Podcast: Relationships and Rose-Colored Glasses

Do your feelings about a romantic relationship or your partner change significantly when it's over? On today's show, Gabe speaks to researcher Aidan Smyth, who conducted a study that looked at how people felt about their relationships – both during and after the relationship ended.

What is your experience? Do you remember your ex with fondness, indifference, or negativity? And which of these emotions are best for moving on? Hear the science behind feelings in romantic relationships with us.

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Guest information for the podcast episode "Aidan Smyth-Relationships"

Aidan Smyth is a graduate student in the Department of Psychology at Carleton University studying romantic relationships, mindfulness, and goal tracking.

Via the Psych Central Podcast Host

Gabe Howard is an award-winning writer and public speaker living with bipolar disorder. He is the author of the popular book, Insanity is an asshole and other observations, available from Amazon; signed copies are also available directly from the author. To learn more about Gabe, please visit his website gabehoward.com.

Computer generated transcript for "Aidan Smyth Relationships" episode

Editor's note: Please note that this transcript was computer generated and therefore may contain inaccuracies and grammatical errors. Thank you very much.

Announcer: they listen The Psych Central Podcast, where visiting experts in the fields of psychology and mental health share thought-provoking information in simple everyday language. Here is your host, Gabe Howard.

Gabe Howard:: Hello everyone and welcome to this week's episode of The Psych Central Podcast. I'm your host, Gabe Howard, and I'm calling the show today. We have Aidan Smyth. Aidan is currently a graduate student in the Department of Psychology at Carleton University. His major is romantic relationships, mindfulness, and goal pursuit. Aidan, welcome to the show.

Aidan Smyth: Thank you very much, Gabe.

Gabe Howard: Aidan, you are here today because you did a study that gave some surprising results and brought you national attention. In short, you've found that people's feelings about their past and present romantic relationships are not based on facts, but rather on how they feel in the moment. Can you tell us about it your studies and what exactly did you want to discover?

Aidan Smyth: For sure. This work was inspired by quite a large number of research which suggests that we are not always as specific as we might like to believe when it comes to the way we think about our partners and relationships. For example, our perception of our relationships can be very subjective and is often influenced by our hopes and goals. So if you want your relationship to work, you might see it through rose-colored glasses, so to speak. For that special one study, my colleagues and I, Dr. Johanna Peetz and Adrienne Capaldi, we were interested in what happens to people's perceptions about relationships after a breakup, when they may no longer be motivated to see them in the best possible light and actually even see motivated to see it in a negative way To see light. In particular, we were interested in whether people who had recently had a breakup would show a trend in the way they remember their previous relationships. And we wanted to see if they would remember her as worse than actually saying it was while they were still together.

Gabe Howard: How did you find people who were in a relationship that they described as good, that made them break up, and then asked them if they saw that because that is just like my thoughts were right. It seems like this research involves finding a happy couple and following them until they break up, and then saying, hey, what do you think of this relationship? Just to see. But I'm not a researcher, so I imagine you didn't do it that way.

Aidan Smyth: You know, that's actually not a bad summary. The study design was quite simple. We basically recruited people who were in romantic relationships and we asked them how satisfied they were with those relationships. And then we waited a few months with an evil grin on our faces, you could say, at which point we contacted them again. And a quarter of the sample had broken up by that point. At this point, we asked these people how satisfied they were a few months earlier when they were still with their ex.

Gabe Howard: And you found that the information they gave you the second time you contacted them was completely different from the information they gave you the first time.

Aidan Smyth: Yes, after a recent breakup, people thought they weren't as happy as they actually were, and they also remembered their previous partners as being less compatible than they originally said they were. In essence, they remembered their previous relationships as worse than they actually were, or at least worse than they said they were during their dating. Interestingly, it didn't seem to matter how long they were in those past relationships.

Gabe Howard: And just to make it clear, when you first met these couples, they said we were happy together. She is great, he is great, we are happy, we go out. Everything is in a good mood. It is you. And then after they broke up it was, oh, I always knew this wasn't going to work. I was unhappy every day and saw it coming. Are these the answers you got the second time?

Aidan Smyth: There's certainly a bit of that going on, and I think one thing that needs to be highlighted is that the people who ultimately broke up actually reported less satisfaction in their relationships than the people who did during the course of the study stayed together. Even at the start of the study, there was a difference in people's satisfaction at the start of the study. But yeah, then we saw some inaccuracies as an afterthought in the way they remembered their previous relationship.

Gabe Howard: On the one hand, I am not surprised that you would call a relationship positive in a relationship, and I know it has some research modality or anonymity. I'm assuming you didn't interview her together. You interviewed each participant individually.

