Did you know that if love is a motivational poster — and obviously it is — then how you imagine that poster is pretty key, whether it’s a cat hanging in there or soul mate scrawled in cursive on a scroll of destiny-weathered papyrus? And that if you believe in the latter, you’re probably kinda screwed? Because maybe.
In a recent study about how people frame love and the impact it has on their relationships, University of Toronto researchers Spike W.S. Lee and Norbert Schwarz found that when their subjects (73 people, all ages, Ann Arbor, at least six months of going steady) were primed with the idea of love as unity — you’re “made for each other” — those then asked to recall conflicts rated their relationship satisfaction lower. Meaning, if you think of love in terms of soul mates, and then you fight with your significant other, you’re even more bummed because this was supposed to be effortless. But those who think of love as more of a journey that takes work are in luck.
From a piece in the NYT:
Mr. Lee told Op-Talk his study was built on a large body of previous evidence that people who favor the journey idea have stronger relationships: “When conflicts arise, they are better at dealing with it; they have higher marital satisfaction; they’re less likely to divorce. All kinds of good things happen to people who believe in the journey idea.”
Over the long haul, any relationship is going to weather a lot. There will be good times, bad times, in-between times, and then, for lots of people, end times. What gets you through it all, except a weird mix of attraction, shared interests, and shared values (except a mortgage, children, guilt, and in-laws)? Is it really the belief that you’re with someone who is meant to be, or is it that you’ve done the crime and the time, so to speak, on the work front?
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