Once we were in each other’s eyes
There always seems to be a halo
But now
The halo is about to dissipate
Every love has more or less twists and turns. When conflicts occur, when enthusiasm is exhausted, when two people are relatively silent, we can’t even believe that the person in front of us is the one we used to be. ‘s beloved. We want to cut off and escape, but we cannot accept that the other party completely disappears into our own world, so we always repeat the cycle of opening and closing, with a glimmer of expectation in our hearts: maybe this broken mirror still has Opportunities come back.
Circulation and Turbulence
What we call “on-off” in our lives is called relationship cycling in psychology, which refers to at least one breakup and reunion experience. intimacy. According to a 2009 study by Dailey et al., about 45% of people have had an ins and outs with their current partner, and 61% have experienced an ins and outs with their partner at some point in their lives.
According to the Relational Turbulence Theory, every transition in an intimate relationship leads to turmoil and chaos, increasing the uncertainty of the relationship. And as the number of breakup-recombination cycles increased, the rift between the two became more difficult to bridge. Numerous studies have shown that intimacy in a relationship cycle leads to less satisfaction, less commitment to each other, less maintenance behaviors and more violent conflict than one-off relationships . At the same time, the future of the relationship has become increasingly unstable.
The stability of intimate relationship development is closely related to personal well-being, so individuals who experience relationship cycles tend to have poorer mental health functioning. A 2018 study showed that relationship cycles are associated with symptoms such as anxiety and depression, and that individuals experience more distress with each on-off cycle.
However, what we want to know more is whether the pain caused by the relationship cycle is short-term and can be dissipated over time? Or will it accumulate over a longer period of time and have a profound impact on the future of the individual? After all, two people who can separate and reunite and have constant entanglements must have a deep emotional foundation. It is too difficult to completely cut off this intimate relationship. If it is only “short pain”, it is not unbearable. Therefore, rather than sighing and feeling, we need science to give answers and tell us what to do.
So, is the love that is divided and closed still worth continuing?
How about tomorrow?
Scholars such as J. Kale Monk from the University of Missouri have studied this issue, positing that relationship cycles are not only related to psychological distress at the time, but also positively related to distress over time. related. In 2021, their research will be published in Family Relations.
Using a longitudinal study, the researchers selected 545 subjects who were in romantic or marital relationships and collected data on four separate occasions over a 15-month period. Variables tested included homosexuality or heterosexuality, relationship cycle experience, stress and anxiety, relationship violence, intimacy satisfaction, uncertainty about intimacy, and more. The researchers then used a multi-layer linear model (HLM) to perform a growth curve analysis of the above variables to explore how they changed over time, adding gender, age, race, etc. as control variables.
The results of the study showed that relational cycles were common among the population, with 33.6% of the subjects reporting they had experienced on-off and on-off, and showed more stress and anxiety. At the same time, individuals with high relationship cycles also experience more psychological distress over time, and this phenomenon exists in both homosexuals and heterosexuals. Unlike our daily experience of “pain will be forgotten over time”, in the four stages of the study sampling, for subjects who are always experiencing on-off and on-off, the longer the delay, the more painful they experience. Big.
In addition, the study also found that an individual’s age was negatively correlated with psychological distress, with a significant reduction in psychological distress experienced by individuals with increasing age; in terms of gender differences, women experienced a greater to more distress; while violence in relationships was also significantly associated with psychological distress, individuals with more history of violence reported greater distress at baseline levels, but this distress did not persist over time; similarly, psychological distress There was a positive correlation with relationship uncertainty and a negative correlation with relationship satisfaction, and neither of them persisted over time.
In conclusion, people with a history of breakup-recombination experience more psychological pain, and it doesn’t lessen or disappear in a short period of time. The more frequent breakup-recombinations people experience, the more pain they experience.
Being better with each other
Early relationship experience can have an impact on future relationship outcomes. Individuals who experienced the relationship cycle before marriage tended to have less confidence and satisfaction in their marriage, and were more likely to develop relationships after marriage. separated. Such a conclusion seems a bit pessimistic, as Mr. Yang Jiang once said: When fate comes to an end, instead of struggling, it is better to leave the stage politely, return yourself to yourself, and return others to others. Let flowers become flowers, and trees become trees. From then on, we will never meet again.
But in this regard, researcher Kale Monk pointed out that in some of their other studies, there are still some couples who believe that it was the days of the breakup that made them realize each other. how important. Therefore, when faced with a relationship cycle, excessive pessimism and optimism are not desirable. Thinking about how to change the existing mode of getting along and avoid falling into the quagmire of separation and integration may be the “middle way” of intimacy.
Author | Kai Zhao
References
Monk, JK, Ogolsky, BG, & Maniotes, C. (2021). OnCoff relationship instability and distressover time in same and differentsex relationships. Family Relations, 1-14. https:https:/ /doi.org/10.1111/fare.12614
Reynolds, E. (2022, February 24). People in on-again, off-again relationships experience more psychological distress. BPS Research Digest. https:https://digest.bps.org .uk/2022/02/24/people-in-on-again-off-again-relationships-experience-more-psychological-distress/