AmAre Way: happiness, living joyfully

Formula for love: is there a need for a love formula?

Why should we even try to represent love with a formula? Can human emotions be quantified? Our formula is meant to be descriptive and preventive, but not predictive. That is, it gives an idea of how the situation is now, and the strengths and weaknesses a couple should be aware of and act upon. Regardless of what the number says, a couple is always responsible, here and now, for the success of the relationship, so a high result still means a couple should keep going with the great affinity, and a lower result means there are aspects to act upon to improve the relationship.

One of the love formula’s strengths is its unlikeness to reach One, the perfect score, or Zero. This formula is useful so couples can improve their awareness about the situation so far, and build a better present. Once the formula served its purposes, then a couple can move on. Because the ultimate success of a relationship is not reaching number 1, it is in finding and renewing the appropriate couple-dynamics. If partners can accept they may have different views, and the fact they assign different weights and grades to the pillars of their relationship, and still respect and love each other, doing their best for the mutual happiness, they are on the way to build together a lasting relationship.

Getting down to variables

Getting down to the formula… Love can be represented as:

Love = (Aw * Ag) + (Mw * Mg) + (A1w * A1g) + (Rw * Rg) + (Ew * Eg) + (…).

Explanation:

A: Aware (being) of each other and couple’s feelings, thoughts, needs and wants
M: Meditating together, or at least sharing thoughts
A1:Active (being) together, do things together
R: Respectful (being) of each other and couple’s feelings, thoughts, needs and wants
E: Eating properly and support each other healthy lifestyle, and also feed the relationship with positive feelings and thoughts
(…): if there are additional aspects considered too important to be included in the rest of the formula, they can be weighted and graded here

Aspects quantified:
w: weight, importance given to each aspect (sum of all weights should be 100)
g: grade, rating given to each aspect (each grade is a value between 0 and 1)

How to use the formula

This formula can be used in many ways, including to quantify the importance of a relationship, how satisfying it is and its strength. Importance is all about what people feel they put into a relationship; so, a respondent should insert the weight of each of the five or more aspects of a successful relationship, and also how much he/she is doing for each of these aspects.

How satisfying a relationship is determined by how people perceive and appreciate what the partner puts in the relationship; so, a respondent should insert the weight of each of the five or more aspects of a successful relationship, and also how much he/she perceives the partner is doing for each of these aspects.

The strength of a relationship can be quantified with the sum of importance and satisfaction for each partner; the higher the sum, and the more balanced the perception from each side, the better. Let’s just keep in mind that we may often discount the importance of what our partner does for the couple, and overestimate how good we are in contributing and going the extra-mile in the name of love. Also at certain stages, for example when we start a relationship, we may perceive less our contribution to the building of our relationship, and put unrealistic expectation on our partner.

Tools to calculate the AmAre Way Love Index

You can easily calculate your AmAre Way Love Index using our *Love Calculator Spreadsheet*. If you prefer a printable version, to fill with your partner, you can use our love formula chart.

Partners can then share their own results at the same time, and discuss them. Additional interesting applications include comparing what people perceive as their partner’s satisfaction level is (using w: estimated weight, estimated importance given by partner to each aspect; g: estimated grade, estimated rating given by partner to each aspect) with how happy their partner really is.

We are also working on the formula of happiness which, in its more advanced form, will allow to predict different degrees of likelihood for an event, action, etc. to succeed in a specific context. If you want to keep updated, just join our newsletter at the top of the page. Stay tuned for more formulas, the AmAre Way