Aidan Smyth: Yes, and it wasn't even couples who entered the study, but individuals who were in romantic relationships. In order to,

Gabe Howard: Gotcha, gotcha.

Aidan Smyth: Yes.

Gabe Howard: So it's not surprising to me, not a researcher, that you would describe it positively in a relationship when you are in a relationship. There's a little bit of self-protection there, isn't there? I mean if someone sat me down and said, Gabe, are you happy with your relationship? And I thought, no, I'm unhappy and I hate it. That makes no sense. There is such a thing as a protection quality, no, of course not. I love her. We work hard. I can see that I am using such positive language even when I had reservations. Did you notice some kind of reading between line language, even in positivity, or was it just plain happy?

Aidan Smyth: The way we actually measured their satisfaction in the relationship was really just through questionnaires. So we didn't do any interviews with these people, which would be interesting. And I think you would take up a lot more of the descriptors that you are talking about there. However, we looked at questionnaires and examined how their scores changed when they rated their relationship satisfaction and partner compatibility.

Gabe Howard: And what did you find out? What was the bottom line of all of this at the end of the study?

Aidan Smyth: Basically, the bottom line was that people were inaccurate in the way they remembered their previous relationships, and essentially felt that they were far less satisfied than they actually said when they were still in these relationships were.

Gabe Howard: And if I get this right, you've also found out that a lot of people have realized that they don't hate their exes as much as they thought they would, and hate is a strong word, maybe, maybe not like? Were not so miserable. Was that also a downside?

Aidan Smyth: So we found that the participants would acknowledge this or that they were aware of it.

Gabe Howard: Fair enough.

Aidan Smyth: We did not investigate this directly in the study. One possibility, however, is that this finding could have something to do with the fact that our memories of the past are often tinged with how we feel in the present. Given that a break-up is often associated with a lot of emotional distress, these difficult feelings can affect people's ability to accurately recall their previous relationships and cause them to remember them as worse than they actually were . Another possibility is that this type of bias actually helps people cope with the breakup and move away from that former partner. We know from previous research that the way people think of their exes is very important when it comes to overcoming a breakup. For example, loving thinking about an ex has been linked to continued attachment to that partner, preoccupation with the previous relationship, and ultimately poorer recovery from the breakup. And I think it's worth noting that this can be problematic for the person's subsequent relationships as well. Other research shows that realizing an ex's shortcomings can help adjust and recover from a breakup. In fact, some researchers argue that people cannot overcome a breakup until they fundamentally change the way they view their previous partners and relationships. To bring it back to this particular tendency, when someone is no longer available to you as a romantic interest, a tendency to view them in a slightly more critical light can actually provide some reassurance and comfort, and diminish those feelings of regret.

Gabe Howard: To make this clear, your study seems to have shown that people are completely inaccurate in the way they remember previous relationships.

Aidan Smyth: It's important to note that they weren't completely inaccurate when it came to how they remembered their previous relationships. For example, it wasn't like they said they were absolutely head over heels in love with their former partner. And then, after the breakup, they remembered that relationship as absolutely terrible, although I think it is possible and for some people it might be a reality. But yes, they generally didn't completely reject their previous relationships. It was more that, on average, they remembered her as a little worse than they actually said while they were together. In this sense, it is possible that after a breakup, people simply take off their rose-colored glasses and no longer see this relationship as idealized.

Gabe Howard: But isn't that healthy, isn't it good to really see someone for who they are?

Aidan Smyth: Yeah, I mean, these types of prejudices can be a little unsettling when you first meet them. And the idea that we may not be as specific as we like to think, how we think about our partners, and how we think about them. However, some researchers speculate that these and similar types of prejudice are actually an important characteristic of a healthy and satisfying relationship. And often we see in previous research that these types of prejudices are associated with greater satisfaction in the relationship.

Gabe Howard: Thank you for the explanation. I need to understand when people are in the best position to judge the quality of a relationship. Is it when they are in the middle of it or only after they break up? Because, of course, when the best position is to be assessed after they break up, no one in a healthy, happy relationship can ever really read what's going on.

Aidan Smyth: This is a really interesting question I'll admit from the start that I certainly don't have the answer to, but it's interesting to think about because there is an implicit assumption that we will likely be more specific in the way how we think about our relationships while we are actually in them, as opposed to when they are over and some time has passed. To make a bad analogy here, if you were eating a sandwich and I asked you how pleasant that sandwich is, I would probably trust your answer a lot more now than if I asked you again in a few months, Sandwich was over.

Gabe Howard: I like this.

