Dangerous Liaisons : Love Can Bloom Amid Intense Situations--War, Earthquakes, Captivity . . . or, Maybe, Prepping for the Trial of the Century

This isn’t about love at first sight. It’s about love at 72nd sight, and under some of the most stressful, adrenalin-pumping conditions imaginable.

Or it’s not love, as the case may be.

But tongues and tabloids have been wagging with speculation about the supposed after-hours liaison between O.J. Simpson prosecutors Marcia Clark and Christopher Darden. In the Nov. 13 issue of People magazine, columnist Mitchell Fink reports that Darden says he’ll marry Clark when her divorce comes through.

Clark quickly dismissed that motion. “It’s ridiculous. It’s ridiculous,” the peeved prosecutor told reporters outside a New York theater. And the official word from the L.A. district attorney’s office is, don’t read too much into reports of a weekend getaway to Reno a deux, and don’t make too much of a mere swing by San Francisco’s DNA Lounge. Press reports have also linked Darden with yet another legal celebrity, Anita Hill.

Longtime Clark crony Roslyn Dauber told People that appearances of a D.A. office romance are deceiving: “They’ve just been through an incredible experience together, like going through a war.”

Precisely. That’s why experts in affairs of the heart nod knowingly at the romantic rumors. Let’s just say that if they were true, no one on this bus would be surprised.

Indeed, pressure cookers could well be the ultimate aphrodisiacs. Mix in a little isolation for extended periods, and you have a potent heart grabber.

“It’s almost the perfect crucible,” says Rutgers University anthropologist Helen Fisher, author of “Anatomy of Love” (Ballantine, 1993). “Danger is very sexually exciting.”

“They were in a fight-or-flight stress state,” says Leslie Pam, co-host of the KMPC-AM (710) talk show “Sex and Relationships.” “When you believe it’s a struggle for life and survival and you’re failing and the other person jumps in, how can that not be a turn-on?”

Free-lance photographer Mike Kubeisy certainly never thought he was getting in the mood for l’amour when he met his neighbor--and spouse-to-be--amid the detritus of the Northridge Meadows apartment complex destroyed by the 1994 earthquake.

“We each knew what the other was going through,” says Kubeisy, who’s coming up on the one-year anniversary of his marriage to Patricia Silden in December. “I have many friends who are active in our church and Lord knows there were prayers for us, but no one heard the cries like we did or felt the fear like we did.”

In psychologese, it’s “the two-factor theory of emotion,” says Midge Wilson, a psychology professor at Chicago’s DePaul University. “In order for a person to experience and label a feeling of love, there has to be arousal present as well as some reason to label the arousal as attraction. Situations of intense fear or jealousy can fuel arousal, or maybe too much caffeine. It heightens the chance you will misattribute that arousal to attraction.”

A corollary love potion is “the Stockholm Effect,” named after a Swedish bank robbery in which, Wilson says, captive bonded to criminal. That hostage’s love for her captor could help explain why Patty Hearst bedded Donald DeFreeze, her Symbionese Liberation Army captor, Wilson says.

Experts point to a famous 1974 study conducted by two Canadian psychologists that called on an attractive woman to interview men on two bridges--a secure bridge and a dangerous bridge over a deep ravine. The men were significantly more likely to ask for her phone number on the scary--and arousing--bridge.

“They were more sensitive to all of the cues around them,” Fisher says. “And both men and women naturally send out flirtatious signals. We were built to flirt with each other. We were not built to work in close proximity with each other.”

Without things getting complicated, that is. Affection can bloom amid long, intense hours, such as one might spend, say, preparing for the trial of the century.

“The need to win was very strong,” Fisher says. “And sex and aggression are very closely linked in the brain. Testosterone and the other androgens are associated with assertiveness and also with sexuality. More than likely, they were stimulated by the body’s and brain’s natural chemicals for assertive behavior--those same chemicals are associated with the sex drive.”

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Courtrooms can be cozy, but a more likely backdrop for romance is the sometimes exotic landscape of the film set, like Kauai’s transformation into “Jurassic Park.” There, love bloomed for Jeff Goldblum and Laura Dern amid the arousing 130 m.p.h. winds of 1992’s Hurricane Iniki.

Although that pairing appears to have stuck, some set romances are all intensity--and nothing else. Sharon Stone reportedly lured newlywed producer Bill MacDonald on the set of “Sliver” but later gave him the boot.

“Having lived with an actress,” Pam says, “they go to do a film, they live in stressed-out situations, they have affairs with leading men. But when the party’s over and they go to their regular lives, they go, ‘My real life is boring. I like the high drama which drew me to someone artificially.’ ”

The real-life blues can hit any new couple coming off the battlefield. “ ‘How will we make this thing function after wartime?’ ” says Pam’s “Sex and Relationships” co-host and wife, Ann Christie. “That’s why a lot of wartime marriages didn’t work out. Because they come home and can’t bridge the gap.”

On the other hand, intense situations may prompt you to consider people you might otherwise overlook--who may actually be just right for you. Could that be true of Darden and the newly single Clark?

“Probably in any other circumstances these two would say, ‘No way, Jose,’ ” Pam says. “What they had going for them was that it wasn’t a sexual relationship [starting out]. Sex never reared its ugly head, let’s assume, to complicate matters. Instantly, the first time you have sex, it changes rules big time. The honesty you bring to each other, being willing to listen, when you become the lover, you’re thrown into the maelstrom. That didn’t interfere, so they developed great relationship skills. ‘The pressure’s off. Let’s celebrate. You’re kinda cute.’ ”

Kubeisy says the extraordinary atmosphere forged by the earthquake opened his eyes to the extraordinary woman he married.

“You always go through life looking for what you want instead of what you need,” says the Simi Valley resident. “I had to learn a tough lesson. All my friends knew I was looking for a short-haired, glamorous, outgoing type of woman. Tricia is a professional. Her vocabulary is four-syllable words. Her tastes are radically different, yet the things she holds closest to her heart are what keep us together--honor, integrity and loyalty. Now with Tricia, there’s nothing in my heart that says, ‘I wonder what it would have been like to date my quote unquote dream girl.’ ”