Comparing your current partner to former flames may be healthy
Toronto study shows that stacking up one’s spouse can strengthen a relationship
Happily coupled? Consider, for a moment ( just a moment!), your ex.
Maybe your previous flame’s salary trumps your current boo’s. Maybe this person from your past went to better schools, told funnier anecdotes or drew more admiring gazes at the beach.
If measuring the two against each other sounds unhealthy for your relationship, that’s not necessarily so, according to University of Toronto researchers.
A new University of Toronto psychology study suggests the degree to which people let such comparisons affect their perceptions of their present love life can actually signify a positive, lasting relationship.
At first blush, it seems counterintuitive.
“You can go online, and you’ll read about how it’s bad to compare your relationship to other people’s relationships,” says Sabrina Thai, a PhD candidate and the lead author of the study in this month’s issue of the Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin.
“But while that’s maybe bad for some people, it’s not bad for all people.”
Thai studies what happens when people stack up their partners against someone else’s. She found that some individuals justified their sweetheart’s apparent shortcomings, despite recognizing “inferior” comparison outcomes.
As for what makes the difference? Thai says it boils down to how much someone considers their partner to be an extension of themselves — a phenomenon called “self-other overlap.”
“If you see your partner as a part of yourself, a concept of yourself, you’re going to protect them,” she explains.
Her study of some 2,000 North American respondents in established relationships found that highoverlap individuals tended to “engage in protective strategies” in order to see their partner in a better light, or as part of an “expanded self.”
Julie, for example, might notice that her friend’s husband Sam is better at helping with his kids’ homework than her own husband, George. Rather than disparaging George, however, Julie might brush aside those shortcomings, reasoning that she enjoys helping their kids with school anyway.
“They still see their partner as being close to their ideal partner, which has positive implications on their relationship,” Thai says. “They aren’t delusional about their partners, but they’re not allowing these shortcomings to cloud their overall judgment.”
Put another way, it all comes down to “me” people versus “we” people in a couple.
“An indirect way of sensing how close somebody is with their partner is how often they’ll speak in terms of ‘we,’ ‘us’ and ‘our,’ ” Thai said.
The same effect arose when people were asked to compare their best friends with other people’s friends,
“There are ways that partners can . . . foster intimacy, but couples who compare partners shouldn’t freak out about it.” SABRINA THAI UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO RESEARCHER
though not casual acquaintances.
Of course, Thai notes that couples who compare each other and try to change their partners can trigger relationship conflicts if their partner senses they’re not up to snuff.
The good news is that there are ways to boost levels of self-other overlap through questionnaire exercises, which Thai suggests couples therapists may want to explore with clients.
She points to a series of 36 questions designed by U.S. psychologist Arthur Aron to foster intimacy be- tween two people through an exploration of mutual vulnerability.
Partners would ask one another what constitutes a “perfect” day for them, to recall their most treasured memory or to explain what friendship means to them.
Thai says another way to foster intimacy is to share novel experiences, such as playing a “ridiculous game” to discover a new aspect of a partner.
“There are ways that partners can be trained to foster intimacy, but couples who compare partners shouldn’t freak out about it.”