Why Proximity and Shared Experiences Can Intensify Attraction

She had never thought of him that way. For months, he was just the colleague across the hall — the one who brings croissants on Fridays and makes mediocre jokes in meetings. Then came the company retreat. Three days in a hotel in Normandy. Same corridor, same meals, same workshops, same evenings at the bar. And something shifted.

In the article that follows, I explore attachment and how it shapes your relationships. If you recognise yourself in this theme, I designed an attachment style test that helps you take stock of your attachment style and its influence on your relationship. It comes with a guide to extend your reflection beyond the results. I also wrote a book on this subject, Understanding Your Attachment Style, if you would like to go further.

The linked tests are paid self-assessments for reflection, not clinical diagnoses or assessments of another person.

The setting may have influenced the encounter. This illustrative opening does not establish why an individual felt attracted.

People sometimes report intense connections during trips or shared living. Here, closed enclosure describes a setting; it is not a validated clinical diagnosis or a single established mechanism.

1. What is a closed enclosure?

A descriptive setting

A closed enclosure is a physically or socially bounded environment in which a restricted group of people shares a space, a time, and common experiences during a defined period. The essential characteristics are:

• Spatial delimitation — a physical space with identifiable boundaries (an office, a hotel, a boat, a camp, a hospital)
• Social restriction — the number of accessible people is limited
• Shared temporality — participants live the same events at the same pace
• Reduced alternatives — interaction possibilities are channelled toward a restricted group

Common examples

Closed enclosures are everywhere in modern life:

• The workplace — eight hours a day, five days a week, with the same people
• The organised trip — two weeks with a fixed group in a foreign environment
• Training courses/internships — a few days to a few weeks of intensive immersion
• Hospital/convalescence — forced proximity in an emotionally charged context
• Flatshares — daily sharing of an intimate space
• Military service/camp — isolation from the outside world and shared experience
• Festivals/retreats — a temporary bubble with its own social rules

What distinguishes a closed enclosure from simple proximity

Several features may coincide in a shared setting: repeated contact, novelty, a limited group, or shared activities. Their presence does not prove accelerated attachment.

2. The psychological mechanisms: why it works

The mere exposure effect

Zajonc’s research concerns effects of exposure on evaluations. It is not a rule that repeatedly seeing anyone increases romantic attraction.

Exposure can affect familiarity and liking under some conditions. Familiarity does not establish safety, reliability, or compatibility.

Repeated exposure research is relevant background, but effects depend on the context and should not be generalized to every encounter.

Proximity and the availability bias

Research on proximity examines opportunities for interaction. It does not show that distance is the best predictor of every friendship or romance, or that shared interests do not matter.

A limited social setting may change whom someone meets or notices. It does not make a particular comparison process inevitable.

Accelerated intimacy and self-disclosure

Closed enclosures create conditions conducive to what psychologists call self-disclosure — the progressive revelation of personal information. Arthur Aron and colleagues (1997) showed that mutual exchange of intimate information generates a sense of emotional closeness that can be remarkably rapid.

People disclose personal information at different rates. Respect boundaries, consent, and the option not to disclose; fatigue or alcohol should not be used to lower someone’s resistance.

• Isolation from the usual world — far from landmarks, one is more open
• The feeling of a temporal bubble — what happens in this parenthesis seems disconnected from real life
• Shared vulnerability — being all in the same situation creates implicit solidarity
• Fatigue and alcohol — cognitive defences diminish with tiredness and social drinking

Physiological arousal and misattribution

Research on arousal and attribution raises questions about context. It cannot determine whether a particular person’s attraction is authentic or merely misattributed.

In a closed enclosure, sources of physiological arousal are multiple: the novelty of the environment, travel stress, the excitement of a break from routine, shared physical activity, social anxiety in a new group. All this physiological activation can be misattributed to the person present, creating a feeling of attraction that is actually mislabelled physiological arousal.

3. The neurochemistry of the closed enclosure

Oxytocin and accelerated bonding

Research on oxytocin and affiliation concerns complex processes. This article cannot infer hormone levels or establish a hormonal explanation of an individual attraction.

Feldman’s work is background on affiliation, not validation of the proposed closed-enclosure construct.

Dopamine and novelty

Novel experiences can feel engaging. Claiming a measured dopamine spike in these people would exceed the evidence.

Aron and colleagues studied shared activities and experienced relationship quality, not every new attraction or its meaning.

Cortisol and stress attachment

Paradoxically, stress can strengthen attachment. In stressful situations, the attachment system activates and drives the individual to seek proximity to a reassuring figure. If the only available figure in a stressful context is a colleague, a travel companion, or a teammate, then that person can become a temporary attachment figure — with all the emotional intensity that implies. I go deeper into this mechanism in The Closer You Get, the More I Pull Away.

Attachment research can inform questions about support under stress. It does not establish that people automatically attach to whoever is nearest.

4. Why the closed enclosure is so dangerous for existing couples

The structural contrast

Some established relationships include routine and practical responsibilities; others also retain novelty. There is no universal contrast with every new encounter.

