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.Feeding Intimate Relationships byBringing Others into the MixNo, I am not talking about being a swinger and swapping partners in arisqué Vegas night club.I am talking about the effects of friendships withother couples on the interest and closeness in your own relationship.As ifdating wasn t hard enough, becoming friends with another couple in-volves my liking both people, my partner liking both people, and each ofthe members of the other couple liking my partner and me.For a four-some, there are a staggering number of missteps that can lead to failure.To create a working foursome, especially if there is only one hole (e.g.,my partner doesn t like one of them), consider the strategies discussed inthe section of this chapter on triggering interest.Once you find another couple to spend time with, besides addingpeople to your social world, you create an opportunity to enhance yourown relationship.Here s why.No matter how much time we spend with someone, we are privyonly to pieces of them and what they are capable of.Our behavior influ-ences and changes the person we are with and thus-server effect )expect to see 162 Curious?As an active member of the relationship, we lose our objectivity, fail-ing to see our partners as they are (as other people who are less familiarwith them would see them).If we want to re-create that initial rush ofpositive feelings and rapid expansion during the early days of our ro-mance, if we want to be interested and our partner to feel the same, wehave to change this mindset from mindless drone to curious explorer.I can learn a great deal about my partner by watching her in actionwith another couple.Hearing my partner tell a story that I heard beforecan take on new meaning when I watch other people listen intensely,laugh hysterically, or be enthralled by my partner.Their attraction to mypartner intensifies my own.As social creatures, we value the opinions ofpeople we care about.Although it sounds crude, my partner s stock valuegoes up as I appreciate anew what is so amazing about this person whomI decided to bring into my life.Besides becoming increasingly grateful and attracted to my partner, Ican discover new things.My partner is going to learn about my likes anddislikes and because of that, she is not going to share everything about herpast and everyday actions.We all learn what gets a positive reaction, whatdoesn t, and then modify what we do next based on these rewards andpunishments (not responding to what my partner cares about is essentiallypunishment by neglect).When we spend time with another couple, two new people withunique tastes that differ from my own are going to draw out stories frommy partner that I might have never heard before.As I witness this, mypartner becomes novel and interesting, and this effect lasts well beyond anyconversation or situation.And it s not just the telling of stories newpeople affect how my partner is going to think, feel, and act.With another couple, my partner might be more assertive and domi-nant (as opposed to falling into a quiet, more submissive role with me) orgoofy and playful (as opposed to tending toward being serious and intel-lectual with me because those are the kinds of conversations that I regu-larly draw her into).We can look at our partners from new perspectives,collect new details, and begin to grasp how complex they really are com-pared to the false idea that we already know everything about them.If The Rewards of Relationships 163you are willing to be open and curious, you can enjoy realizing that thereare things you think you understood about them that you didn t, andthere is always going to be unknown information awaiting discovery.Richard Slater, a psychologist at Stanford University, extended re-search about the ways two people can refuel their interest and excitementafter being together.He matched 60 unacquainted married couples intopairs, and had foursomes do the 45-minute closeness induction procedurewhere they picked up cards with intimate questions on them and tookturns answering them.Other couples worked their way through 45 min-utes of mind-numbing small-talk questions.His results were amazing.First, couples generally felt a great deal closer to other couples afterthe closeness questions than those who worked with the small-talk ques-tions.In fact, many of them appeared to be on their way to forming realfriendships, passing along phone numbers to meet after the experimentwas over.In contrast, everybody in the small-talk group appeared to beready to depart quickly when the session ended; they weren t happy orupset, they just felt a lack of energy throughout the conversation.Second, each couple in the closeness group felt better about their ownrelationship after the interaction.They felt more satisfied about the partnerthey came in with after sharing intimacies with another couple.Third, the reason they felt more satisfied about their relationship wasthat they felt a surge of positive feelings, they found the entire task to benovel and interesting, and they learned new things about their partners. In a mere 45 minutes in a sterile laboratory, talking to another couple ledthem to grow (even if only a tiny bit) in their relationships.In the imme-diate aftermath, they reported viewing both their overall relationshipsand their partners as more interesting and satisfying.Although we don tknow how long these thoughts and feelings last, just the fact that wechange long-standing views suggests these new experiences are portals toseeing our partner from new angles and perspectives [ Pobierz caÅ‚ość w formacie PDF ]
