Study: Couples Who Head in Same Direction Have Better Relationships - East Idaho News
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Study: Couples Who Head in Same Direction Have Better Relationships

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GETTY H 062812 CoupleHandHolding?  SQUARESPACE CACHEVERSION=1340880382304Stockbyte/Thinkstock(HONG KONG) — Two hearts will beat as one if they’re headed in the same direction, according to studies of married couples in the U.S. and Hong Kong.

A research team led by Irene Huang of the Chinese University of Hong Kong found that romantic relationships seem to work better when couples took approximately the same daily commuting path to work.

Researchers checked the commuting patterns of a few hundred married American and Chinese couples who took the subway to work, learning that people who took parallel routes seemed more content with each other.

The reason, Huang and her team theorized, is because going in the same direction indicates shared goals and this common result “increases interpersonal attraction.”

As a follow-up, an experiment conducted in Hong Kong found that randomly-paired men and women who walked into an exercise room from the same direction were more drawn toward each other.

Borrowing a line from a French author, Huang wrote in the study, “Love does not consist in gazing at each other, but looking in the same direction together.”

Copyright 2012 ABC News Radio

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