4 Things Happy Couples Know that You Don’t
There are millions of people on the internet giving free relationship advice. But if you consider how many of them are as good as they look, you’ll be shocked.
Your relationship with your partner is important. Mine too. So one morning, @4am I decided to do some research. I had a few neat social psychology textbooks at my disposal. So I dug through those.
The following 4 things are the most important lessons I learned from those books.
Don’t Rely on Passion
A research was conducted on 17 participants who were madly in love. They were told to bring a picture of their loved ones to the lab where the research was conducted. Upon arrival, they were placed in a brain scanner and researchers instructed them to look at the photo of their lover.
While the participants were looking at their lovers, some of their brain regions were activated; brain regions that are responsible for the expectation of reward and for addiction.
Researchers conclude that love can be considered not just as an intense emotion, but as a motivation, a serious craving to be with your lover, an intense longing. It’s what some of us call, infatuation.
Researchers named it passionate love. It’s the initial phase of a romantic relationship; when hormones are high and love is in the air. Love takes a different form after some time. Which is called compassionate love.
Compassionate love is when you feel an intimate bond, have compassion and have absolute trust in your partner. Compassionate love does not require sexual arousal or intense longing. It relies on friendship, trust, and loyalty.
Many people end their relationship as soon as their passion fades. They fail to realize their compassionate love. They fail to see beyond the thick fog of cravings.
Couples who embrace compassionate love and deem it superior are more content with their relationship. Couples who think of love in terms of, “we are made for each other” tend to be disappointed, and couples who think of love as, “It’s a journey and we’re in this together” fight off all the problems in their way. A relationship isn’t sustained just through the power of love. It takes constant effort and struggle. Think of it as a company, you need to maximize the profits, secure your investments, and last but not least, fight off competitors.
Commitment is the Cornerstone of Relationships
In the 1950s psychological science was dominated by Behavioralism: A view that all animals and humans do things regarding their rewards and costs. In this approach, equity theory explains that a relationship will be satisfying if the rewards and costs of that relationship are balanced. That is if the pros of the relationship outweigh the cons.
At any point, a relationship will function well even if the pros and cons are barely balanced. But as soon as partners meet someone better, things will start to shake.
The biggest threat to any romantic relationship is the presence of a better potential partner. (And so, extramarital affairs are the leading cause of divorce in more than 160 countries).
Suppose, Tim and Julia are dating for a year now and like most relationships, they have their problems and pleasures. Everything is normal and sometimes, things go bad and they fight but they get back together again. One day, Tim stumbles on his college best friend Lyla. They immediately have a rapport with one another. Lyla invites him to go kayaking with her next weekend and Tim gladly agrees. After a few months of them being casual friends, Tim suddenly realizes that his relationship with Julia isn’t doing so well and he spends better time with Lyla. And Lyla is a great girl. She’s funny, she’s talented, she’s smart, she’s pretty and she’s single.
Now, what do you think is going to happen? Is Tim going to break up with Julia just because Lyla seems better than her?
Well, less likely (There’s another thing at play that determines the commitment of partners in a relationship), even though the pros with Lyla are better than with Julia, Tim is likely to stick with Julia because they have shared lots of things together. (Partners in a relationship spend a lot of time together, they go on trips together, have lots of mutual friends, some have a family together with beautiful children, and some share assets such as a house, car, or land. Psychologists call these shared things investments). So, Tim or any other person for that matter will be committed to their partner if they’ve invested quite a lot in that relationship.
The most important pillar of any romantic relationship is commitment. (Commitment: An individual’s intent to maintain his/her relationship and remain psychologically attached to his/her partner).
Your or my commitment to a relationship is largely dependent on three things:
- How satisfying the relationship is. (Pros must be higher than cons. Jordan Peterson states that a relationship won’t last if there’s less than 5/1 positive/negative interactions and if it exceeds 11/1 positive/negative interactions).
- The quality of potential mates. (If the quality of potential mates is high, things will look shitty even if they are not).
- How much you’ve invested in a relationship.
Limit yourself to one person. Spend less time with attractive potential mates and encourage your partner to do the same. And invest more in your relationship. What could make you richer than the experiences you accumulate with your partner.
