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Should you let your partner check other people out?
Published on April 13, 2011
It’s no surprise that partners who are less interested in alternatives to their current relationship partners turn out to be more satisfied with those relationships. If you don’t think the grass is greener, then you won’t be as interested in hopping the fence. What might come as a bigger surprise are the findings of a group of psychologists at the University of Kentucky and Florida State suggesting how one should react to a partner whose eyes (and potentially, hearts) are wandering: let them ogle.
They root their theory in an old idea that has received strong recent empirical support: forbidden fruit tastes sweeter. When our desires are externally prohibited, desires grow stronger. Psychologists call this “reactance”. When prohibitions are imposed upon us we tend to interpret such impositions as an affront to our liberty. In response we come to value the forbidden more than we otherwise would. This is why we drive even faster than we were previously going after we pass by police cars on the highway. Police going to tell me how fast I can drive? I don’t think so.
Sometimes such prohibition can benefit relationships (e.g. Romeo and Juliet). But when you catch your boyfriend doing the old “oh I’m just stretching my neck” routine, how should you react? Scolding such action might make that passerby, and perhaps others as well, seem more desirable. This is the possibility the researchers sought to test.
They brought participants who were in relationships of over 1 month into the lab and told them they would be engaging in a timed categorization task. A letter (E or F) would appear on the screen and they were to press the corresponding key as quickly as they could on the keyboard. Simple enough. But before the letter appeared, two pictures (one of an attractive opposite-sex person and an average looking opposite-sex person) were flashed on the screen, and then the letter appeared in the same location as one of these pictures. In the experimental condition, the letter appeared in the location of the average-looking picture 80% of the time, subtly directing participants’ attention towards those pictures (and away from the attractive alternatives), while in the control condition letter placement was random. Now, having limited participants’ attention away from the hotties, how would participants judge the quality of their actual relationships?
If ignorance is bliss, then delusion is even better — if you’re in a new marriage, anyways.
So says new research from investigators at the University at Buffalo, who examined 193 newly-married couples over three years to see what kinds of variables might predict greater marital satisfaction.
How could this be? Weren’t we always told the common wisdom — that we needed to be realistic in our relationships, and not look for that Knight in Shining Armor who comes to our rescue (or a Maiden trapped in a castle tower who needs rescuing)?
Apparently the common wisdom may need to be revisited, because continuing to idealize your partner long after the glow of the wedding fades away seems to help keep you happy.
A long-term, stable romantic relationship with a committed, caring partner has many psychological benefits, which we know from the oodles of psychological research published about them. So it’s a good thing to try and protect one’s relationship from external influences. One of the most difficult to recover from and damaging influences is cheating.
If cheating will harm a relationship (and cheating appears to be one of the primary reasons cited in many, if not most, relationship breakups), what can be done to minimize it?
After all, isn’t it human nature — and the nature of temptation — to constantly look for desirable alternatives?
One of the ways people look to protect their long-term relationship is to simply remain inattentive to those alternatives. Research has demonstrated that being inattentive to attractive members of the opposite sex generally promotes relationship success.
But new research (DeWall et al., 2011) suggests it’s not so simple. If the circumstances or situation implicitly limit a person’s attention to an attractive alternative, that alternative suddenly becomes “forbidden fruit.”
And all that more attractive.
The researchers call this the “forbidden fruit hypothesis,†based upon previous research that has demonstrated that people find things more desirable when they off-limits or forbidden. There’s something in human nature that wants what it can’t have. (Or perhaps we can have it, but with serious consequences.)
This hypothesis is consistent with another psychological theory called the “ironic process model.†This model suggests that suppressing thoughts about something will lead that thing to become even more salient. The more we try and not to think about something, the more we think about it.
To test their forbidden fruit hypothesis, the researchers conducted a series of three experiments involving undergraduate students.
“When love is not madness, it is not love.†~Pedro Calderon de la Barcaa
“Love must be as much a light, as it is a flame.†~Henry David Thoreau
“Love makes your soul crawl out from its hiding place.†~Zora Neale Hurston
To be loved means being free to be yourself in the presence of another person. It is the mutuality of this experience that we each crave. Somehow we know when it is near, and ache when it is lost. We have all had it: the look, the feeling, and the sense of awe in the presence of the person we are attracted to. But is it more than just the infusion of the catecholamine neurotransmitter, dopamine, or the mammalian hormone oxytocin?
