Of being blinded by love “Love blinds us to the realities of the people around us. In one study, participants in relationships were asked to write about recent romantic moments, or random events, that they had shared with their partner after being shown a

qualities accurately. If status is a priority for you, then you are likely to be attracted to people for whom status is their best attribute. How impressive you think their status is on a scale of one to seven is likely to be different to someone else’s interpretation – but that does not matter, because we all inflate the qualities of the people we love.

Directional bias – consistently ranking our partner’s qualities higher than other people would – is one of the most important factors that determines how happy you are in your relationship. If you ask people what they want from a relationship, they might say that they want to be seen authentically in a way that matches their self-perceptions. But people also quite like their partner to see them as a bit better than they really are. So, when we are secure in our relationships, this manifests as being overly positive.

“Your job in a relationship is to encourage your partner, to be a cheerleader,” says Fletcher. “People want their partners to see and accentuate their positives. If you want to have a good, happy relationship then it is helpful to have a charitable bias towards your partner. When you stop doing that your partner might interpret that you want them to change. It sends a powerful message that they are not good enough for you.”

“Women are biased about their same-sex friends,” says April Bleske-Rechek, a psychologist at the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire. “It is well established that women compete with each other on attractiveness, but they will rate their close female friends as more attractive than them. They rate them even higher than when they rate themselves.”

This could be advantageous because a group of attractive women are more likely to arouse the attention of a group of attractive men. It is beneficial to be in a group that attracts the best quality men and to be one of the more attractive women in the group.

“Women should find attractive friends, but not too attractive because they get all the attention,” says BleskeRechek. “It’s like the idea of playing tennis with people at your level or slightly above to make you better.”

What you think your partner thinks about you is also important for the wellbeing of your relationship. “This is something we are really tuned into,” says Fletcher. “We pick up on what our partner wants from us. Once you start getting into real communication problems and people develop negative bias, they start to see their partner as less attractive than they really are – then the relationship is in trouble.”

While in love, people also underestimate how environmental factors (like how well they get on with the friends or family of their partner) affect their happiness. “Because their partner encapsulates their attention,” says Ty Tashiro, author of The Science of Happily Ever After, “they don’t see these environmental things that are more subtle. People only recognised environmental factors as an influence on their happiness in a relationship 5% of the time – which is a gross underestimate.”

However, after a break up our love blindness is revealed. Without the physical presence of our partner, says Tashiro, we have a more objective view and are better able to see the environmental factors at play.

“People are impervious to good advice from friends,” says Tashiro. “If a friend is in a bad relationship, it is very tough to communicate that to them because they are so tuned into the positives of their partner. When it is over maybe there is this window of objectivity which could be valuable going forward. At this point they might reflect and realise that there were issues in their relationship.”

Fletcher warns that if you are going to commit yourself to a partner seriously, then there is good reason to acknowledge that you are also going to perceive them through rosetinted glasses. “Romantic love is a commitment device,” he says. “Part of that is that you view your partner as better than they are. Positive bias allows us to overlook small problems and to invest in our partner once the relationship has started.”

But, Fletcher says, you can’t afford to get too far away from reality. It is no good being overly positive because you will be misleading yourself about some of your partner’s flaws: “Romance is not based on objectivity, it is emotion and cognition working together or conspiring to put you in a long-term relationship.”

When your friends are in seemingly unsuitable relationships, remember that they are probably seeing their partner as better than they are, and they might be impervious to your advice and unable to see better options elsewhere. Their assessment may well be wrong, but we are all guilty of it.

Source: BBC