Variation to rekindle appreciation in relationships: Time to change the tune?

Remembering to create some variation may be particularly important in the context of your relationships. For some sense of academic support, one study found that novel and interesting or exciting activities make couples feel more strongly connected to each other.

Relationship and leisure quality are clearly among the areas that are the most strongly related to people’s prosperity in their daily lives, and activities are in some sense what make up our relationships with others (as well as our leisure). In time though, these activities may increasingly become routine and both leisure and your relationships may start seeming less interesting.

The authors observe that the sense of happiness derived from close relationships seems to decrease in time when the initial thrills of a relationship become increasingly an ordinary part of daily life.

Why this happens is not explained, but an at least similar and memorable concept worth remembering is called habituation: When you experience something over and over, eventually these sensations become less noticeable or you stop noticing them entirely. Understandably, you are less likely to appreciate and be interested in something that you can’t even notice. The same reasoning is likely to hold also for your leisure more generally.

Given this outlook, the authors ask if couples may be able to increase their happiness by actively engaging in activities that are novel, interesting and exciting. After summarizing the results of a range of questionnaire studies and experimental trials, they conclude that this is really the case — see the quote below. Their observation is not entirely new, the importance of variation and novelty was suggested already in 1979 in what is described as a classic marital therapy manual.

Shared participation in novel and arousing activities was consistently associated with higher levels of experienced and behaviorally expressed relationship quality.

- Aron et al., 2000

It may be something to consider to remember to induce some change, variation and novelty in your relationships. Widening the horizon a bit, trying something new, some new environment, some new activity, something exciting or just something interesting.

Habituation may be less desirable in the most important areas of your life, and you can choose to actively induce novelty, change and variation in your relationships, or your leisure, by planning and doing something different once in a while.

Sources/further reading:

• Aron, Norman, Aron, McKenna and Heyman, 2000. Couples’ shared participation in novel and arousing activities and experienced relationship quality. Journal of personality and social psychology.