There are warning signs of divroce or breakup. And this kind of behavior is one of them. So what’s going to lead you straight to separation?
You’re the demonstrative type. And you prove it with lots of little words of love: “My love”, “My angel”, “I miss you already”… Red alert. According to a recent American study published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, the proliferation of declarations of love and other gestures of affection is evidence of a relationship doomed to failure.
A sign of things to come
The study looked at the behavior of 168 couples over a period of 13 years, in other words, over the long term. What emerged was that too much affection is a harbinger of dysfunction in a couple. And when there’s too much, the couple seems to fall apart a few years later. Conversely, less demonstrative lovers are more likely to stay together in the long term. So is the need for demonstration a need for reassurance within the couple? Or to convince oneself of its durability?
“Some people get caught up in the infatuation of the early stages of a relationship, hence the term ‘love makes you blind’. Yet we know that infatuation, passion, are not possible long-term states,” explains psychologist Mason Roantree in the columns of The Independent. “Once that’s gone, you have to look at what’s left between the two people, and if there’s no connection other than passion, then the relationship is likely to fall apart.”
This would happen in several stages. First comes disillusionment. Once the passion wears off, you open your eyes to who the other person really is. If, on top of this, a routine sets in, it can quickly be fatal and lead to a break-up. Disillusionment often leads to disappointment. And if the latter is repetitive, with no renewal of positive feelings, it’s all over. That’s why some people multiply their tokens of affection to compensate for a lack. And therein lies the problem. Affection alone isn’t enough to keep a couple together. It takes more than that to make a relationship work. So while this technique is reassuring at first, it’s only camouflaging an emptiness that will most likely lead to a break-up.
And if you’re arguing too, the fallout will be swift, especially if you use one of those words..
