Toronto: Those soulful thoughts like "made for each other" or "she is my other half" may no longer intensify love but actually hurt your relationship.
According to an interesting research, people who 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.
To understand this, researchers asked: If two people were really made in heaven for each other, why should they have any conflicts?
In one experiment, they asked people in long-term relationships to complete a knowledge quiz that included expressions related to either unity or journey, then recall either conflicts or celebrations with their partner and finally evaluate their relationship.
As predicted, recalling conflicts leads people to feel less satisfied with their relationship - but only with the unity frame in mind and not with the journey frame in mind.
Recalling celebrations makes people satisfied with their relationship regardless of how they think about it.
"Apparently, different ways of talking and thinking about love relationship lead to different ways of evaluating it," said social psychologist Spike WS Lee from University of Toronto's Rotman School of Management.
"Next time you and your partner have a conflict, remember that love is a journey. You will feel better and you will do better down the road,a researchers concluded in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology.