Yes.
You most likely know that the limbic system is the seat of emotions and it regulates the type, degree and intensity of our feelings. But what you may not know is your limbic system may be trying to detect whom you will love, and who will love you back. Limbic resonance is a term used to describe the feeling of attraction to another.
From the book A General Theory of Love the authors define the term:
We are brainwashed by television and movies at a very young age that there is a glorious, happy ending at the end of every story. This phenomenon instructs us that our lives should always include happy endings. We are taught that anything less than total fulfillment and smiles all around amounts to dismal failure. We are taught this concept called closure. It is a term used often in contemporary media and it means to heal a personal loss or trauma such as death of a loved one, being abused by a parent or being a child of an alcoholic parent. After this process, we are supposed to ride off into the sunset with this emotional pain never darkening our door step again.
Well, this is actually impossible to accomplish unless you get total amnesia. If you have the expectation that you will not have any sad or frightening memories about this trauma once you have believed you have fully healed, you will find yourself deeply disappointed and frustrated.
Memories and feelings about the trauma are likely to come up from time to time. Just because the memories continue to arise don’t mean that you haven’t worked through your issues. It only means that as humans; memories and feelings will continue to move in and out of our awareness unless you are deeply repressing them. Repression is not a useful or helpful tactic unless you are in a situation where pushing away memories and feelings is the only way to survive.
Laughter, Pleasure, Malice, and the Pursuit of Adult Fun
by Regina Barreca, Ph.D.
You want a “Nice” boyfriend or “Bad” boyfriend?
Published on April 17, 2011
From my bad boyfriends, I learned that life is not easy and that relationships were not always emotionally safe.
From my good boyfriends, I learned an even more daunting lesson: that the very promise of safety is an illusion. I learned that while some choices seem less dangerous than others, life is not ultimately a game of tag.
In this respect, boring boyfriends are indeed dangerous because they lead you to repeat mistakes with genuinely bad boyfriends.
You’re so thoroughly mind-numbingly dulled by your good boyfriend that the first time a bad boy with a sly grin rolls up his sleeves and looks your way, you throw your virtue, your conscience, and your sense of self-worth out the window along with your panties.
That’s the double meaning of getting caught: getting caught is great if you’re falling, but it’s terrible if you’re running away. And it isn’t as if it was easy to decide what choices to make, either. The right man at the wrong time is the wrong man. And the wrong man at the right time is still the wrong man.
These nice boyfriends were as compelling as yesterday’s news. They were clippings from a magazine that seemed interesting at the time, but to which I would never again refer. They were like wrapping paper that you remove neatly, fold, put away, and eventually throw out, crumpled up at a later date because you could never find a use for it.
Bad boys, in contrast, were literature.
Like literature, they had a long shelf life in your imagination. They were complicated.
They had great dialogue and interesting back-stories. They were memorable characters. They were always present. They were unavoidable. They took center stage, whether or not they were the leading man.
In fact, you can rarely distinguish the bad guy from the romantic lead.
Where is the line drawn between admiration and discrimination?
Published on April 15, 2011
If I say, exoticbeauty, who is the first person you picture? I’ll be honest and say it’s the Brazilian Victoria’s Secret model, Adriana Lima. Dark flowing hair, full lips, tanned skin, and cool bluish-green eyes. A look that is exotic, otherworldly. Which is precisely the problem.
According to dictionary.com, exotic is defined as “strikingly unusual or strange in effect or appearance.” And this is where the issue arises according to racial microaggressions researchers. Sue and colleagues (2007a) describe racial microaggressions as:
“Simply stated, microaggressions are brief, everyday exchanges that send denigrating messages to people of color because they belong to a racial minority group. These exchanges are so pervasive and automatic in daily interactions that they are often dismissed and glossed over as being innocuous,” (p. 72).
