Love: Unity or Journey?

Love is interpreted in a number of ways. Psychologists have identified two distinctive perspectives: love as perfect unity (“made for each other,” “she’s my other half”); and love is a journey (“look how far we’ve come,” “we’ve been through all these things together”).

In a recent issue of the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology Spike W. S. Lee of the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management and Norbert Schwarz of the University of Southern California looked at how these perspectives affected the way couples dealt with conflict.

According to Spike Lee:

“Our findings corroborate prior research showing that people who implicitly 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. Apparently, different ways of talking and thinking about love relationship lead to different ways of evaluating it.”

One experiment they conducted required couples in long-term relationships to: 

* complete a knowledge quiz including expressions relatig to either unity or journey

* then recall either celebrations or conflicts with their romantic partner, and 

* finally, evaluate therelationship.

As the researchers predicted, remembering conflicts led the participants  to feel less satisfied with their relationship—but only within the unity framework, not with the journey frame in mind. On the other hand, recalling celebrations led to feeling satisfied with the relationship no matter how they thought about it.

The researchers too a more subtle approach in follow-up experiments when they invoked the unity vs. journey perspectives in more incidental ways. As an example, participants identified pairs of geometric shapes that formed a complete circle (activating unity) or drew a linefrom points A to B through a maze (activating journey). These pictorial cues were enough to change the way they evaluated relationships. Conflicts hurt relationship satisfaction with the unity frame in mind, but not with a journey perspective.

The researchers suggest that couples would feel better now, and in the future if they think ‘journey’ when they make their marriage vows, such as  “I, ____, take you, ____, to be my husband/wife, to have and to hold from this day forward, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness or in health, to love and to cherish; from this day forward ‘till death do us part.”

Rahoq Mehaayin, Rahoq Mehaalev

Naufal Rangkuti