Modern Love

Last month, a few days before Mandy Len Catron’s essay “To Fall in Love With Anyone, Do This” appeared in Modern Love, she aired some concerns about the coming exposure on her blog, writing that while a few hundred people may see one of her blog posts, thousands would see this column.

She underestimated by about 8 million.

In the essay, Ms. Catron told of how she found love by replicating a 20-year-old experiment by the psychologist Arthur Aron that involved two strangers asking each other 36 increasingly personal questions followed by a four-minute staring session to see if doing so would lead to intimacy and love. For Ms. Catron and the man she barely knew, the experiment worked.

Readers found this combination of romance and science (with a happy ending) irresistible. Ms. Catron’s story went viral, with couples across the country and around the globe trying the questions themselves.Article