Category: Relationships

People’s decisions about their relationships are often unselfish.

People sometimes stay in unhappy relationships when they believe their partner cannot cope with a breakup.

It helps show that people’s decisions about their relationships are often unselfish.

Even people who are not that committed to their relationship do not want to hurt the other person.

Dr Samantha Joel, the study’s first author, said:

“The more dependent people believed their partner was on the relationship, the less likely they were to initiate a breakup.”

One of the studies in the research followed 1,348 people over ten weeks.

Dr Joel explained the results:

“When people perceived that the partner was highly committed to the relationship they were less likely to initiate a break up.

This is true even for people who weren’t really committed to the relationship themselves or who were personally unsatisfied with the relationship.

Generally, we don’t want to hurt our partners and we care about what they want.”

Other reasons people stay in unsatisfying relationships include that there are no better alternatives available and they afraid of being alone.

It is difficult to say if staying with someone for their benefit is really the sensible thing to do.

It will depend on how the relationship pans out.

Dr Joel hints that some people may be overestimating their partner’s reliance on the relationship:

“One thing we don’t know is how accurate people’s perceptions are.

It could be the person is overestimating how committed the other partner is and how painful the break up would be.”

Ultimately, Dr Joel asks:

“Who wants a partner who doesn’t really want to be in the relationship?”

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

The test can predict which friendships will thrive and which will crumble.

Knowing how a friend will react in an irritating situation is a simple test of a good friendship.

Although it is easy to quickly describe someone’s traits, it is harder to predict how they will react in specific situations.

Some people have almost no knowledge of how people close to them will react, while others are surprisingly accurate.

The study of 178 people had them think about a number of scenarios and then predict how irritated they would be and how irritated their friend would be.

For example, imagine your friend is talking to someone who is very sceptical.

Here is the authors’ explanation:

“When someone is overly skeptical of information that he/she receives.

When he/she questions things that are generally accepted. When he/she is very hard to convince of something.”

The results showed that people with better relationships knew which situations really set their friends off and which didn’t bother them.

The authors call these ‘if-then’ profiles.

Knowing a friend’s ‘if-then’ profile was linked to lower levels of relationship conflict and less frustration.

Ms Charity A. Friesen, the study’s first author, said:

“It’s a more detailed way of understanding personality.

You might know the person is extroverted when they’re out with their friends but more introverted when they’re in a new situation.”

The study tested all kinds of scenarios, including obliviousness, gullibility, social timidity, social boldness and perfectionism.

While people have a natural desire to understand other people’s personalities, it takes more effort to really get to know a person.

Ms Friesen said:

“But, if I’m close to someone, I can really start to learn the if-then profiles, and that’s what’s going to pay off in my relationship.”

The study was published in the journal Psychological Science (Friesen & Kammrath, 2011).

Infidelity may affect up to 75 percent of relationships.

Relying on intuition is a useful way to tell if a partner is cheating.

People are surprisingly good at telling if a person has cheated just from observing a small amount of their behaviour in a neutral situation.

In this study, a stranger was able to spot a relationship cheat just by watching a couple interacting for a few minutes.

Both the couple’s trustworthiness and commitment ‘leaked out’ from their behaviour.

People automatically pick up on the markers of infidelity without quite knowing how they have done it.

The study’s authors conclude that:

“…people may be internally programmed to identify inclinations that could be devastating to their relationship.

…individuals seeking a committed relationship may be well advised to listen to their intuition or at least think twice before committing to someone they suspect may be inclined to cheat.”

Detecting deception fast

For the study, established couples were given a quick drawing game to play that was recorded.

The couples also answered questions about their own infidelity.

Strangers watched the three- to five-minute video and tried to guess whether one had cheated on the other.

The results showed that people did surprisingly well given how little information they had to go on.

The study’s authors write:

“People can make remarkably accurate judgments about others in a variety of situations after just a brief exposure to their behavior.

