Norms and convention guide us. In many contexts we internalise what other people are doing, what seems ‘normal’ and then behave accordingly. Forever changing fashion trends highlight this seemingly inherent part of our nature. Just as quickly as a look or style can become popular, as soon as others denounce it as being ‘so last year’ we move onto something else. It soon becomes forgotten and rarely seen. Although a good example of how we behave in line with norms and conventions, fashion trends probably aren’t too much of a serious issue. Yet, an issue arises when norms and convention cause us problems or stop us from living as well as we might do. Often following convention works out for us pretty well – sleep about 8 hours a day, look after your children, avoid going out on a school night and so forth. But it is an error of reasoning to take from this that convention and norms will always ‘work for us’. Relationships are no exception. I suggest that in some instances, following how convention tells us to behave in relationships isn’t a very good idea.
If you are in a relationship, generally speaking, you want it to work well. The benefits are obvious. But how should I behave in a relationship? What should I be doing? How should we be living? These are probably the kind of questions we should be asking ourselves if we care about our relationships. Our primary source of information is to look at what everyone else in a relationship tends to do. If we dig further, we might peruse women’s magazines and agony aunt columns. The problem with what is ‘normal’ and the contents of women’s magazines is that they aren’t necessarily right. Convention isn’t always worth following. When we think about accomplished chefs and scientists – they ask questions of convention and achieve excellence through defiance. Through trial and error they learn what conventions can be broken and dispensed with. So how does this relate to relationships? It suggests that there are likely to be some long established conventions we should drop and in doing so, improve our relationships. Backed by psychology I think I have found some. We shouldn’t be afraid of defying convention if such defiance can work for us. In contrast to what is expected of us in relationships, dependent on your disposition the good/bad news is that we should:
Avoid sharing our passions with partners
Avoid spending time with our partners all together
Watch our partners like hawks
Stop sleeping with our partners
Why shouldn’t we include our partners in our own passions? We shouldn’t because they might end up ruining them. Based entirely on gender stereotypes, it is likely that boyfriends accept getting dragged shopping and girlfriends put up with getting dragged to the football. But they shouldn’t be putting up with this at all. It is bad for everyone involved. We are all different: arty films, Chinese food and karaoke bring about diverse reactions, negative and positive. Having to do something you don’t enjoy (even if it is with your partner) is the first problem. I am all for trying new things, but if you are sure you don’t like something, you should avoid doing it. The other problem is that merely being there has the potential to ruin it for your partner also. Research by Raghunathan and Corfman (2006) has examined how sharing experiences can have a down side. Across a series of studies, in conditions of their experiments the researchers examined how enjoyment, of a film for example, can be influenced by how much your viewing partner likes or dislikes the experience. The good news is that engaging in an experience with a person who likes it as much as you do makes it more enjoyable than watching it alone. The bad news is that the presence of another person liking it less than you do drags your enjoyment down. Why does this occur? Seeing our partner having a more negative experience can do two things –1) make you question how similar and close you are - 2) cause you to question our your own views and integrate your partners negatives evaluations into our own. What about in the unlikely event that you partner is extremely considerate/a push over and suffers in silence? It may still be a problem because of mood contagion, whereby without knowing; the moods of our partners bring ours down too. Ramanathan & McGill have shown that our partner’s unconscious facial reactions have a rippling effect and influence us unconsciously too. The outcome being that our enjoyment is shaped by others enjoyment.
Thus, although shared joys seem like a good idea, sharing experiences that one partner doesn’t enjoy doesn’t work well for either party. This is also good news as putting an end to this will enable you to spend less time with your partner. After 10 years of marriage boredom can kick in (which works well for friendsreunited.com). People habituate to things and get bored of them over time. Food is a good example, the first bite of a meal is great but the last isn’t as good. Our reaction to a newly released song is the same. Listening to it for a while can bring about euphoria, but after having downloaded it and played it to death on repeat, we get bored of it a day or two later. What does this mean for relationships? In order to enjoy our partners more we should think about how often and when we see them. Studying habituation, Epstein and colleagues (2011) show that if we are exposed to something repeatedly we enjoy it less. However, if we partition and have a day off for example, habituation ‘resets’ and enjoyment is back where it started. Of course we shouldn’t stop seeing our partners (they’d get quite annoyed), but maybe we should be planning our time to help prevent monotony, pursuing activities and passions that can be enjoyed separately. A slightly more romantic spin on what is effectively systematic avoidance is that such planning would also allow us some time to enjoy looking forward to seeing our partner. Perhaps this could even help us appreciate them more (it has of course been suggested that absence can make the heart grow fonder).
Checking up on your partner’s whereabouts, reading text messages and questioning all of their plans isn’t a good idea. In this sense watching partners like a hawk is not advised. But we should be more hawkish in terms of paying more attention to how our partners behave, in order to work out who they are and what they do and don’t like. Research by Luo & Sneider (2009) suggests that investing time in properly getting to know our significant others is likely to be good for all. Examining different predictors of relationship satisfaction the researchers had sets of partners rate aspects of their personality and temperament, as well as rating what they believed about their partner’s personality traits. The extent to which couples were accurate and knew their partners well was important. It significantly predicted relationship satisfaction. Partners that knew each other well were happier with their relationships. How? I don’t know as the study didn’t examine this, but there is probably lots of interesting stuff going on. Knowing what others are like, what they do and don’t like and how they will react to different situations can make us more considerate and caring for their needs. In addition, if your partner can’t think what you would want for a birthdays or consistently gets you wrong, this would breed discontent in even the fairest. Paying attention to and asking questions about our partner’s wishes, aspirations and behaviour seems like something we should be doing anyway, but this research is suggestive that it may have tangible benefits too.
Perhaps the most common relationship norm of all is the sharing of a bed. Sleep is more important than you’d think. If an individual has a lack of it, or consistent prolonged poor quality sleep, they are more likely to suffer from adverse health consequences and research suggests perhaps even an earlier death. Does sleeping with a partner improve your sleep? No, definitely not. Does it make it worse? Yes, quite possibly, especially if you are a light sleeper. Cognitive ability and concentration is also hampered by lack of sleep, which can make for an unpleasant and unproductive day at work. If you aren’t a light sleeper and are extremely selfish you might be wondering why any of this applies to you. Well, lack of sleep also increases risk of weight gain, so if you prefer a slimmer build on your partners you might be out of luck too. Could tiredness and exhaustion also contribute to arguments and bickering? I would guess so. Should we be moving convention away from sleeping together and towards sleeping alone? This I am not sure of, but at the very least it underlines how most norms and conventions need to be poked and probed to assess their credentials.
What to do?
Avoid loved ones from time to time.
Tell your boyfriend to get bent next time he tries to make you watch football with him.
Pay more attention to your partner, they might do something interesting.
Give your girlfriend a blanket and show her where the couch is.
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