Variety is the Spice of Love: Promoting Partner Responsiveness within the Relationship Ecosystem

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Romantic relationships are frequently listed as one of life's most meaningful factors. Thus, understanding what makes relationships successful is a critical issue for individuals and society. Psychologists know a lot about the negative processes that undermine happy and long-lasting relationships. Recently, however, it has become clear that more attention should be devoted to understanding how positive processes promote relationship happiness and success. Positive relationship experiences tend to occur much more often than negative experiences, and romantic relationship quality has a powerful impact on our mental and physical well-being. But how exactly can we enhance the strengths of our relationships to grow as people and have happier lives with our partners? Consider the following description of a long-term romantic couple: James and Marie have been together for several years, respect each other, and have become quite comfortable in their relationship. Although they argue only occasionally, they both feel as if they are "stuck in a rut" and that the positive parts of their relationship are lacking. The difficulty is, they're not exactly sure how to be more supportive, caring, and appreciative of each other. This project investigates how romantic couples, such as James and Marie, can capitalize on the strengths of their relationship to enjoy personal growth and greater well-being. To understand these concepts, I adopt an interdisciplinary approach that bridges the social psychological and ecological sciences. Just as natural ecosystems are more resilient when they contain a wide variety and abundance of organisms, it seems likely the healthiest relationship "ecosystems" must also be characterized by a breadth and abundance of relationship attributes and experiences. In this research, I seek to understand how the many different ways romantic partners can convey responsiveness (caring, understanding, and appreciation) within their relationship have downstream effects on health and happiness. My research approach is couple-based and uses a variety of methods. I ask romantic partners to report their perceptions of their relationship each day for two weeks to understand how their breadth of responsiveness dynamics operate on a day-to-day basis. I combine this information with videotaped interactions between partners to aid in the development of an intervention designed to bolster the variety of ways partners convey responsiveness to each other, testing whether and how responsiveness promotion techniques influence personal growth and relationship quality over time. This intervention has implications not only for couples who are "on the rocks," but also satisfied couples endeavoring to strengthen their relationship. This topic is important in many different ways. It is important for science because social relationships, and particularly romantic relationships, are critical components of the human experience broadly and daily life more specifically. It is important for society because the financial and emotional costs of relationship breakdown to health and other public services are very high. Moreover, the way we approach long-term relationships and find happiness has changed substantially in the past several decades. Understanding how our romantic relationships benefit us and help us grow, as well as delineating the specific information and strategies needed to improve relationships over time, may help reduce the modern-day 40% divorce rate. Finally, it is important for individuals striving to live a fulfilling and healthy life because understanding how to maximize the positives of our romantic relationships is equally, if not more, important than knowing how to avoid or cope with the negatives.