It may sound like we’re reciting a scene from 300 before we bellow ‘I AM SPARTA!” But no. We’re talking relationships. More simply, do you know where it is heading?
Are they ‘the one’? Do you think you will be able to remember this stage in your romance in five years’ time? A new scientific study has revealed that dating couples who have moved towards marriage over the course of their romance can accurately state what was going on at each stage of their relationship. However, for those whose commitment towards their other half has stagnated or gone backwards have more vague memories of their relationships.
The study, at the University of Illinois concluded that people who are committed to each other remember their relationships more clearly than couples who are less committed and divided participants into three categories: advancers, maintainers and regressers.
Brian G. Ogolsky, Professor of human development and family studies, said: “People like to feel that they’re making progress as a couple. If they’re not – if, in fact, the relationship is in trouble – they may have distorted recollections that help them feel like they’re moving forward because they need a psychological justification to stay in the relationship…”When a couple is considering making a lifelong commitment, they have a lot at stake. It’s important that they have accurate recollections of how their relationship evolved.”
The nine-month study followed 232 heterosexual couples who had never been married and who had been dating for around two years on average. Each half of the couples gave their opinion of chances of marrying; also taking into account their partner’s new. They used a scale of 0-100 per cent and plotted it on a graph from the results. Then on completion of the experiment, participants examined their entire relationships to see if their memories matched the reality.
The participants fell roughly into three clear groups: advancers, whose relationship had become more committed over the time of the experiment; maintainers, who casually dated throughout; and regressers, who had gone from being serious to casual or split up and started dating again.
The advancers remembered their relationship history perfectly, while the maintainers recalled their romances as being lesser in the beginning as a way of justifying the continuing romance.
“They had given themselves some room to grow and remembered the recent past as better than they had reported it being. If they saw maintenance as stagnation, that’s a way of addressing that cognitive gap. It helps them feel that their relationship is developing in some way – that they’re making progress,” Ogolsky noted.
Finally the despite the trajectory of the regressers’ relationships, they also thought they were going OK and were probably in denial.
Interesting, huh? Are you dating? If so, which category do you think you fall into? Spartan?
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