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<\/p>\nLove can be a complicated thing, whether it be for friends, family, or that special someone. In class, we discussed several ways of starting as well as maintaining a romantic relationship, and even tried out Aron\u2019s 36 Questions ourselves. Our blog post follows a structure similar to that of the stages of a relationship itself; Maya wrote about the initiation of a relationship, Helena speaks to how one gets closer in a relationship, and Sofie discusses bettering committed relationships with ToM and perspective taking. While complicated, we must also keep in mind that love is such a special, beautiful aspect of our lives.<\/p>\n
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The Pursuit of a Romantic Relationship – Maya<\/strong><\/p>\n Last week my favorite song, \u201cYou Belong with Me\u201d by Taylor Swift, started playing over the loudspeaker at an event that I was at with my friends. My friend and I were dancing when all of a sudden a man approached us and stuck out his hand to introduce himself to me. My friend slowly floated away into the crowd (not a great friend move) and I was left alone with this guy I had never met. He began asking me questions about what school I went to and told me all about why he was in town. All I could think of were two things – \u201cdon\u2019t be an asshole, Maya\u201d and \u201cI really want to just go back to dancing to You Belong with Me with my friend.\u201d The conversation continued as I replied with one word answers hoping he would get the hint. Finally I caught the eye of another friend of mine and made a wide-eyed look that screamed please help me!! She waltzed over, grabbed my hand and started dancing with me – saving me from that horribly awkward and uncomfortable situation. Gender Dynamics: Shouldn\u2019t We Shoot Our Shot? I would love to hear your thoughts on this, because it is not an easy question and there are no simple answers \u2013 what are solutions to this issue and how would you approach someone who you were interested in given this newfound knowledge from the Bohns et al., 2018 paper?<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Security of a Romantic Relationship – Helena<\/strong><\/p>\n Quite often, society places a heavy emphasis on getting into relationships, whether it\u2019s the how or when or who. But then this excitement slows once we get into the stages of the actual relationship, and discussions regarding how to get closer in a relationship and how to best maintain one become muted in significance. Yet, this is arguably one of, if not the most important stage of any relationship, since, after all, what is a relationship if it cannot be sustained?<\/p>\n For better visualization, let\u2019s narrow down a situation while simultaneously putting this idea into a big picture concept: looking ahead, as we grow older and start developing long-term relationships, we\u2019re warned about this time period, this standstill that occurs in a relationship. Early on, relationships are easy; everything is new and exciting, full of dates and time spent together to get to know each other more. Then, after a while, a feeling of being comfortable with them creeps in, and maybe it\u2019s a little too comfortable (Butler & Randall, 2013). Having been with my significant other for over 4.5 years now, this feeling certainly isn\u2019t foreign. Relationships aren\u2019t supposed to be one event after the other after the other. There are pauses and lulls, whether it be the feeling of comfort or having too many priorities to focus on in life, and this is where the feeling of being at a standstill comes in, and that\u2019s completely okay. However, this is when it is most crucial to continue to develop closeness to maintain the relationship. Aron et al. speak towards specific tasks designed to generate closeness, starting with a series of 36 questions and then following with staring into the others\u2019 eyes for four minutes (Aron et al., 1997). The main findings here were that reciprocal self-disclosure plays a crucial part in building closeness in a relationship, even more so than things like agreeing with one another, mutual likings, and goals.<\/p>\n While Aron brings up a lot of interesting points, upon reading Aron\u2019s papers, a feeling of discomfort settles in at the bottom of my stomach. Particularly, the line regarding, \u201cpresents a practical methodology for creating closeness in an experimental context […] we have tried to make being in a relationship accessible to laboratory study and experimental manipulation\u201d. The idea of having a relationship be put in an experimental setting such that closeness can be created and taken away by others is so incredibly strange, and yet we see this all the time. There are numerous articles online discussing \u201cA 4-Step maintenance plan to keep your relationship going\u201d, or \u201c8 Steps to Having a Lasting Romantic Relationship\u201d. Confining a relationship and defining it merely to steps to take in order to be successful seems like boxing in something that is so beautiful, and the steps that one has to take in a relationship just seems so artificial in and of itself. Quite frankly, it seems to be the exact opposite of what love is supposed to be like; instead, we think of it to be something generated purely from the heart. So, if love is something that can be accelerated from a few simple steps, whether it be the 4-step maintenance plan or even from 36 questions, what truly is love?