Epilogue

For us, the most important take-home message from this book is that
relationships should not be left to chance. Relationships are one of the
most rewarding of human experiences, above and beyond other gifts
that life has to offer. In fact, one study found that 73 percent of over
three hundred university student participants were willing to sacrifice
the majority of their goals in life for a romantic relationship. But despite
the importance we assign to our most intimate bonds, most of us still
know very little about the science behind romantic relationships and
allow ourselves all too often to be guided by misconceptions and
myths.
Even the two of us, having thoroughly studied the science behind
adult attachment styles, occasionally find ourselves falling back into
familiar patterns of thinking when we hear a certain love story or watch
a romantic movie that pushes all our old buttons. We recently saw a
popular boy-meets-girl film that did just that. A young man falls
passionately in love with a beautiful and intelligent woman. He
becomes consumed by the desire to spend the rest of his life with her.
She, on the other hand, is determined to stay free and unattached—
and tells him so from the start. Throughout the story, she sends mixed
messages; she flirts and strings him along, which allows him to keep
hoping for a happy ending. But in an atypical Hollywood twist, she
breaks his heart. He later discovers that she has gone on to marry the
man of her dreams and is living happily ever after. (Well, to the best of
his, and our, knowledge, because the movie ends there.)
Our first reaction, along with the rest of the audience, was to fall in
love with the woman. She was strong, passionate, independent—a
truly free spirit. And she was honest; she warned him in advance that
she wasn’t looking for a serious relationship. We certainly couldn’t fault
her for that. Besides, he obviously just wasn’t “the one” for her (after all,
we were told she later found “the one”). For much of the movie we were
also enthralled with the romantic possibility that she might open up to