Relationships involve tradeoffs, in which we sacrifice to meet our partner's needs while expecting them to sacrifice to meet ours.
When we marry, we expect it to last a lifetime. Our culture also tells us that we should only have eyes for our spouse and want no one else. So married persons are often surprised when they find themselves strongly attracted to—and maybe evenIn reality, we don’t stop finding other people attractive once we put on that ring. However, the amount ofwe pay to these attractive alternatives—as well as our behavior towards them—can depend on how satisfied we currently are with our marriage.
addict.” Certainly, each of us must bear responsibility for our own actions. However, to understand what drives behavior, we have to look beyond the person to the context in which they have acted.According to University of Toronto psychologist Yoobin Park and her colleague Sun W. Park, every intimate relationship entails a tradeoff. On the one hand, we enter into the relationship in order to satisfy our connectedness needs.
Reasoning along these lines, Park and Park hypothesized that perceived partner commitment would be associated with attentiveness to alternatives and intentions to be unfaithful. In other words, if you feel your partner has lost interest in the relationship, you might start considering other relationship options and even acting on them.
Furthermore, the researchers later replicated the study with both spouses reporting their own and their perceived partner’s commitment. The correlation between these was fairly strong, indicating that we usually do know our partners pretty well. The results supported the hypothesis that perceived partner commitment would be associated with attention to alternatives and intention to be unfaithful. That is, people are more likely to consider other relationship options when they believe their spouse is no longer committed to the marriage.
I enjoy that this article stresses the need to address the context of why infidelity happened in the first place
candice_counsel Speaking as a spouse who WAS fully committed & had been working on a marriage I say this is completely untrue. Even w/counseling & many “date nights” he continued his affair so she wouldn’t “tell on him” so don’t give me this bullshit analysis.