The Science of Love & Intimacy
This is an overview of the relationship category.
It’s a one-stop with all the information you need to achieve the best relationship ever.
Think of this as a compendium, the only one post you need to improve your relationship.
Contents
Relationship Power Dynamics
We start with what’s relevant to this website: power dynamics.
- How to Maintain Attraction: the basics of power, control and attraction in long-term relationships
- The Stages of Power: How power changes in intimate relationships depending on the stage of the relationship
- How women control relationships: in most relationships, women are the prize and have true power. I call this role “the judge“, and it also exists in social relationships
- When men and women struggle for power: this is what happens when there is no clear leader and man and woman struggle to one-up each other
- Power hungry-partners: mostly men, but in a few exceptional cases it can be women. It describes why people very high in power-seeking don’t usually make for great partners
Below are articles less focused on power dynamics, but equally helpful to master intimate relationships.
Relationships Dynamics
The aim of this article is to give you a quick overview of all the most common relationship problems.
Click on whatever interests you most to dig deeper.
It’s all based on research and data. It condensates, in a shorter and easier format, all the more in depth articles and books previously appeared here.
If you need more details, you can then just click on the hyperlinks.
1. Picking the Best Partner
There are several layers you want to take into account when looking for a great partner.
1. Personal Quality
Learning to recognize your partner’s quality today is the greatest investment you make in your tomorrow:
- Traits of high quality women
- Traits of high quality men
- Traits of low quality women
- Traits of low quality men
2. Finding a Loyal Partner
Trust is crucial in a relationship.
And these are the best articles and indicators to find a loyal, trustworthy partner:
- How to pick a loyal partner -scientifically
- Signs of a fuckboy
- Psychology of womanizers
- 7 Questions to find out if he’s a womanizer
- How to overcome infidelity
- How to prevent cheating
- How to forgive a cheater
- 10 questions for a cheater
- Why people cheat
- Emotional infidelity: what is it and how it happens
3. Attachment Styles
One of the most important traits you need to have compatible with your partner is attachment styles.
It’s as important as it is underrated. Few people talk about it because few people know about it.
Read here:
- Attachment styles overview
- Anxious attachment style
- Avoidant attachment style
- Secure attachment style
And most important:
This is possibly the single most important factor when it comes to matching personality traits for good relationships.
For more insights, check the relationship guide.
What Makes Strong Relationships
1. Accepting Influence
Accepting influence means listening to your partner and taking into consideration what they like and prefer.
Couples who don’t do it split up more than 80% of the times.
Read:
2. Emotional Connection
Sue Johnson, author of Hold Me Tight says that great couples don’t communicate better than poor couples.
They are just more emotionally attuned.
Read:
3. Positive Outlook
Couples who have a strong sense of relationship see each other positively.
And this is true for life in general as it is for relationship. Having a positive outlook means that you interpret negative behavior as the exception and positive behavior as the norm.
4. Fondness and Admiration: Staying in Love
A great way to stay focused on the positives and to stay in love for ever is to cultivate a culture of fondness and admiration for our partners.
Read here how to that:
5. Knowing Your Partner (Love Maps)
Knowing our partner and keep alive the curiosity it takes to updated that knowledge says “I care about you”.
6. Shared Meaning
A shared culture tells about your relationship together. The more shared meaning you have, the more unique and special your bond is.
7. More Positives to Negatives
John Gottman found out that there is a “magic ratio” of positive to negatives above which relationships are successful.
8. Share Love Languages
Gary Chapman has such a simple and yet so revolutionary concept: if we don’t speak the same love languages we can’t communicate our love and appreciation to each other.
What Breaks Relationships
And here’s what has been proven to destroy relationships instead (here’s a more in depth overview article focusing only on relationship destroyers)
1. Ambivalence
Ambivalence is not knowing whether to fully commit or not. You can’t have a good relationship while being ambivalent.
2. Bad Conflict Styles
Arguing well is not necessary a plus, but arguing badly does break relationship apart.
Avoid the following, also called The Four Horsemen of The Apocalypse:
Unsolvable Issues Bitterness
Conflict resolution is great, but don’t go thinking you’ll solve all problems. Most relationship issues stem from core differences, which makes them perennial issues.
No worries, you can still have awesome relationships even if those, here’s how:
4. Vicious Circles
When you argue badly, you accuse your partner for your unsolvable issues, and you lack most of what makes an awesome relationship, a bad thing start happening: vicious circles.
Vicious circles is how all relationships end.
Relationships to End
1. Abusive relationships
Abusive people rarely change, which means you can’t work on a relationship with an abusive partner.
There are as many bad women as bad men, granted.
But most abusers are men, so this list mostly focuses on men.
You must avoid these guys altogether:
And albeit not tailored to abusive relationships:
2. Bad Relationship Dances
Relationship dances do not necessarily spell doom and some of them are not the end of the world (parent/child for example).
But still, if your goal is as awesome as you can be:
3. Combative relationships
Great relationships should be sanctuaries of safety. That means no one upping, no undermining and not too many power games.
Combative relationships are how the most seemingly normal relationships end up being
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