<\/p>\n I think this comes with the notion that there\u2019s a difference between falling in love, and staying in love. Falling in love, as Maya spoke to above, is a wonderful thing. Then, there\u2019s value in maintaining a relationship, and making the choice to push ourselves to commit to someone. As French philosopher Simone de Beauvoir proposes, authentic love is about supporting each other in discovering themselves, and ultimately, enriching the world together. Perhaps we should worry less about what love is and instead, be more interested in how we can love better.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Maintaining a Romantic Relationship: Perspective-taking, Empathy and Theory of Mind – Sofie<\/strong><\/p>\n One important lesson which I\u2019ve learnt about romantic relationships in the last few years has been that at the core of understanding and communication is learning to put yourself in your partner\u2019s shoes when working through a situation. My partner and I met in Hong Kong during COVID and we are extremely different people \u2013 he is much older, grew up in New Zealand in a very stoic, masculine environment where vulnerability is not encouraged whereas I wear my heart on my sleeve, am sensitive and very open about my emotions and like talking about feelings in general. I am also always aware that men vs. women have different approaches to their relationships as well. A lot of the time, I start difficult conversations with my partner like this if I am having trouble perspective-taking because of a barrier (such as gender): Ramezani et al. find that empathy plays an important role in maintaining romantic relationships. Specifically, they looked at how Theory of Mind (ToM) training can improve empathy between married couples. Theory of mind refers to the ability to ascribe independent mental states to self and others to explain and predict social behavior. It is very related to the ability to perspective-take, which is a social skill in which you are able to mentally represent the mind (beliefs, desires, intentions, emotions included) of another person. The ability to perspective-take helps with being able to anticipate what another person is thinking or feeling. In the study, they found that there is an association between efficient ToM training and improvements in empathy within couples. Even though I have not done any official ToM training, I have always felt that empathy, perspective-taking, and theory of mind have been strengths of mine. In my relationship, I find myself trying to put myself in my partner\u2019s shoes and think about the way they would perceive a situation before getting upset. I feel like this has helped me maintain the relationship because we are able to communicate honestly with one another, trying to understand the way the other person perceives something. In past relationships, I\u2019ve noticed there were a lot more arguments, I would get upset a lot more, and overall it felt like there was a lot less commitment to wanting to understand one other\u2019s perceptions. I also feel like as we get older, meet more people and have more experience, perspective-taking becomes easier so it would be interesting to see if there is any existing research linking age & maturity with empathy or perspective-taking. Even though the 36 questions that we went through in class was presented as a study for a \u201cway to fall in love\u201d I actually also believe they can help strengthen and maintain a relationship because the more questions you\u2019re asking each other, the more you\u2019re learning and able to then perspective-take and empathize (Catron, 2015). It would make sense that the better you know someone, the easier it is to empathize.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n References<\/strong><\/p>\n Aron, A., Melinat, E., Aron, E. N., Vallone, R. D., & Bator, R. J. (1997). The experimental Bohns, V. K., & DeVincent, L. A. (2018). Rejecting unwanted romantic advances is more Butler, E. A., & Randall, A. K. (2013). Emotional coregulation in close relationships. Emotion Catron (2015). To fall in love with anyone, do this. New York Times.<\/p>\n Gary W. Lewandowski Jr. Professor of Psychology. (2022, January 21). A 4-step maintenance Gillette, H. (2021, October 14). 8 Tips for a Lasting Romantic Relationship. Psych Central. Hafen, C. A., Spilker, A., Chango, J., Marston, E. S., & Allen, J. P. (2014, March 1). To accept or reject? the impact of adolescent rejection sensitivity on early adult romantic relationships. Journal of research on adolescence : the official journal of the Society for Research on Adolescence. Retrieved April 1, 2022, from https:\/\/www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov\/pmc\/articles\/PMC3979626\/<\/p>\n Ramezani, A., Ghamari, M., Jafari, A., & Aghdam, G. F. (2020). The effectiveness of a Theory Love can be a complicated thing, whether it be for friends, family, or that special someone. In class, we discussed several ways of starting as well as maintaining a romantic relationship, and even tried out Aron\u2019s 36 Questions ourselves. Our blog post follows a structure similar to that of the stages of a relationship