Ambady and Rosenthal (1992) referred to this brief observation as a “thin slice.”

For example, students could accurately predict personality traits of an instructor after watching a 30-s video clip (Tom, Tong, & Hesse,2010), while Stillman, Maner, and Baumeister (2010) showed that a 2-s look at a picture of a face was enough to accurately determine a violent or nonviolent past.”

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Infidelity: 10 Studies Reveal The Hidden Warning Signs (P)

The study was published in the journal Personal Relationships (Lambert et al., 2014).

When is the turning point where a relationship becomes serious?

In the first few weeks people cannot tell the difference between relationships that will last and those that are doomed.

Both long-term and short-term relationships feel almost identical to people — at least at first they do.

Whether the relationship is destined to last a month or a lifetime, romantic interest initially rises in similar ways, interviews find.

In other words, people do not really know whether it is going to last.

However, at some stage in what become short-term relationships, romantic interest starts to tail off.

The turning point is often when the relationship becomes sexual.

Dr Paul Eastwick, the study’s first author, said:

“Long-term and short-term trajectories typically pull apart after you’ve known someone for weeks or months.

In the beginning, there is no strong evidence that people can tell whether a given relationship will be long-term and serious or short-term and casual.”

Casual to committed

The results come from in-depth interviews with over 800 adults of all ages.

People were asked to reconstruct the events and experiences in their relationships — both long- and short-term.

Dr Eastwick said:

“Some of the most interesting moments in these relationships happen after you meet the person face-to-face, but before anything sexual has happened.

You wonder ‘is this going somewhere?’ or ‘How much am I into this person?’

It is somewhere around this point that short-term and long-term relationships start to diverge, and historically, we have very little data on this particular period of time.”

People may end up in short-term relationships with those they are only attracted to a little.

Long-term relationships turn out to be those that start out exciting and grow into something long-lasting and stable.

Dr Eastwick said:

“People would hook up with some partners for the first time and think ‘wow, this is pretty good.’

People tried to turn those experiences into long-term relationships.

Others sparked more of a ‘meh’ reaction.

Those were the short-term ones.”

The study was published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: General (Eastwick et al., 2018).

Over 60 percent of people have been involved in this type of relationship.

Relationships that involve repeatedly breaking up and then getting back together are linked to poor mental health.

These “on-again, off-again” relationships are associated with increased depression and anxiety, as well as worse communication, less commitment and more abuse.

Over 60 percent of adults have been involved in this type of unstable relationship.

Around one-third of cohabiting couples report breaking up and getting back together at some point.

Dr Kale Monk, the study’s first author, said:

“Breaking up and getting back together is not always a bad omen for a couple.

In fact, for some couples, breaking up can help partners realize the importance of their relationship, contributing to a healthier, more committed unions.

On the other hand, partners who are routinely breaking up and getting back together could be negatively impacted by the pattern.”

The conclusions come from a study of 545 heterosexual and homosexual couples.

The results showed that male-male relationships had the highest rate of ‘cycling’ (on-again, off-again), while female-female and heterosexual couples were similar.

However, whether heterosexual or homosexual, cycling relationships were linked to higher depression and anxiety.

Dr Monk said:

“The findings suggest that people who find themselves regularly breaking up and getting back together with their partners need to ‘look under the hood’ of their relationships to determine what’s going on.

If partners are honest about the pattern, they can take the necessary steps to maintain their relationships or safely end them.

This is vital for preserving their well-being.”

Dr Monk provides some pointers for people experiencing cycling relationships:

• Consider the reasons you broke up in the first place when thinking about getting back together. Can they change or are they permanent?
• Talk about what is leading to break-ups with your partner — this can be illuminating.
• Why might you consider getting back together — are they the right reasons?
• Remember that it is OK to end a toxic relationship.
• Counselling is always an option.

The study was published in the journal Family Relations (Monk et al., 2018).