A few days ago, my best friend pulled the girl and said a lot of whispers. Including something that makes her happy and nervous.
Best friend’s boyfriend successfully signed a contract with a large company and could directly settle in first-tier cities. They can finally realize their dreams in big cities. If nothing unexpected happens, they can buy a house, get married, and have children within two years.
However, she was very worried.
The household registration belongs to the boyfriend, and the house is likely to be the boyfriend, and the boyfriend contributes a lot of money.
. In the future, their relationship life will change and she has almost no ability to survive there.
Some people may think: It’s too pretentious, why can’t your boyfriend be bad, and it’s not OK?
But this insecurity is very real.
She told me that she seemed to be her boyfriend's accessory, and the only connection between them was their relationship.
But the matter of emotion is invisible and intangible, and it is very metaphysical.
You can’t live your life by relying on love.
The problem of best friend seems very simple.
If you want to gain a sense of security in staying in a big city, just work hard and gain independent capital.
But if you think about it carefully, her insecurity is actually largely due to her "misunderstanding":
She regards love as an "excellent" equivalent exchange .
01
Is love an equivalent exchange?
My best friend's mother graduated from high school. She is tall and has a pretty face. There are many people who pursued her back then.
And his best friend's father, although he is less than 170cm tall, graduated from junior high school and looks average, but he has a city household registration and his mother doesn't lose money when she gets married.
Under the indoctrination of this concept, my best friend felt since childhood that the value of two people can be "equal exchange" and is an important rule of marriage . Is the idea of
correct?
In interpersonal relationships, using each other to get ideal rewards to maintain relationships is necessary for social life. This process is called social change .
is like a best friend’s mother. If we use our own good conditions to exchange our father’s city household registration, we can understand it as an exchange. [1]
In later development, interpersonal relationship scientists called it " interdependence theory ".
interdependence theory has two elements: reward and cost .
is like the experience and objects we get when we contact friends, or the acceptance and support we get from our lovers. Anyone who can bring us a sense of pleasure and accomplishment in interpersonal communication can be called a reward.
The cost is punitive and unpleasant experience, such as money expenses, physical injuries, and of course, there are psychological burdens, worries, etc. in close relationships.
When dating, we often unconsciously use rewards to subtract the cost and calculate the result we get, whether it is positive or negative.
This theory seems to vulgarize beautiful love.
Will we build an intimate relationship just because of the "reward"? Of course not.
Interdependence theory cannot explain the whole story of love, but it still has meaning.
calculating the reward and cost of intimate relationships can provide extraordinary information for the current status and future of the relationship.
For example, a study measures the degree of generosity, care, and self-disclosure of lovers when they start dating. It was found that these data can accurately predict whether the lovers are still together after 4 months.
02
Will my boyfriend really leave her because of her "low value"?
is not necessarily true.
The "value" in everyone's eyes is different
The girl has seen a magical couple on TikTok.
The reason why they are said to be magical is that her husband Hui Ge is a British aristocrat. He graduated from the Cambridge Physics Department. He likes music, language, physics, programming and rockets. He is also tall and handsome.
According to this setting, his wife should be of a white, rich and beautiful level.
is not, his wife, the owner of Jersey Island, has dark skin, a little convex mouth, is not tall, and is not good at studying.
Island owners’ family of five
Such a combination seems to break our understanding of “uniform matching”.
Someone even asked Zhihu, is they true love for those with such a big gap in education, family background and appearance?
Check out their videos. The noble Brother Hui often cooperates with the island owner to make some nonsensical actions. A son and two girls laughed happily and laughed.
The full sense of happiness is almost overflowing the screen.
Some people say that Brother Hui, who loves physics, is a traditional science and engineering man, introverted and conservative, and perfectionist; while the island owner is careless, he can bring relaxation and happiness to Brother Hui.
Some people say that although the island owner is not as good as Brother Hui, she is strong and perseverant. She takes the IELTS exam from zero during pregnancy, and Brother Hui will never leave her if she fails to start a business.
From the perspective of secular vision, they may not match, but they are souls that nourish each other.
The girl asked her daughter, you have communicated with her boyfriend, what does he love you?
best friend said that her boyfriend felt very relaxed by her side, and she could complain to her best friend with confidence, and she could be the real self by her side.
You see, this is a value that cannot be measured by salary and household registration.
Reward minus the price, it does not determine whether we will continue
best friend told me that my boyfriend lives in a single-parent family with only his father and has never had a girlfriend.
Every time she brings delicious snacks to accompany her boyfriend, her boyfriend feels very touched. It turns out that being wrapped in love is such a happy feeling.
