London, July 2 (IANS): Love does come at a hefty price - two intimate friends to be precise.
According to a new Oxford University study, a person who falls in love runs the risk of losing two good friends at least.
The study relied upon the “inner core” philosophy that typically believes that a normal human being has five friends in his/her circle.
“People in romantic relationships, instead of having the typical five friends on average, they only have four in that circle. Bearing in mind that one of those is the new person that has come into your life, it means you have had to give up two others,” Robin Dunbar, a professor of evolutionary anthropology at Oxford, was quoted as saying.
For the study, researchers questioned nearly 540 people, aged 18 and up.
The results found that falling in love leads to a smaller “inner core”, typically reduced by one family member and one friend to accommodate your new lover.
According to Dunbar, the intimacy directly corelates with the frequency of your interactions with a person.
“What I suspect happens is that your attention is so wholly focused on your romantic partner that you just do not get to see the others,” he was quoted as saying in a BBC report.