) Make the heart beat faster - research confirms that couples who stay together play together, so decide on some regular activities such as dancing, walking or a particular sport.

(3) Honesty is not the best policy - instead, be co-operative and kind. The key predictor of whether you are going to be in a relationship or not is how straightforward you are - the more brutally honest, the more likely you are to be single (so no, her bum does not look big in that). But don’t cheat or lie in matters of the heart.

(4) Touch a lot - touching releases the hormone oxytocin, nicknamed the "cuddle" hormone, which is linked to feelings of closeness and also mediates orgasms.

(5) Look at the lips - the strongest body language displays that predict sexual interest and arousal have been found to centre on the lips, in particular licking, puckering and touching. However, make sure not to neglect the eyes...