Why do couples break up despite promising eternal love?José Manuel Rey, professor in the Department of Economic Analysis at the Complutense University of Madrid, has prepareda mathematical modelbased on the second law of thermodynamics and the optimal control equations commonly used by NASA engineers to explainwhy romantic relationships end.
Experts agree on the existence of a kind of second law of thermodynamics of couple relationships, according to whichit takes some effort to stick together, as Rey explains in an article published in the magazinePLos One. According to their results, maintaining long-term love “is very expensive and, with exceptions, almost impossible.” “The popular saying that love is not enough holds true and suggests that the ‘erosion’ of relationships must be somehow prevented.”
Lasting relationshipsare those in which balance is maintained, so that both members strive,without neglecting the relationship at any time despite the fact that? the dynamics of things, the inertia, makes one tend to relax and make less and less effort.? Furthermore, according to the researcher, the effort is always greater than one can anticipate at the beginning of the relationship. That explains what he callsthe “paradox of failure”, that is, why many people get married in love and committed to living together forever but they don’t get it. The mathematical model is quite daunting, “especially if we apply it to the society in which we live, in which low-effort, high-reward policies prevail,” Rey concludes.
