Have you ever fallen for an internet dating quiz that claims to classify you, like “What’s your star sign’s love style?”
They may be fun, but we all know most of them are boring.
What would you say if someone told you they’d found a way to “category” your love style based on actual science?
Three relationship scientists asked nearly 400 couples to track how they felt about their relationships and how committed they were to marrying their partners. They tracked each couple for nine months. They didn’t literally track them, because that would be creepy. Instead, they asked the couples a few questions and asked them to keep track of how committed they were over time.
After nine months, the scientists collected all of the couples’ responses and scrutinized the data. They found that couples did indeed tend to fall into one of four categories.
Get ready to take a deep look into your soul. You may be:
1. Conflicted yet passionate
These are the couples for whom Facebook created the “complicated” relationship status. Their levels of commitment tend to go up and down over time, especially after arguments. But that’s not necessarily a bad thing. These people let those conflicts help them make decisions about their relationship, and in fact, they didn’t seem any more destined to break up than the other groups.
And as a bonus, they tend to follow those tumultuous lows with passionate highs: “These couples live in a tension between the conflicts that drive them apart and the passionate attraction that draws them back together,” he says. Study author Brian Ogolsky.
2. Partner-focused
If you think your perfect date night is a long walk followed by eight hours of watching “House of Cards” together, you might fall into this category.
Partner-focused couples tend to spend a lot of time together, share hobbies and leisure activities, and it’s this shared time that drives them forward. They tend to be more careful and thoughtful about relationship decisions, are more likely to build from the inside out, and are the most satisfied overall.
3. Sociable people
On the other hand, if your perfect night with your partner involves gathering all your friends and going out to a bar and playing Settlers of Catan for the hundredth time, this may be the category that best describes you. Social couples typically share a group of friends and use the time they spend with friends to get to know and build their relationship as a couple.
“Having mutual friends makes these couples closer and more committed,” Ogorsky said. They also tend to have fairly stable, high levels of affection based on their friendship feelings for one another, which can be a good indicator of long-term happiness.
4. Dramatic
Renaissance kiss with oil
Image source Sophie/Flickr.
Unfortunately, not all couples have an easy road. Even if things start out well, dramatic couples tend not to stay that way. These types of couples tend to make decisions based on negative experiences or things outside of their relationship.
“These couples go through a lot of ups and downs and their commitment fluctuates a lot,” Ogorsky says. “Every little thing starts to chip away at them, they start to view the relationship negatively and eventually they give up.”
Perhaps unsurprisingly, dramatic couples were the most likely to break up, twice as often as other couples.
So what is best? Now, this article is different from most other internet quizzes: the answer is that there is no “best” relationship.
Every couple’s relationships work and thrive differently. It’s a different journey, and it’s a mistake to assume there’s a “right” way to love someone, or that you’re locked into a particular relationship style forever. “These aren’t pre-determined, lifelong patterns,” Ogolsky says.
And even in single relationships, these patterns aren’t predictors of doom: In fact, dramatic couples may last longer than sociable ones, and partner-driven couples may be more passionate than anyone you’ll ever meet.
And in their paper, the researchers are quick to admit that their study doesn’t cover all relationships — for example, many very happy couples don’t want to get married — and it’s worth noting that it wasn’t that long ago that the United States didn’t allow all couples to marry. obtain married!
But wait, this isn’t going to teach you how to find a perfect, forever happy relationship, is it?! So why study this?
Because, Ogorsky explained, humans are, at heart, social creatures. Love, friendship, passion, and commitment are part of the human experience. Understanding relationships is as important to understanding ourselves as studying chemistry or biology. It also affects health!
Regarding what you The takeaway from all of this is that what you use to make a decision (conflict, internal, external, friendship, etc.) can impact your level of commitment. Couples should be mindful of their own choices, and not just their own. how They make their own choices.
So… your Category?
This article was originally published on February 15, 2016.