Sue and colleagues (2007b) find several common themes regarding forms of racial microaggressions. One example is inscription of intelligence. A hypothetical offense would include asking an Asian person for help with math. Another theme is colorblindness, and would include the belief that America is a melting pot; the problem with this supposition is that an individual’s unique cultural experiences are denied, with the assumption that they will take on the dominant culture.
“Your mind is what interests me the most.” Bumper sticker.
“One can find a woman who never had one love affair, but it is rare indeed to find anyone who had only one.” La Rochefoucauld
People who have online lovers naturally want to know more about them. So should these lovers replace their online communication with regular offline communication? The answer is usually no. The paradox of the internet is that you have less information about each other and this ambiguity often makes love more intense.
Face-to-face communication relies on many sources of information: facial expressions, voice, posture, hands, gaze, focus, and so on. Such sources provide crucial signals for communicating our emotions and understanding the other person’s attitudes. Online communication relies on fewer sources and is often based merely on written messages. The lack of visual content seems to be a particularly significant deficiency, especially because our eyes are of central importance in revealing our emotional attitudes. Sometimes, one look in the eyes conveys more profound information than many words. We say, “A picture is worth a thousand words.”
Nonverbal communication often involves information that the subject is not fully aware of and does not always want to convey to other people. The lack of nonverbal information in text-based online communication led some researchers to claim that such communication is leaner and hence online relationships are less involving, less rich, and less personal than offline relationships. It is true that not all types of information available in face-to-face communication are also available in online communication; in this sense, the latter is leaner. However, this does not mean that online relationships are necessarily less involving, less rich, or less personal than offline relationships.
Ironically, the opposite is often the case because fewer vehicles of communication can provide richer information than a greater number of vehicles. Quality and richness of personal relationship are not merely derived from the quantity of communicative vehicles, and most people experience this even in platonic relationships, such as the intensity of Twitter relationships in which the followers have never actually met.
The male sexual brain is an OR Gate; the female sexual brain is an AND Gate.
Published on April 12, 2011
To encounter erotica designed to appeal to the other is to gaze into the psychological abyss that separates the sexes.
Donald Symons
The vast majority of the differences between the software of male and female minds are all located down in that most intimate and controversial of locales, the sexual brain. But down here the differences are even greater than you think.
As we described previously, we all come wired with a set of sexual cues analogous to our tongue’s taste cues. However, men respond to radically different cues than women. Male cues are primarily visual. Female cues are primarily psychological. Men do have psychological cues, but (with a couple exceptions) these cues are quite different from female psychological cues. A man’s cues are all directed outwards, at his partner. Some of a woman’s cues are directed outwards at her partner, but some of her cues are also directed inwards at herself.
The female sexual brain is what a computer engineer would call an “AND gate.” It requires input from multiple cues simultaneously to surpass a combined threshold of activation before arousal occurs. The female brain may be turned on by a man who is handsome and a cardiologist andpets her beagle and is popular with her lady friends andplays the sensual melodies of Cat Power in the dappled candlelight.
When Conflict Arises Within A Couple More Intense Emotions Are Experienced By Women
Article Date: 14 Apr 2011 – 2:00 PDT
Women feel their emotions more intensively than men when a conflict arises within the couple. Conversely, it is men – who mostly express “powerful emotions” as wrath or despise – who cause conflicts more frequently.
This is the conclusion described in an article published in the journal Intervención Psicosocial prepared by professors from the Department of Social Psychology of the University of Granada, Inmaculada Valor Segura, Francisca Expósito y Miguel Moya. This study analyzed the type of interpersonal emotions than men and women feel when they face different conflicts within the couple, and the effect that emotions have on the recurrence of conflicts.
A sample of 142 male and female students from the University of Granada participated in the study. They were placed in five different conflictive situations. In general terms, the results showed that men and women have different emotions in conflictive situations.
Thus, when facing a situation where “my partner offends me or treats me disrespectfully”, women felt miserable, while the situation “if my partner is physically aggressive during an argument” women felt more disappointed than men. In the situation “my partner shouts at me with frequency”, women felt more sadness, while men felt guilt. In the situation “if my partner distorts an argument to be right” women feel sadness, while men feel embarrasment.
