Session Notes

Business Insider

The masters, by contrast, showed low physiological arousal. They felt calm and connected together, which translated into warm and affectionate behaviour, even when they fought. It’s not that the masters had, by default, a better physiological make-up than the disasters; it’s that masters had created a climate of trust and intimacy that made both of them more emotionally and thus physically comfortable.

Gottman wanted to know more about how the masters created that culture of love and intimacy, and how the disasters squashed it.

Good Men Project

It was ordinary. Not fluffy, not overly romantic. Real. The kind of real I coveted in couples who married shortly after high school, in wrinkled older spouses walking down the street, still holding hands. I had wanted “real” so badly I often wondered if I had given so much power to the fantasy relationship that I couldn’t hack it, that I sabotaged it so I could never have it for myself.

What I missed when assessing other people’s relationship was their reality. I saw sugar topping the cookie, not the month-old flour involved in the baking.

BPS

Men and women who said they’d been poached by their current partner tended to start out the study by reporting less commitment to their existing relationship, feeling less satisfied in it, committing more acts of infidelity and looking out for more alternatives. What’s more, over the course of the study, these participants reported progressively lower levels of commitment and satisfaction in their relationships. They also showed continued interest in other potential romantic partners and persistent levels of infidelity.

Psychology Today

All of us are attracted to a certain type that stops us dead in our tracks, be it a physical type, an emotional type, or a personality type. Let’s say that there is a “spectrum of attraction,” from 1 to 10; the people at the far end aren’t physically or romantically attracted to us at all, but those at the upper end are icons-they’re compellingly attractive, leaving us weak in the knees and triggering both our longing and our insecurity.