A new acquaintance may be known in fewer circumstances than a long-term partner. Comparing the two requires recognizing that difference rather than assuming the new person is a fantasy or the established relationship must continue.

The fundamental attribution error

The fundamental attribution error (Ross, 1977) consists of attributing a person's behaviour to their character traits rather than to the situation. In the context of the closed enclosure, this means that the emotional intensity felt is attributed to the person ("they are exceptional") rather than to the context ("we are in a situation that artificially manufactures intensity").

Context and personal qualities can both matter. The intensity of a feeling is not proof of compatibility, but neither is it proof that the feeling is artificial.

The myth of the rediscovered soulmate

The closed enclosure often activates a particularly powerful cognitive schema: that of the rediscovered soulmate. The intensity and speed of the connection are interpreted as proof that this person is "special" — otherwise, how could one feel so much in so little time?

Intensity alone does not establish compatibility. Consider what is known about the person, shared values, consent, and behavior over time.

5. Variations of the closed enclosure

Shared settings at work

Work can provide repeated contact and shared goals. Consent, professional boundaries, and power differences remain important. No prevalence estimate is established here.

Shared settings during travel

Travel can change routines and opportunities for contact. It is not established here as the strongest form of a psychological effect.

A temporary setting may influence expectations; it does not make intensity inversely proportional to the expected duration of a relationship.

Professional therapeutic boundaries

Feelings toward a therapist can be discussed within professional boundaries. Transference is not adequately explained by a room, isolation, or one proposed mechanism.

Different theories of transference should not be presented as disproved by the descriptive idea of a closed setting. This article does not establish a new clinical explanation.

6. How to protect yourself: the CBT perspective

Metacognition as a shield

The first defence against the closed enclosure effect is metacognition — the ability to observe one's own thought processes. Concretely, this means:

• Recognising when you are in a closed enclosure
• Naming the effect: "I am in a context that manufactures emotional intensity"
• Separating the feeling from its interpretation: "I feel an attraction, but this does not mean this person is exceptional — it means the context is exceptional"

The reality testing technique

In CBT, reality testing consists of confronting a belief with objective evidence. Applied to the closed enclosure:

• "Would I feel the same if I met this person in a supermarket on a Tuesday afternoon?"
• "Would this connection survive three months of daily routine?"
• "What do I actually know about this person, beyond what they have chosen to show in this context?"
• "Is the intensity I feel proportional to what I actually know about this person?"

Cognitive defusion

Cognitive defusion involves noticing a thought as a thought. It may support reflection, but does not guarantee a change in feeling or resolve a relationship decision.

Reinvestigating the existing relationship

When the closed enclosure highlights a contrast with the existing relationship, the therapeutic response is not to deny the contrast — it is to investigate it. The contrast often reveals unmet needs in the current relationship: a need for novelty, adventure, attention, mutual discovery.

The question is not "is this new person better than my partner?" but "what does this attraction tell me about what is missing in my current life?" The attraction is a signal, not a directive.

7. The positive closed enclosure: using the mechanism wisely

Renewing the closed enclosure within the couple

If the closed enclosure can create attachment between strangers, it can also renew attachment between established partners. This is the principle behind couple retreats, trips for two, child-free weekends — deliberately creating a closed enclosure within the relationship.

Aron’s research offers limited evidence about shared novel tasks and experienced relationship quality. It does not show that all retreats produce the same effect or that effects necessarily last.

Conditions for an effective couple closed enclosure

• Real novelty — not the same restaurant, the same hotel, the same routine. A genuinely new environment.
• Disconnection — no phone, no emails, no children. A true bubble.
• Shared vulnerability — doing something that takes both partners out of their comfort zone.
• Feasible time — choose an activity both partners want and can afford. No minimum duration is established here.

Limitations of the approach

If there is intimidation, coercive control, or fear of retaliation, prioritize confidential individual support and safety rather than confronting a partner or starting joint exercises. Neither remaining together nor forgiveness is an obligation. Shared vulnerability, isolation, or alcohol must never be imposed to create attraction.

It would be naive to think that a weekend for two suffices to resolve deep relational problems. The couple closed enclosure can reveal what still works in the relationship, but it cannot repair what is broken. If the problems are structural — toxic communication, unresolved betrayal, fundamental incompatibility — the closed enclosure will only highlight them in a more concentrated setting.

8. Conclusion: context is not content

Context can influence attraction, but cannot settle its meaning. Allow time, consider real behavior, and avoid interpreting intensity as either destiny or proof of a meaningless encounter.

A feeling is real as an experience; its meaning may remain uncertain. Different explanations can coexist.

Reflection can help separate observations from interpretations without treating emotion as noise or prescribing a single mature response.

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References and limits

Aron and colleagues (2000): shared novel activities and experienced relationship quality. The experiments included seven-minute tasks; they do not establish a 48-hour requirement. Other theoretical references above are background, not independent validation of a closed-enclosure construct.