Is he or she the chosen one? You know, the one to introduce to your parents, who you want to live with, start a family, that one or the one you marry? At some point in each relationship, these questions come to light.
Psychology researchers are also asking the same questions.Are there any recognizable signs that can predict where you are going? A relationship? How do you know how a relationship fluctuates with time? A recently published study examined this issue by following how relationships evolved over time through people's own changing senses.
Tracing the course of love
Some days of your relationship you may feel that you will be happy forever, while other days you feel that you will not be happy or eat partridges.Researchers believe that in these sensations the key of whether your relationship will end in marriage or not .
If you could trace the story of your relationship, what would it look like? Maybe a straight upward line that shows constant progress? Or maybe a curved line that shows that you have passed some potholes along the way? It is this trajectory that can influence how your story will end.
In a recent study, researcher Brian Ogolsky and his colleagues raised the hypothesis that the way in which this curve fluctuates in individuals could predict the future results of the relationship.To test the idea, the interviewers used 376 wedding couples with those who created a line in a graph about how they felt the probability of marriage, as well as their evolution over time.
The researchers would update the participants' graphs through short interviews for the next nine months , since the beginning of the study.During the interviews topics such as spending too much time with friends, fighting, or conversely, spending a lot of time together and the elements in common.
The researchers analyzed the graphs, observing any crisis or moments when the chances of marriage decreased.They also examined inflection points to see if things were climbing rapidly, slowly eroding or any of the other paths that a relationship can take.
Types of commitment in four groups
The researchers identified four different commitment patterns:
1.Dramatic (34% of the sample)
This The group had a type of relationship "up and down" , with more crisis and more pronounced changes in commitment than other groups.These individuals spent more time apart and had worse opinions of the relationship.
2.Socio-centered (30% of the sample)
This group had the idea that "my partner is the center of my universe" , great commitment approach and I experience very few declines.Their changes in commitment coincided with the amount of time they could spend together.
3.Socially involved (19% of the sample)
This group experienced very little variability, and fewer falls than the dramatic group.When changes occurred, they were largely determined by the amount of interaction with their social network , affected by what his friends and family thought about the relationship.
4.Conflictive (12% of the sample)
Like the drama group, this group had a large number of recessions.the sizes of the changes were not so high.Those in this group also reported a lower number of positive things to say about the relationship than those of the socio-centered group, and less support from family and friends than the socially involved group.
So is my relationship doomed?
These four ordered categories have no doubt a intuitive appeal .However, the classification is simplification .Our relationships and psychological experiences are complex in a way that defies basic categories or groups; Each relationship cannot fit perfectly into these four categories .However, these provide a single framework for understanding the progress of relationships.
Individuals in the group Dramatic were more than twice as likely to break up than any of the other three groups.Those in the socio-centered group were more likely to make progress in the relationship (for example, the advance from casual to serious quotes) than those in the drama group.Also the conflict group was more likely to maintain their stable marital status compared to the drama group.
Together, these results suggest that it is good to be socio-centered , but not dramatic.In other words, those who frequently experience important fl uctuations in your commitment should have long-term concerns about sustainability of the relationship.
In any case, relationships move in different steps and patterns.This research only shows that sometimes the trajectory of the past of your relationship, can offer a vision of your future.
Don't miss this article about the ideal age to get married! Is it your turn?
Image: Jay, Anne Marthe Widvey, Terrell Woods, opacity and siti fatimah via Flickr
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