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Love Games: How We Sabotage Relationships
A new study used simulated relationships to offer new insight into real romance-showing how certain personality traits can sabotage healthy bonds.
Vicary adapted the book’s interactive formula to create a “Choose Your Own Relationship” narrative, where study participants could make decisions about how to interact with their partner-would they break off the relationship when it starts getting serious or sit down and talk about it? Support the boyfriend when his family’s dog dies, or expect him to man up and quit whining?
Vicary found that answers to those questions largely depended on the personality traits of the individual making them. Before participants began “dating” their virtual partner, she had them complete a questionnaire designed to measure their levels of avoidance and anxiety. Avoidant individuals are less likely to form close relationships or disclose their emotions, making it difficult for their partners to know what they’re thinking or feeling. Those who score highly on the anxiety dimension tend to have difficulty trusting their partners and become jealous easily, which can often drive the person they’re trying to get close to further away.
She found that it’s not as much the romantic cards you’re dealt that matter but how you play them. Those with personalities that were prone to anxiety or intimacy avoidance were more likely to push the liaison in a negative direction, and they wound up less satisfied overall.
Interesting.....
A new study used simulated relationships to offer new insight into real romance-showing how certain personality traits can sabotage healthy bonds.
Vicary adapted the book’s interactive formula to create a “Choose Your Own Relationship” narrative, where study participants could make decisions about how to interact with their partner-would they break off the relationship when it starts getting serious or sit down and talk about it? Support the boyfriend when his family’s dog dies, or expect him to man up and quit whining?
Vicary found that answers to those questions largely depended on the personality traits of the individual making them. Before participants began “dating” their virtual partner, she had them complete a questionnaire designed to measure their levels of avoidance and anxiety. Avoidant individuals are less likely to form close relationships or disclose their emotions, making it difficult for their partners to know what they’re thinking or feeling. Those who score highly on the anxiety dimension tend to have difficulty trusting their partners and become jealous easily, which can often drive the person they’re trying to get close to further away.
She found that it’s not as much the romantic cards you’re dealt that matter but how you play them. Those with personalities that were prone to anxiety or intimacy avoidance were more likely to push the liaison in a negative direction, and they wound up less satisfied overall.
Interesting.....