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Is Your Relationship Really Close Enough?

by Anne Trueman on Feb 28 2013 11:44 AM
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Is Your Relationship Really Close Enough?
Recent research reveals that it does not make any difference how close you are with your partner to make your hearts beat together. What actually matters is that you are as close as you wish to be; it even implies you are not too close at all!
The research was published in Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin. Around 732 men and women were enrolled in the study, who took online surveys during a span of three years.

Various questions were asked pertaining to different aspects of their relationship such as how satisfied they were in their relationship, how intimate they felt with their partner, how committed they are with their partners, etc.

The couples’ intimacy was assessed with the help of Other in Self Scale which takes into ‘stock of how much overlap couples show in areas such as shared identity, values, resources, and personality traits.’

The scientists observed that about 57 percent of the volunteers felt too distant from their partners, 5 percent of the respondents felt too close to each other and 37 percent were happy with their intimacy.

It was also noted that the wider the gap between what an individual felt to be the best level of closeness and the actual closeness of his/her relationship, the more probability that he/she reports symptoms of depression and poor quality of relationship.

This was applicable with almost all levels of intimacy. It simply did not matter whether the volunteers wished more closeness or less; if the satisfaction level was low, they experienced more negative impacts.

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The couples who felt ‘too close’ or ‘not quite close enough’ had more chances of a break up.

Prof. David Frost, a psychologist and Professor of Population and Family Health at the Mailman School, who was also an authors of the study mentioned, “It’s best not to make too many assumptions about what constitutes a healthy relationship. Rather, we need to hear from people about how close they are in their relationships and how that compares to how close they’d ideally like to be.”

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The scientists advocated that their study is effective in improving therapy for the couples by stressing the actual amount of togetherness each partner desires, instead of forcing couples to stick to some abstract idea that more closeness is always good for sustaining a relationship.

The study also revealed that 55 percent of adults aged between 18 to 35 years believed that Valentine’s Day is the right occasion to communicate more with their partner.

Another significant point that was highlighted by the study was that around 60 percent of the couples with kids anticipated having sex on a holiday than parents with no kids living with them.

Source-Medindia


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