Category: Relationships

Marriage is about balancing what you put in with what you expect to get out.

Couples are becoming increasingly dissatisfied with their marriages because they are demanding more without putting in the necessary time.

Spouses either need to demand less from their relationship or put in more effort, says psychologist Professor Eli Finkel.

Increasingly, those with children put all their time into parenting and those without children concentrate on work.

As a result, there is less time to spend on the relationship.

Professor Finkel, the study’s first author, sees two options:

“You can demand less from your partner, focusing less on resource-intensive self-expressive needs, or supply more time and other resources into the marriage.”

It is not so much that people demand more from modern marriages than they used to, though, says Professor Finkel:

“The issue isn’t that Americans are expecting more versus less from their marriage, but rather that the nature of what they are expecting has changed.

They’re asking less of their marriage regarding basic physiological and safety needs, but they’re asking more of their marriage regarding higher psychological needs like the need for personal growth.”

The best marriages now are probably better than they ever were in the past, but many do not reach these exacting standards.

Professor Finkel says:

“In contemporary marriages, Americans look to their marriage to help them ‘find themselves’ and to pursue careers and other activities that facilitate the expression of their core self.

However, developing such insight requires a heavy investment of time and psychological resources in the marriage, not to mention strong relationship skills and interpersonal compatibility.”

Marriage is about balancing what you put in with what you expect to get out, says Professor Finkel:

“In general, if you want your marriage to help you achieve self-expression and personal growth, it’s crucial to invest sufficient time and energy in the marriage.

If you know that the time and energy aren’t available, then it makes sense to adjust your expectations accordingly to minimize disappointment.”

The study was published in the journal Current Directions in Psychological Science (Finkel et al., 2015).

Watch the eyes for this sign that a partner is 50 percent more likely to cheat on you.

Partners who spend a fraction of a second longer looking at other people they find attractive are 50 percent more likely to cheat.

The marriages of those who can’t keep their eyes in their heads are also more likely to fail.

Other signs of infidelity were hidden in couple’s appearance and dating history.

Less attractive women were more likely to be unfaithful, it emerged.

Among men, those that reported more short-term sexual partners before marriage were more likely to have an affair.

The opposite was true for women: the more sex partners before marriage, the more faithful women were during marriage.

The conclusions come from a study in which newlyweds were shown pictures of both average-looking and very attractive men and women.

Those that had trouble looking away from the very attractive pictures were 50% more likely to cheat.

Professor Jim McNulty, the study’s first author, said:

“People are not necessarily aware of what they’re doing or why they’re doing it.

These processes are largely spontaneous and effortless, and they may be somewhat shaped by biology and/or early childhood experiences.”

Faithful newlyweds were more likely to downgrade or discount the very attractive faces they saw.

This helped them put these other options out of their mind.

The study followed 233 newlyweds for up to the first 3.5 years of their marriage.

Professor McNulty said that social media has a role to play in the US divorce rate, which is approaching 50 percent:

“With the advent of social media, and thus the increased availability of and access to alternative partners, understanding how people avoid the temptation posed by alternative partners may be more relevant than ever to understanding relationships.”

The study was published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology (McNulty et al., 2018).

Even someone who has many positive qualities can strike out because of one or two negative qualities.

When people are thinking about a potential partner they consider negative qualities more than positive ones.

Even someone who has many positive qualities can strike out because of one or two negative qualities.

Dr Gregory Webster, study co-author, explained:

“We have a general tendency to attend more closely to negative information than we do to positive information.”

Here are the 7 most important deal breakers, in no particular order:

1. Undesirable personality traits (e.g. anger issues, abusive, untrustworthy).
2. Differing relationship goals (e.g. is uncaring or inattentive).
3. Unhealthy lifestyle (e.g. smells or has poor hygiene).
4. Differing religious beliefs.
5. Limited social status.
6. Differing mating strategies (e.g. is seeing someone else).
7. Unattractiveness.

