Category: Relationships

This type of couple were twice as likely to break up.

The most damaging relationship pattern is a dramatic style marked by emotional highs and lows and wildly fluctuating commitment.

Dramatic couples prefer doing things separately and tend to focus on each other’s negative qualities.

This type of couple is twice as likely to break up as those that fall into other categories.

Their relationships were the most likely to deteriorate over time.

One-third of couples in the study fell into the ‘dramatic’ category.

Dr Brian Ogolsky, the study’s first author, said:

“These couples have a lot of ups and downs, and their commitment swings wildly.

They tend to make decisions based on negative events that are occurring in the relationship or on discouraging things that they’re thinking about the relationship, and those things are likely to chip away at their commitment.”

These conclusions come from research involving 376 dating couples.

After tracking relationship commitment for nine months, the psychologists placed the couples into one of four categories.

Dr Ogolsky explained:

“The four types of dating couples that we found included the dramatic couple, the conflict-ridden couple, the socially involved couple, and the partner-focused couple.”

Partner-focused couples

In contrast to the dramatic type, the partner-focused couples — who made up around one-third of the sample — were the most likely to stay together.

Dr Ogolsky said:

“These partners are very involved with each other and dependent on each other, and they use what’s happening in their relationship to advance their commitment to deeper levels.

People in these couples had the highest levels of conscientiousness, which suggests that they are very careful and thoughtful about the way they approach their relationship choices.”

Conflicting couples

Couples that were full of conflict — 12 percent in this study — were still not as rocky as dramatic couples, the researchers found.

Dr Ogolsky said:

“These couples operate in a tension between conflict that pushes them apart and passionate attraction that pulls them back together.

This kind of love may not be sustainable in the long term–you’d go crazy if you had 30 to 50 years of mind-bending passion.

Partners may change from one group to another over time,”

Socially-involved couples

Like partner-focused couples, socially-involved couples (the remaining 19 percent) had very good relationships.

They shared a social network and used it to guide decisions about their commitment.

Dr Ogolsky said:

“Ideally long-term relationships should be predicated on friendship-based love.

And having mutual friends makes people in these couples feel closer and more committed.”

Couples can naturally move between these categories as their relationships develop over time.

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The study was published in the Journal of Marriage and Family (Ogolsky et al., 2015).

Both husbands and wives can benefit from this simple technique.

Acting compassionately towards your partner makes you feel better, even if your partner doesn’t notice .

Compassionate acts include expressing tenderness, showing your partner they are valued and changing plans to accommodate them.

The study examined 175 newlyweds who had been together for an average of 7 months.

Professor Harry Reis, the study’s first author, said:

“Our study was designed to test a hypothesis put forth by Tenzin Gyatso, the current Dalai Lama.

That compassionate concern for others’ welfare enhances one’s own affective state.”

For the study, the couples kept a diary over two weeks, recording when they acted compassionately towards their partners.

The study’s authors describe ‘compassionate acts’ as:

“…caregiving that is freely given, focused on understanding and genuine acceptance of the other’s needs and wishes, and expressed through openness, warmth, and a willingness to put a partner’s goals ahead of one’s own.”

The results showed that partners benefited from receiving compassionate acts, but only if they noticed them.

However, performing the compassionate act was beneficial to the partner who did it, whether their partner noticed or not.

Professor Reis said:

“Clearly, a recipient needs to notice a compassionate act in order to emotionally benefit from it.

But recognition is much less a factor for the donor.”

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The study was published in the journal Emotion (Reis et al., 2017).

Language use changes three months before a relationship break up.

Signs that a couple is heading for a break-up are evident in their language months before the event.

The types of words both partners use change about three months before the break-up.

Their language shifts more towards a self-focus with greater use of the pronoun “I”.

There is also a higher use of words that indicate cognitive processing.

This suggests that they are thinking intensely about what is happening to their relationship.

Examples of cognitive processing words include ‘want’, ‘think’, ‘need’, ‘realise’, ‘decide’, ‘reason’, ‘depend’ and ‘wonder’.

This is true whether they are the person about to end the relationship or the one on the receiving end.

Ms Sarah Seraj, the study’s first author, said:

“It seems that even before people are aware that a breakup is going to happen, it starts to affect their lives.

We don’t really notice how many times we are using prepositions, articles or pronouns, but these function words get altered in a way when you’re going through a personal upheaval that can tell us a lot about our emotional and psychological state.”

The study analysed over 1 million posts by 6,800 people on Reddit, an online forum for discussing a wide range of subjects.

One of these forums, called r/BreakUps, is dedicated to relationship issues.

The results of the analysis revealed that language use became more personal and informal around three months before the couples broke up.

This pattern continued for a further six months afterwards.

Similar shifts in language use were seen in forums discussing divorce and other upheavals.

Ms Seraj said:

“These are signs that someone is carrying a heavy cognitive load.

They’re thinking or working through something and are becoming more self-focused.

Sometimes the use of the word ‘I’ is correlated with depression and sadness.

When people are depressed, they tend to focus on themselves and are not able to relate to others as much.”

For a minority of people, language patterns did not revert, and they returned to the r/BreakUps forum to retell the story of their break-up again and again.

This suggests that some people find it particularly hard to adjust to their new circumstances.

Dr Kate Blackburn, study co-author, said:

“What makes this project so fascinating is that for the first time, through technology, we can see the way people experience a breakup in real time.

Implications for this research are far reaching.

At the most basic level, it gives you, me, and everyday people insight into how loved ones may respond over time to the end of a romantic relationship.”

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The study was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (Seraj et al., 2021).