Is there Anything Like A Perfect Couple?

 

Couple who think they are a perfect match are more likely to split up.

So-called ‘soulmates’ find rows harder to get over than those who see relationships as a journey on which they talk through their problems.

Professor Spike Lee, of Toronto University, and Professor Norbert Schwarz, of the University of Southern California, asked long-term couples questions relating to ‘unity’ or ‘journey’, and got them to recall conflicts and evaluate their relationship.

 

Those with a ‘unity state of mind’ found recalling conflicts made them feel less happy with their relationship.  

Professor Lee said: 'Our findings corroborate prior research showing people who implicitly think of relationships as perfect unity between soulmates have worse relationships than people who implicitly think of relationships as a journey of growing and working things out.

'Apparently, different ways of talking and thinking about love relationship lead to different ways of evaluating it.'

It was the Greek philosopher Aristotle who said 'love is composed of a single soul inhabiting two bodies.' 

But the study published in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology said this outlook can be damaging.

People speak and ponder about love in apparently limitless ways but underlying such diversity are some common themes. For example, some use words like ‘made for each other,’ and ‘she is my other half’, seen by scientists as ‘the perfect unity’ frame.

 

But others prefer ‘the journey’ idea, using expressions such as ‘look how far we have come,’ and ‘we have been through all these things together’.

As predicted, recalling conflicts leads people to feel less satisfied with their relationship, but only with the unity frame in mind, not the journey. Recalling celebrations makes people satisfied with their relationship regardless of how they think about it.

 

In a two follow up experiments, the researchers invoked the unity against journey frame in even subtler, more incidental ways.

For example, people were asked to identify pairs of geometric shapes to form a full circle, activating unity, or draw a line that gets from point A to B through a maze, activating journey.

Such non linguistic, merely pictorial cues were sufficient to change the way people evaluated relationships. Again, conflicts hurt relationship satisfaction just with the unity frame in mind.

They added: 'It is a journey. You will feel better now, and you will do better down the road.