Aidan Smyth: While relationships are more complicated than sandwiches, we know from a variety of research that in a relationship we are prone to a range of prejudices that can lead us to view our relationships in that idealized way rather than in a more objective way and way. In essence, we are motivated to view them as good, that we have a great partner, that we have a great relationship, and so we will likely upplay some of the positives and downplay some of the more negatives. On the other hand, after a breakup, it is possible that we may be motivated to do exactly the opposite. And we might want to believe that our previous relationships were never really that great all along because it probably isn't exactly comforting to think that your previous relationship, which ended for whatever reason, was absolutely amazing and that you will never find another just like it. So, essentially, it seems like we might be prone to prejudice on either side of the separation. And I think it remains an open question when we are in the best position to evaluate them objectively.

Gabe Howard: What did you find in relation to people who stayed together? I mean, obviously you said 25% broke up

Aidan Smyth: Mm-hmm.

Gabe Howard: That means 75% were still strong.

Aidan Smyth: Mm-hmm, an interesting finding, so our research showed that people who stayed in the same relationships over the course of the study also showed some prejudice or inaccuracies in the way they thought about their relationships. These people felt that by the end of this study, their relationships had improved significantly in the past few months, when in fact there had been no improvement. They said they were significantly happier in their relationships by the end of the study than they were at the beginning, even though they were just as happy at the beginning.

Gabe Howard: Why do you think that was Why do you think people thought relationships were improving when in reality they were just stagnating? I don't mean, I don't mean bad stagnate.

Aidan Smyth: Mm-hmm.

Gabe Howard: Just like someone who has been married for nearly a decade, I like to say that boredom is healthy. There is no drama. Do we know each other. It's all right. But I understand why young people are like this, man, I don't, I don't want to be that guy. I get it. At the same time, this is what a healthy relationship looks like. There is no gossip. It's just there.

Aidan Smyth: Mm-hmm.

Gabe Howard: Why do you think they see this when in reality I think they are boring? Is that the word to use?

Aidan Smyth: Well, I think this type of bias could also reflect the idea of ​​seeing the relationship through rose-colored glasses and that it can be helpful to imagine that the relationship will continue to improve or improve over time. And by downplaying or excluding the past, we can do so. This tendency could reflect a mechanism that allows people to judge their relationships positively over time. And it will likely help fend off some of the ideas you just mentioned about stagnation or the possibility your relationship will deteriorate over time. That kind of bias would somehow help protect you from it, and probably be a little more appealing. I think I will also notice that other research has shown that we do this on a personal level as well. For example, there is a study that showed that college students remember their former selves more negatively than they did a few months earlier in relation to a number of traits such as self-confidence or their social skills. So downplaying the past seems like a strategy that will make us and our relationships feel better in the present.

Gabe Howard: We'll be right back after this news.

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Gabe Howard: We're back with Aidan Smyth discussing his study of relationships and our feelings. What other prejudices were there in romantic relationships?

Aidan Smyth: Sure, so there is a great amount of research going on, and I think even some of your past guests have probably talked about these kinds of things as well. One of the prejudices that I have pointed out here a few times is the idea of ​​seeing our partners through rose-colored glasses or in an idealized way. By that, I mean that there was one study that essentially found that people tended to describe their partners as being more like their ideal partner than the actual characteristics of their partners. So there is some nice empirical evidence for the term love is blind, I suppose.

Gabe Howard: I understand from a research perspective why facts are important. I get it. But romance is, I know why we're researching and it's fascinating. But what you just said there somehow appeals to me, this idea that I emphasize the positive aspects of my wife and suppress and ignore her negative aspects, and that I can just love her so much more. I like to believe, of course, that this is what you have to do to maintain a healthy marriage with me. That's how it is, you have to. But I honestly think anyone who hears this would wonder why science is messing with it. You think the best of your romantic partner and you kind of give them the worst. It sounds like a bias is almost helpful, but I imagine it can go too far.

Aidan Smyth: I think there is a lot to do and a lot of great things to think about.

Gabe Howard: Isn't it good to emphasize the positive and diminish the negative? The very first thing I thought when you said this was, yeah, it's like any 20 year old who said, hey, I get married. What advice do you have And I would like to celebrate its positives and ignore its negatives. Do you know when she snores? Yes. Downplay that. Is she always half an hour late to get ready? Yes. Downplay that. But if she's cheating on you, you have to have real facts. So where, when is it good to put on rose-colored glasses and when is it important to take them off?