Intimacy is intricate
It’s what determines relationship satisfaction. After the initial phase of a relationship, you won’t have the drug high of the relationship. So you have to make do with intimacy.
The following 3 things will help you get a more intimate bond with your partner.
Proximity
“People who are nearest to us are the dearest to us”. It’s perhaps the most literal thing in this article. To love someone is to know someone closely. And to know someone closely, you have to stay close to them and interact with them frequently.
It gets hard for people to maintain relationships when the physical distance is high. Physical separation is the major cause of breakups during the transition from high school to college according to many students.
And the physical separation between husbands and wives is a huge predictor of marital separation.
Partners who have regular face-to-face interactions are far more happy and more content than partners who have long-distance relationships.
Don’t fuck up. Don’t distance yourself from your partner. Stay close, stay happy.
Disclosure-responsiveness
Telling someone about the intimate aspects of yourself is self-disclosure. It’s the key element to all relationships.
We disclose to people whom we love and we like them more after we’ve disclosed to them. And we also like people who disclose more. (According to a meta-analysis of 94 studies).
As relationships develop, people start sharing more and more intimate things about themselves; how their parents used to abuse them, how they got kicked out of school, why they hacked a knife at their wrist, how their boss is bullying them, and so on. And as a relationship regress, partners start sharing less and less.
A study was conducted where couples were asked to disclose more to their partners and note the number of times they disclosed to their partners on a given day. The participants reported feeling a stronger, and more intimate bond the very next day.
But to disclose more, one needs to feel that their partner understands, values, cares for them, and is eager to listen to them. When they feel that their partner isn’t giving heed to what they have to say, or is criticizing what they’re saying, they tend to stop disclosing to their partner and they might even end the relationship.
Be smart. Start disclosing more. This will solve every problem you guys face, after all, you’ll help each other fix them, because, you’ll disclose them. And of course, be more receptive to your partner. Listen when it’s your time to listen and speak when it’s your time to speak.
Interdependence
“We do not love people so much for the good they have done us, as for the good we have done them,” Wrote Leo Tolstoy, one of the world’s greatest novelists. We love people whom we bestow our favor upon.
Why? Because if we’ve done someone a favor, it’s an investment. And we’re smart. We don’t make stupid investments. That means that if we give someone something, they are worthy of our investment.
Reciprocation(the process of giving and taking) builds trust and commitment and intimacy. Give and take. Give and take. Do that often enough and you’re bond for life.
Be dependent on your partner. Rely on them. They’re always happy to be a helping hand. But don’t forget to make it easy for them to ask favors from you too.
How to Manage Conflicts
Partners in romantic relationships have different needs, values, morals, and goals about money, chores, shopping, sex, children, and a ton of other stuff. Partners have to cope and cooperate with individual differences and preferences. And so, conflicts will occur. It’s only natural.
But conflicts are stressful. If you don’t want to take your relationship to the gutter, you need to learn how to handle conflicts.
The following 2 things will help you manage conflicts in a less conflicting way.
Straight talk
State your feelings instead of criticizing. Instead of saying, “You’re a slut,” say, “I feel bad when you flirt with other guys and I feel insecure. I know that you’re charming and flirtatious with everyone but I feel jealous when you do it with other guys.” Instead of saying, “You’re an asshole,” say, “I know you graduated top of your class but your major was zoology and you argue all day about the stock market. Sorry to say but you know very little about the stock market and you don’t listen to what I have to say even though I majored in economics and I used to work for a brokerage firm.”
Learn to speak. Most of us know how to only insult.
Immediate feedback
You want to praise your partner when he does something you like and you want to call it out if he does something you hate. If you choose to stay silent when your partner does something you like, it means punishing them for that behavior. And if you suppress your resentment when he does something bad, your resentment might leak out at other times. And he won’t know why the fuck you’re angry and might start hating you because he thought you got angry at him for some meaningless thing.
Tell it straight. No passive-aggressive behavior is allowed.
Conclusion
Passion, commitment, intimacy and conflict are the four pillars of any relationship.
- Remember that love is a journey and you have to give constant effort.
- Stay committed by increasing relationship wealth and avoiding hot guys and chicks.
- Increase intimacy by staying close, disclosing more, and being interdependent.
- Handle conflict and avoid unnecessary stress by stating your feelings clearly and by giving immediate feedback.
