It’s common to want to become a better version of yourself. Much like the desires to eat, drink and avoid harm, human beings also experience a fundamental need to learn, grow and improve – what psychologists call self-expansion.
The psychology of relationships is a field of study that explores how people think, feel, and behave in their interpersonal relationships with others. It involves understanding the dynamics and processes that influence the formation, maintenance, and dissolution of relationships.
Some key topics in the psychology of relationships include attraction, communication, attachment, intimacy, love, conflict resolution, and relationship satisfaction. Researchers in this field use various research methods, such as surveys, experiments, and observations, to investigate these topics.
Our relationships with others have a significant impact on our mental health and overall well-being. Understanding the psychology of relationships can help us develop healthier and more fulfilling relationships with others, whether it be with romantic partners, friends, family members, or colleagues.
Consider your favourite activities. Things like reading a book, spending time in nature, volunteering with a new organization, taking a class, traveling, trying a new restaurant, exercising or watching a documentary. Those experiences add new knowledge, skills, perspectives and identities. When who you are as a person expands, you enhance your competence and capabilities and increase your ability to meet new challenges and accomplish new goals.
Of course, you can achieve self-expansion on your own, by trying new and interesting activities, learning new things or working on a skill (like meditation). Research confirms that these kinds of activities help individuals expand themselves, which encourages them to put forth more effort on subsequent challenging tasks.
However, it is romantic relationships that are often a key source of growth for many people and despite modern couples holding high expectations of each other, falling in love feels good, and spending time with a romantic partner is enjoyable. People tend to value partners who help them become a better version of themselves.
One way to optimise self-growth in your relationship is by sharing in your partner’s unique interests and skills. When “me” becomes “we,” partners blend their self-concepts and include the other in the self. That merging encourages partners to take on each other’s characteristics, quirks, interests and abilities to some extent. Romantic partners inevitably have different life experiences, knowledge bases, perspectives and skills and it is the mutual sharing of these that can really propel a relationship and help each other’s personal growth within it.
great stuff…