Scientists: True love can last a lifetime

• Story Highlights
• Scientists have discovered that people can have a love that lasts a lifetime
  
• About 10 percent of couples appear to feel young love's first blush permanently
  
• Research has suggested first stages of romantic love fade within 15 months

"Love's first blush fading? Lost that loving feeling? Love is not all around?

Sick of cliches?

Take heart, scientists have discovered that people can have a love that lasts a lifetime.

Using brain scans, researchers at Stony Brook University in New York have discovered a small number of couples respond with as much passion after 20 years together as most people only do during the early throes of romance, Britain's Sunday Times newspaper reported.

The researchers scanned the brains of couples together for 20 years and compared them with results from new lovers, the Sunday Times said.

About 10 percent of the mature couples had the same chemical reactions when shown photographs of their loved ones as those just starting out.

Previous research has suggested that the first stages of romantic love fade within 15 months and after 10 years it has gone completely, the newspaper said.

"The findings go against the traditional view of romance -- that it drops off sharply in the first decade -- but we are sure it's real," said Arthur Aron, a psychologist at Stony Brook, told the Sunday Times."

http://www.cnn.com/2009/HEALTH/01/04/true.love.found/index.html

I do not usually quote articles from News websites here but I am making an exception for this one. It explains how I can feel the way I do about Santino after six years of being together. I am just as in love with him now as in the beginning, and I have always felt that our love WILL last a lifetime.

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