The study found that the deal breakers were more important for women and those in committed relationships.

However, different people had different deal breakers — not everyone found the same negative traits off-putting.

For example, some people enjoy impulsive personality traits in others, while others prefer someone predictable.

The results come from six different studies that surveyed over 6,500 people.

Unconsciously or not, people focussed a lot on undesirable traits in order to weed out those they considered undesirable.

Dr Webster said:

“A lot of times, just by avoiding negative traits, people will probably be fairly well off — maybe even more well off — than if they were trying to optimize the best potential partner.”

People who were more desirable to others were also more picky; in other words they had more deal breakers.

Those less fortunate had fewer deal breakers.

Focusing on negative traits is adaptive behaviour since it helps us survive, Dr Webster said:

“Things that can harm are generally more important [to pay attention to] than things that can help you.”

The study also looked at deal breakers in the context of non-romantic friendship.

Deal breakers were not as strongly adhered to for choosing friends, although some qualities, like dishonesty, were always avoided.

The study was published in the journal Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin (Jonason et al., 2015).

It makes it easier to build intimacy and get greater fulfilment.

Being true to yourself is the key to a happy and healthy relationship.

People who see themselves objectively and clearly and act consistently with those beliefs have more positive relationships.

Dr Amy Brunell, the study’s first author, said:

“If you’re true to yourself, it is easier to act in ways that build intimacy in relationships, and that’s going to make your relationship more fulfilling.”

The study involved 62 heterosexual couples who were asked about what psychologists call their ‘dispositional authenticity’.

This included questions like: “For better or for worse, I am aware of who I truly am.”

The results showed that men and women who reported being more true to themselves behaved in more intimate ways and they felt more positive about their relationship.

Dr Brunell said:

“Typically in dating and marital relationships, the women tend to be ‘in charge’ of intimacy in the relationship.

So when men have this dispositional authenticity, and want to have an open, honest relationship, it makes women’s job easier — they can more easily regulate intimacy.”

Dr Brunell said that it wasn’t just about accepting flaws in yourself, but being aware of limitations:

“It shouldn’t be a surprise, but being true to yourself is linked to having healthier and happier relationships for both men and women.”

The study was published in the journal Personality and Individual Differences (Brunell et al., 2010).

Continuously questioning a relationship wears both partners down.

Being highly sensitive to rejection is damaging to relationships.

People who are sensitive to rejection frequently think about their partner leaving them.

They worry that revealing their true self will lead to rejection.

This means that they are constantly on the lookout for any signs of displeasure in their partner.

The continuous questioning of the relationship wears both partners down.

Naturally, then, this thinking style is linked to lower levels of relationship satisfaction, the psychological research reveals.

Pre-emptive rejection

The results come from a study of 217 young people who had been in relationships for at least three weeks.

They were asked about how sensitive they were to rejection with a scenario like:

“Lately you’ve been noticing some distance between yourself and your significant other, and you ask him/her if there is something wrong.”

Then they were asked:

“How concerned or anxious would you be over whether or not he/she still loves you and wants to be with you?”

The more anxious people are in these sorts of situations, the higher their fear of rejection.

One typical reaction of people who fear being rejected is to reject the other person first by cutting them off.

It’s like a pre-emptive strike.

Emotionally cutting the other person off, though, turns out to be a bad move, the researchers found.

People who did this were even less satisfied with their relationship.

The authors explain:

“Although individuals are attempting to reduce the potential for rejection, distance also reduces the potential for fulfilling, accepting, and intimate behavior.”

In other words, by pushing the other person away, you are hurting yourself to try and avoid hurting yourself — which clearly makes no sense.

Dealing with insecurity

Other typical reactions to perceived rejection are coercion and compliance.

The study’s authors explain:

“Coercion involves verbally and/or physically aggressive acts meant to force romantic partners to remain in the relationship.