itself; […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10567,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-258","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/socialconnection\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/258","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/socialconnection\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/socialconnection\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/socialconnection\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10567"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/socialconnection\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=258"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/socialconnection\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/258\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":262,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/socialconnection\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/258\/revisions\/262"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/socialconnection\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=258"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/socialconnection\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=258"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/socialconnection\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=258"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nWhen reflecting on this week\u2019s readings and lecturette I started replaying moments like these in my head and why they make me so uncomfortable. One reason I could think of is that I seem to care a lot about what the other person will think of me. Upon reflection I think I do not want to come across as \u201cbetter than them\u201d and I always want to assume the best intention and feel guilty outright rejecting someone. Many of us have likely found ourselves in situations like these where a rejection feels \u201cwrong\u201d because we are worried that there may be costs associated with our reputation or we do not want to make false assumptions. But as Bohns et al., 2018 points out \u201cuninterested targets ultimately find themselves in an uncomfortable situation.\u201d<\/p>\n
\nFurthermore, the Bohns reading made me reflect on the gender dynamics at play in these situations. The Bohns paper opens with a quote from a Title IX investigator who says, \u201cI can think of several cases I\u2019ve investigated where the (usually male) perpetrator is completely oblivious, and the (usually female) target feels like she\u2019s trapped and can\u2019t really say \u201cno.\u201d Right off the bat the Bohns paper touches on some of the stereotypical gender dynamics that can happen with romantic advances. They generally allude to the dynamic in which the \u201csuitor\u201d is a male and the \u201ctarget\u201d is a female. They support this by making the conclusion that \u201cwomen were more than twice as likely to report having been pursued by someone whom they were not interested in than men.\u201d This fact in and of itself is quite startling but also perhaps makes sense given the frequency to which a male may act as the \u201csuitor\u201d compared to the female. In fact, another study by Hafen et al., 2014 suggests that women will use \u201cself-silencing\u201d as a coping mechanism in instances in which they \u201cexperience worry over rejection.\u201d This supports the thought that perhaps women feel less empowered to reject as they are worried about the repercussions of their actions in both a social setting and in work or school dynamics, and instead remain silent in instances of discomfort. Moreover, the male \u201csuitor\u201d may have a more difficult time understanding \u201cthe difficult position they put targets in” due to their lack of experience in the reverse role. So the question remains how does one pursue a romantic advance in a comfortable and balanced manner?
\n*I would also like to note that I was surprised at the degree to which this paper decided to focus on only two genders and not explore some of the dynamics outside of the male and female gender paradigm.*<\/p>\n
\nWhile I have always been one for \u201cshooting your shot,\u201d the Bohns paper provides some clear cut points for why we perhaps need to rethink exactly how we do this. With complex gender dynamics at play, perhaps it is worth it to rethink how romantic advances could play out. I personally think we should all continue \u201cshooting our shot\u201d as it is important to put yourself out there and meet new people, but that being said, I think it is vital to be cautious as to how the person you approach reacts and responds. Look for the signs and do not make too many leaps too quickly. Rather than jumping to ask for their \u201csnapchat\u201d or number, start off by making simple conversation in order to sense their comfortability.<\/p>\n
\n\u201cThis is how I feel about ____. A lot of the time women will feel this way when ___ happens. I\u2019m not sure how the majority of men approach a situation like this but please help me understand how you perceive it because I can\u2019t know unless you tell me.\u201d<\/p>\n
\ngeneration of interpersonal closeness: A procedure and some preliminary findings. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 23(4), 363-377.<\/p>\n
\ndifficult than suitors realize. Social Psychological and Personality Science, 10(8), 1102\u20131110. https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1177\/1948550618769880<\/p>\n
\nReview, 5(2), 202-210.<\/p>\n
\nplan to help Keep Your Relationship Going Strong. The Conversation. Retrieved April 1,
\n2022, from https:\/\/theconversation.com\/a-4-step-maintenance-plan-to-help-keep-your-relationship-going-strong-130736<\/p>\n
\nRetrieved April 1, 2022, from https:\/\/psychcentral.com\/health\/how-to-maintain-love-in-healthy-relationships<\/p>\n
\nof Mind (ToM) training program in promoting empathy between married couples.
\nJournal of Couple & Relationship Therapy, 19(1), 1-25.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"