The psychological signs of abuse. This video offers an informative summary on the warning signs to look out for which could suggest that you are in an abusive relationship.
The Internet and smartphones have significantly changed how ordinary people interact not only with one another, but with their own sexuality. Intimacy takes on new definitions, as we use technology to not only keep in touch and connected with one another, but for sexting and other talk that has, in the past, been reserved for face-to-face time. You may not be doing it, but I bet dimes to donuts someone you know is.
Which is a very good reason to have a blog about sex, intimacy and technology here at Psych Central. I’m pleased to introduce Sex and Intimacy in the Digital Age, a blog about sexual addiction and problems, adultery and cheating in the digital age of the Internet, smartphones, and always being connected. A day doesn’t go by where we don’t hear how the Internet and other digital media are impacting our relationships in both positive and negative ways. Porn addiction is one of a relationship’s new problems, and with ready access to sexual materials online and on the go via our smartphones, Android devices, iPads and iPhones, it’s no wonder.
Experiments have found that ordinary people tell about two lies every ten minutes. I don’t see how that’s possible, as I’ve been alone the last hour writing this piece (oh dear, am I making it up as I go along?). However, the half-hour before that, I averaged about fifteen per minute.
“What are you eating, Mom?†(I’m shoving chocolate-dipped macaroons into my mouth at an ugly pace…)
“Carrots! Want some?”
Robert Feldman, a social psychologist at the University of Massachusetts found that liars tend to be more popular than honest people (think politics). Because social skills involve telling people what they want to hear (things that aren’t, um, true). The more social grace a person possesses, experiments say, the more willingness and ability he has to deceive.
But some lies are meant as acts of love. Truly. Parents lie to protect their kids from distressing or harmful facts (your uncle crosses his eyes because of a vision impairment…not because he’s a sloppy drunk; daddy went on a business trip…not down the road to a hotel because we can’t figure out whether or not to divorce).
Ever since I got summoned to jury duty awhile ago, I’ve been paying attention to lies. More than a few people said to me, “Just say something racist. You’ll get out of it.”
Um. Yeah. I could do that. But I have something inside me called a Catholic conscience. My conscience makes a dinging sound every time I approach the danger zone: where my depression is hovering like a hawk to feast on all the guilt (and I’ve given up trying to feel less guilty).
In his New York Times bestseller, Getting the Love Your Want, psychologist Harville Hendrix explains why people who grew up in homes — well, a little like the one in the 2006 flick Little Miss Sunshine — without proper emotional nurturing seek dysfunctional relationships as adults. He explains the low brain — our more reptilian thought process that can’t handle anything different than what it already knows and reverts to fear as its primary gear — and the new brain, the cerebral cortex that is conscious, alert, able to reason and think logically. He writes:
What we are doing, I have discovered from years of theoretical research and clinical observation, is looking for someone who has the predominant character traits of the people who raised us. Our old brain, trapped in the eternal now and having only a dim awareness of the outside world, is trying to re-create the environment of childhood. And the reason the old brain is trying to resurrect the past is not a matter of habit or blind compulsion but of a compelling need to heal old childhood wounds.
Some of you undoubtedly are thinking: “Oh puh-leaze, move on from the naval-gazing-it’s-my-mommy’s-fault theory.”
I may have uttered similar opinions had I not fallen into this trap so many times in my adult life, even as a happily married woman. What I failed to recognize until recently is that a healthy marriage doesn’t protect you from attempts to fill in the deep hole left from the earlier years. If you don’t do it in your primary romantic relationship, you get the job done via friendships and family relationships. Try as you may to recover from your past and move on, but I agree with Hendrix that you will always subconsciously seek to heal those wounds by trying to recreate a similar situation and forcing it to be different.
The trick is disassociating the situation from the brain phenomenon.
It’s not about the person, place, or thing you are fixated on. It’s not about the friend who is emotionally unavailable. It’s not about the relative who will never remember your birthday. Or the co-worker who is smarter (or so he thinks) than you. It’s merely the low brain recognizing a possibility to have some fun, a potential sandbox to build the sandcastle of your youth so that this time it can stand forever.