Similarly, compliance involves giving in to one’s romantic partner’s potentially harmful or unhealthy demands to prevent further rejection.”

Both of these are also poor ways to deal with feelings of insecurity.

Instead, the best way to deal with being sensitive to rejection is to be aware of it and when it is happening.

Awareness is the first step to changing a behaviour.

Sensitivity to rejection frequently goes along with a weak sense of self.

This is especially prevalent among young people whose identities are not yet strongly formed.

People with stronger and better developed identities tend not to fear rejection as much.

They have an ability to balance their dependence and independence healthily.

Psychologists call this ‘self-differentiation’.

The study was published in the journal Couple And Family Psychology: Research And Practice (Norona & Welsh, 2016).

Happy couples unconsciously share this linguistic habit. Are you doing it?

Couples are more likely to match their language when their relationship is going well, research finds.

Using the same patterns of words or turns of phrase suggests a couple are in sync.

The reason is something psychologists call ‘language style matching’.

Professor James Pennebaker, who led the study, explained:

“When two people start a conversation, they usually begin talking alike within a matter of seconds.

This also happens when people read a book or watch a movie.

As soon as the credits roll, they find themselves talking like the author or the central characters.”

The study’s authors tracked the changes in the language of poets and writers over the years and how it reflected their relationship.

For example, Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung wrote to each other weekly for around 7 years.

Their relationship was tempestuous and this is reflected at the very basic level of language use, well below the meaning of words.

The study tracked the use of common words, including pronouns, prepositions and articles like “I”, “into”, and “the”.

Because the words are so common, it is easier to track changes in style.

When their relationship was solid, their use of these words was more similar.

Towards the end, when Freud and Jung had fallen out, their styles no longer matched.

Dr Molly Ireland, the study’s first author, said:

“Because style matching is automatic, it serves as an unobtrusive window into people’s close relationships with others.”

The researchers saw the same pattern emerge in the poetry of Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath, whose relationship was rocky, to say the least.

The language both used in their poems changed over the years to reflect the state of their relationship, the researchers found.

Victorian poets Elizabeth Barrett and Robert Browning showed the same changes in their poetry as their relationship changed over time.

Dr Ireland said:

“Style words in the spouses’ poems were more similar during happier periods of their relationships and less synchronized toward each relationship’s end.”

The study was published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology (Ireland et al., 2010).

Couples doing this were less likely to argue and were more committed to each other.

Small acts of kindness are one of the simplest ways to improve a relationship, psychological research finds.

Making a cup of coffee, being respectful, showing affection and being forgiving are easy ways to demonstrate generosity.

Partners who are generous to each other are less likely to argue, to divide housework fairly and to be more committed to each other.

Generous people are seen as more desirable partners.

Being generous also benefits the person being generous: it makes them feel more satisfied with the relationship.

The study analysed data from a US survey of almost 3,000 married couples aged 18 to 45.

They were asked about their marital conflict, the potential for divorce and the generosity of their partner.

The study’s authors explain the results:

“…spouses’ reports of generosity toward the participants were associated with participants’ reports of marital quality.

Specifically, spouses’ generosity was positively associated with participants’ reports of marital satisfaction and negatively associated with participants’ reports of conflict and subjective
divorce likelihood.”

Being generous benefited both partners, the study showed:

“We also found that participants’ reports of behaving in a generous fashion toward their spouse were linked to their own reports of marital quality.

The extension of generosity toward the spouse was positively related to their own reports of marital satisfaction and negatively associated with their own reports of conflict and subjective divorce likelihood.”

In fact, wives seem to get a particular benefit from being generous to their husbands, the study revealed:

“…wives reported lower levels of marital satisfaction when they also reported low levels of generosity toward their spouse.

These findings were robust to the inclusion of spousal
reports of generosity in the same model, and
they were present in all four types of analyses.”

The study was published in the Journal of Marriage and Family (Dew & Wilcox, 2013).