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.Feeding Intimate Relationships byBringing Others into the MixNo, I am not talking about being a swinger and swapping partners in arisqué Vegas night club.I am talking about the effects of friendships withother couples on the interest and closeness in your own relationship.As ifdating wasn t hard enough, becoming friends with another couple in-volves my liking both people, my partner liking both people, and each ofthe members of the other couple liking my partner and me.For a four-some, there are a staggering number of missteps that can lead to failure.To create a working foursome, especially if there is only one hole (e.g.,my partner doesn t like one of them), consider the strategies discussed inthe section of this chapter on triggering interest.Once you find another couple to spend time with, besides addingpeople to your social world, you create an opportunity to enhance yourown relationship.Here s why.No matter how much time we spend with someone, we are privyonly to pieces of them and what they are capable of.Our behavior influ-ences and changes the person we are with and thus-server effect )expect to see 162 Curious?As an active member of the relationship, we lose our objectivity, fail-ing to see our partners as they are (as other people who are less familiarwith them would see them).If we want to re-create that initial rush ofpositive feelings and rapid expansion during the early days of our ro-mance, if we want to be interested and our partner to feel the same, wehave to change this mindset from mindless drone to curious explorer.I can learn a great deal about my partner by watching her in actionwith another couple.Hearing my partner tell a story that I heard beforecan take on new meaning when I watch other people listen intensely,laugh hysterically, or be enthralled by my partner.Their attraction to mypartner intensifies my own.As social creatures, we value the opinions ofpeople we care about.Although it sounds crude, my partner s stock valuegoes up as I appreciate anew what is so amazing about this person whomI decided to bring into my life.Besides becoming increasingly grateful and attracted to my partner, Ican discover new things.My partner is going to learn about my likes anddislikes and because of that, she is not going to share everything about herpast and everyday actions.We all learn what gets a positive reaction, whatdoesn t, and then modify what we do next based on these rewards andpunishments (not responding to what my partner cares about is essentiallypunishment by neglect).When we spend time with another couple, two new people withunique tastes that differ from my own are going to draw out stories frommy partner that I might have never heard before.As I witness this, mypartner becomes novel and interesting, and this effect lasts well beyond anyconversation or situation.And it s not just the telling of stories newpeople affect how my partner is going to think, feel, and act.With another couple, my partner might be more assertive and domi-nant (as opposed to falling into a quiet, more submissive role with me) orgoofy and playful (as opposed to tending toward being serious and intel-lectual with me because those are the kinds of conversations that I regu-larly draw her into).We can look at our partners from new perspectives,collect new details, and begin to grasp how complex they really are com-pared to the false idea that we already know everything about them.If The Rewards of Relationships 163you are willing to be open and curious, you can enjoy realizing that thereare things you think you understood about them that you didn t, andthere is always going to be unknown information awaiting discovery.Richard Slater, a psychologist at Stanford University, extended re-search about the ways two people can refuel their interest and excitementafter being together.He matched 60 unacquainted married couples intopairs, and had foursomes do the 45-minute closeness induction procedurewhere they picked up cards with intimate questions on them and tookturns answering them.Other couples worked their way through 45 min-utes of mind-numbing small-talk questions.His results were amazing.First, couples generally felt a great deal closer to other couples afterthe closeness questions than those who worked with the small-talk ques-tions.In fact, many of them appeared to be on their way to forming realfriendships, passing along phone numbers to meet after the experimentwas over.In contrast, everybody in the small-talk group appeared to beready to depart quickly when the session ended; they weren t happy orupset, they just felt a lack of energy throughout the conversation.Second, each couple in the closeness group felt better about their ownrelationship after the interaction.They felt more satisfied about the partnerthey came in with after sharing intimacies with another couple.Third, the reason they felt more satisfied about their relationship wasthat they felt a surge of positive feelings, they found the entire task to benovel and interesting, and they learned new things about their partners. In a mere 45 minutes in a sterile laboratory, talking to another couple ledthem to grow (even if only a tiny bit) in their relationships.In the imme-diate aftermath, they reported viewing both their overall relationshipsand their partners as more interesting and satisfying.Although we don tknow how long these thoughts and feelings last, just the fact that wechange long-standing views suggests these new experiences are portals toseeing our partner from new angles and perspectives [ Pobierz caÅ‚ość w formacie PDF ]