If you have heard of “The 36 Questions That Lead to Love,” you may already know the story of Mandy Len Catron and Mark Janusz Bondyra’s first date.
Ms. Catron wrote about it in an essay, “To Fall in Love With Anyone, Do This,” which was published in the Modern Love column of this newspaper in 2015. In the piece, she described how she and Mr. Bondyra, an acquaintance at the time, had replicated a scientific experiment “designed to create romantic love.” They asked each other 36 increasingly personal questions, and then stared into each other’s eyes for four minutes.
The article became one of the most-read stories on The New York Times’s website that year, and continues to be widely read. The 36 questions — from a 1997 study by the psychologist Arthur Aron (and others) — spun into a phenomenon of their own, with countless duos trying them out. In Ms. Catron’s story, many readers found an irresistible premise: a kind of formula for falling in love.
As someone who researches and writes about romantic love and relationships, Ms. Catron was — and still is — wary of formulas and simple narratives of love. After all, there is always more to the story. (More than you could fit in, say, a newspaper column.)
Ms. Catron, now 44, and Mr. Bondyra, 49, first met in February 2011, when she was teaching a writing class at the University of British Columbia, where she is a lecturer. It was a continuing education course for community members, and Mr. Bondyra, a user experience designer and business analyst, enrolled.
“I took the class, and I was very struck by Mandy,” Mr. Bondyra said. “She’s a really good teacher and she’s very passionate about the subject.” He ended the course with a few new friends — and a bit of a crush on his teacher. Over the next few years, they occasionally ran into each other at their climbing gym, and stayed in touch on social media and through mutual friends from the class.