Aidan Smyth: So that's a good question, and I think there is some truth to this idea, and I think this is even reflected in some of these other research that shows these biases can be helpful, and often with greater satisfaction in ours Relationships are connected. With that said, I wonder about a similar question that you seem to be alluding to here. Is it helpful to know about these prejudices? For example, is it helpful to know that even though you thought it did, your relationship may not have improved over time? Or is it helpful to know that your relationship isn't necessarily better than your friends' or less likely to lead to a breakup? On the one hand, I somehow remember the phrase that ignorance is bliss. On the other hand, I remember a Nietzsche quote that I think goes something like this: You can measure the strength of a person's mind by how much truth they can tolerate. I like to believe that knowing about these prejudices can be helpful in the sense that people may see that their relationships are not perfect. And that's fine. It's okay that their relationships aren't perfect. Another potential benefit is for people who are in the early stages of a relationship. This type of research could lead them to potentially watch out for red flags that pop up instead of sweeping them under the carpet. Perhaps this could save them a lot of stress and heartache in the long run.

Gabe Howard: Man is biased. We have prejudices everywhere, and the more research is done and the more we learn about our culture and society, the more we realize that we have prejudices that we don't even know about. I don't want that to be left unsaid. But this show is specifically about romantic relationships. And one of the things I think about is the tendency we have when relationships are new. I call it new relationship energy. Whenever I am in a new relationship, be it a friendship, a business relationship or a romantic relationship, everything is amazing and exciting and new. And I have a tendency to chase this awe-inspiring dragon because it's so exciting, not boring. It's unique. And I don't know I coined the term new relationship energy, but I think it's a well understood concept that all romantic relationships are great for a week. Are we not ruining this? Because this week is great. When should you make sure the bias is understood? I think Aidan I keep thinking about and maybe I'm a hopeless romantic, maybe I'm middle aged, maybe I've seen one too many rom-coms but I think about the excitement of new relationships and honestly how ridiculous they are. I would hate to think that relationships will come down to scientific questionnaires. And why can't it just be fun for a while? But I am also aware that people interfere in destructive, dependent and dangerous relationships and carry them out over the long term. Where is the balance?

Aidan Smyth: Great question, I think this is going to be on a personal level and I think it would really depend on the person and how much of these uncomfortable truths they can tolerate I think and.

Gabe Howard: Perhaps you won't let people move in on day one, but aren't you running out of their balances either?

Aidan Smyth: Yes, I think these are two great pieces of advice.

Gabe Howard: There's kind of a quote in my head that says Trust in God but lock your car. And when we apply that to romance, I think it's okay to love love. It's okay to get carried away. It's okay to be excited. But you may not give the person the key to your house on the first day. Don't do the Dharma and Greg and get married and check the facts. Remember that there is a tendency and apply it as you move forward. Enjoy the moment but don't make long-term decisions is the advice that may come to mind. How was it for you personally to conduct this study? Because when love shows up, people in general have very strong beliefs that have little to do with science and a lot to do with their grandmothers and then with their parents 'marriage and their grandparents' marriage. As your study has shown, the history of our romantic relationships plays a big role in our attitudes towards romantic relationships. What conversations in your group started this study?

Aidan Smyth: I think one thing I would say is that when I first heard about all of these types of prejudice, I was certainly very surprised because it can be quite uncomfortable or almost threatening to believe that you are not a former partner or have seen a former partner as closely as you may have current partner. However, over time, I think that learning that this isn't necessarily a bad thing and that people need to hug about it has given me a little security, I think. But it certainly made me think about past relationships and the way I think about them now. And I try to take the perspective of how I might have felt back then, even though these are difficult things.

Gabe Howard: Aidan, what do you have to take away? What do you hope society learns from your research?

Aidan Smyth: One thing I'm about to point out is that I don't think this is a green light for people running out and getting back together with their exes. We are not trying to say that with this research here. But I think it gives us an opportunity to reflect on our past relationships and possibly see them in a new light as valuable experiences. And maybe, over time, people can get to a place where they actually realize that they enjoyed their time with these people and that they likely served them in their future lives.

Gabe Howard: Please note that there was a final sample size of 184 participants for our listeners only. About half of these participants were undergraduate students, the mean age of the entire sample was approximately 27 years, and 60% of the sample were female and 65% were Caucasian. We just want to make sure you have all the facts as the research is limited and what conclusions can be applied to all of humanity.

Aidan Smyth: Absolutely.

Gabe Howard: All right, thank you Aidan for being here. We really appreciate that.

Aidan Smyth: Thank you for having me, Gabe.

Gabe Howard: You are welcome. Hey everyone, my name is Gabe Howard and I am the author of Insanity is an asshole and other observations. It's available on Amazon. Or you can get signed copies for less money on my website. gabehoward.com. I'll even throw in show stickers. We have a super secret facebook page PsychCentral.com/FBShow. Listen. You can hang out with me. And if you really like the podcast, wherever you downloaded it, please subscribe, rate, rate and rate it. Remember that you can get free, convenient, affordable and private advice online for a week anytime, anywhere BetterHelp.com/PsychCentral. We meet next week.

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