Among them, comparison level is affecting our choice. We often compare our rewards with expectations.
Like his best friend's boyfriend, he may not have received meticulous care in the past. After he gets the company of his best friend, he will feel that this is an unparalleled reward.
comparison level is the criterion for measuring our satisfaction with relationships.
Interacting with others, our inner experience is a genealogy that changes continuously from grief to ecstasy, and the individual's comparison level only represents his reference point.
If the relationship results exceed your comparison level, you will feel happy.
Dad has told the girl since she was a child, "Dad should be nice to you, so that when you grow up, you won't be easily moved by others' goodness."
Dad do this, in fact, to improve the girl's comparison level. I hope that the girl can meet a man in the future, which is better than her father.
The degree of happiness often depends on the degree to which the results you obtain exceed your expectations. If the results of your interactions far exceed your comparison level, you will feel very happy.
Look back at the girl's best friend. The love she can give her boyfriend is far beyond her boyfriend's expectations, so her boyfriend is very satisfied in this relationship.
03 How should I deal with such a relationship?
Good relationship must be achieved through hard work by both parties.
The girl heard a passage when she was very young. When the two broke up, both of them assumed 100% responsibility, rather than each taking 50% responsibility.
So, the following suggestions, the girl hopes you can pull your partner to watch together.
· Convert exchange relationship into common relationship
In the exchange relationship, people want to get the same reward while giving expectations for others.
If they receive kind help from others, they will feel obliged to report to others and not be owed to each other.The characteristics of this relationship
are superficial and transient, and are largely task-oriented.
Best friend can be said to be a typical exchange relationship thinking, but this kind of thinking is not suitable for the development of intimate relationships. If you want high-quality intimate relationships, you often need to have common relationships.
In a shared relationship, the partner will pay special attention to the other party's happiness and support and care for each other without expecting any reward. [3]
Therefore, people who seek common relationships will not strictly calculate the price they pay, they will not eagerly hope that their efforts will be rewarded immediately; even if they do not have the chance to get benefits, they will closely monitor their partner's needs. In relationships like
, people often make some small sacrifices for their partners and help each other a little, and as a result, they enjoy a higher quality intimate relationship. [3]
· Improve yourself and create new experiences
Of course, if your best friend can improve yourself, it is best to fundamentally break this "imbalance".
Girls want to tell you about the benefits that can bring to emotions from a psychological perspective.
mentioned above that people’s rewards are divided into many types, such as the increase in knowledge and the promotion of self-concept, which will give us a happy experience.
When we establish a new intimate relationship, we will broaden our original world through our partner's eyes and thoughts.
Through partners, we develop new interests, skills and experiences, and such partnerships often attract us. [5]
Intimate relationships are becoming increasingly boring. One of the reasons is that as both parties gradually become familiar with each other, the role of partners in broadening the world becomes smaller.
Therefore, the meaning of to improve oneself is that while we improve ourselves, we can bring new knowledge and new experiences to our partners .
Novel activities, the development of new talents and the acquisition of new ideas and opinions are all inherently satisfying. [4]
was written at the end
After my best friend talked to me, she went to find her boyfriend and expressed her concerns frankly.
boyfriend said, " You don't know. Every day I wake up and think of you by my side, I feel so lucky.
grew up by my father's side and always felt that I was a strong person who doesn't need to be loved.
My There are only straight lines with clear edges and decisive black and white in the world. But because of your arrival, I suddenly felt that everything was bright and soft.
I can cry here, laugh here, and forget all the rules and regulations. ”
Best friend burst into tears when she heard this. It turned out that both of them were wandering around in the happy circle.
Girl wants to tell everyone that it is very normal to have trouble even in a loving relationship. When faced with trouble, gentle and honest communication is always the best solution.
Of course, when you are at a loss, it is also good to come to "professionals" like me and give you some feasible suggestions.
Hope there are people who love you and me in your world.
The world and I love you.
- The End -
References:
[1] "Intimate Relationship" Roland Miller
[2]Beck, L. A., & Clark, M. S. (2010). What constitutes a healthy communal marriage and why relationship stage matters. Journal of Family Theory & Review, 2(4), 299-315.
[3]Clark, M. S., & Grote, N. K. (1998). Why aren't indices of relationship costs always negatively related to indices of relationship quality?. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 2(1), 2-17.
[4]Tucker, P., & Aron, A. (1993). Passionate love and marital satisfaction at key transition points in the family life cycle. Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology, 12(2), 135-147.
[5]Strong, G., & Aron, A. (2006). The effect of shared participation in novel and challenging activities on experienced relationship quality: Is it mediated by high positive affect?.
