Application Of Positive Psychology In Everyday Life And Relationships

I think assurances, openness, and positivity are the most important qualities of a long term romantic relationship. Those factors are mainly related to the commitment and intimacy of Sternberg’s Love Triangle as I think those are the key factor to have a long-term relationship.

Assurances are to make a commitment to the partner and imply that the relationships persist. People who highly committed to their partner will consider more about the consequences of unloyalty to their partner which has a lower chance of cheating on the partner( LE, Benjamin 2011). Infidelity is one of the main reasons for breaking up, lowering the chance of cheating have a higher chance to maintain a romantic relationship.

Openness is to tell the true feelings to the partner and encourage your partner to disclose their thoughts. When an individual tried to hide something from their partner, the satisfaction of the relationship will be decreased as the partner may feel less intimacy(Thompson & Vangelisti 2015). Telling the true feeling to partner can also help them to understand your needs and avoid some things that may cause argument.

Positivity is how patience and cheerfulness that an individual show to others. Giving a positive manner to the partner can enhance the partner’s self-esteem and reduce the stress level. People who perceived positivity from their partner will spend more time together and feel more satisfied with the interaction which has a higher level of intimacy(Flora,1998). With positivity, partners face fewer conflicts and have a higher willing to maintain their commitment because of positive illusion(Murray, Holmes, & Griffin. 1996) The positive illusion makes them ignore negative events and focus more on positive things.

In order to maintain a long-term romantic relationship, I think the most important qualities are openness, respect, and honesty. According to Sternberg’s Love Triangle, love relationship is composed of 3 sessions, passion, commitment and intimacy (Sternberg, 1986). To achieve a long-term romantic relationship, commitment and intimacy are more important than passion as it will fade with increased knowledge of partner.

Openness is willing to share feelings and embrace others. Intimacy increased when both partners can be open to each other about how they feel and what they want. As every human being is different so as their thought, there must be a difference between partners. What your partners do is not always fit what you are thinking and if a person always keeps everything in his/her own mind, sometime this will become conflict or make others feel aloneness during the relationship. Openness can be the factor that prevents buildup conflict (Block, 2003). With openness, partners can open their hearts, share and accept others feeling and develop bonding in each other. A relationship built based on this kind of bonding; it is very hard to break down.

Honesty is telling the truth in a more acceptable way which your partner can hear it (Goldsmith, 2014). Honesty build trust in a relationship which can also help develop intimacy. When a person often lies to his/her partner, partners will feel unsafe as he/she doesn’t know about you at all and may start to think that what you say is all lie and unwilling to talk to you anymore. Besides, Honesty can strengthen the relationship as when both partners can tell truth to others, they are more likely to have a higher life satisfaction (Weber & Ruch, 2012).

Respect is how partner senses and responds for partner’s opinion. When a person disrespects their partner, he/she is less likely to know or feel what the partner wants and treat it serious (Frei & Shaver, 2002). If both partners respect to other, they are more likely to share all difficulties and together and try to find out the best solution as they are respected to others opinions and can integrate it to become the best solution that suits the favors of both of them. If not, this will usually become conflict and eventually intimacy faded away as they may feel their partner is not considering his/her opinion.

Openness and positivity play important role in ABCD model of the stage in an intimate relationship. Openness, as the ability to share feelings and accept other's feeling and opinions, can help attract the opposite sex. People tend to be attracted and disclosed more by the person who is believed to like them (Curtis & Miller,1986). And openness affects people's attitudes toward others. People with low openness tend to be negative toward others and expect the wrongdoing of others and these negative expectations and emotions towards others have fostered hostility to a certain extent (Wang & Xia, 2019). On the contrary, when people have high openness, they are more likely to have a positive attitude toward themselves and others. According to the law of attraction, a kind of self-fulfill prophecy, people tend to stay together or attracted by the person who has a positive attitude to them. Besides, people like the person who understand their feeling and thought (Seltzer, 2017) and openness help a person to understand others, therefore they are more likely to attract others.

In the continuation stage of a long-term relationship, openness also plays an important role as it affects the quality of the relationship. Quality of relationship increase with openness (Anant, 2015) as an openness person will embrace the weakness and mistake of partners instead of going into conflict with them. A person with low openness often has a negative attitude in interpersonal relationships like interpersonal conflicts and provocations (Wang & Xia, 2019). In addition, with openness, partners are able to disclose themselves to others and become a good listener to help reduce the pressure from life or work and maintain intimacy within them.

For positivity, it is an important factor for initial attraction which can increase the chance to engage in a romantic relationship. Positive persons can attract more people to interact with them in social media compared to people that always post a negative comment. A study showed that the social media account which posts more image of smiling people or positive language have more like and comment(Kevan, 2014). The positive manner not only attracts people on the Internet but also in face-to-face communication. A researcher brought 128 male and female to watch a happy or a sad movie. And The result showed that those who watched a happy film have a more positive feelings about their partner and the relationship which is because of the positive impression such as smiling during the movie(Forgas, Levinger, & Moylan, 1994). Therefore, positivity makes people get a better feeling and higher frequency of interaction which enables people to discover commonalities and share their liking which has a chance to build a deeper relationship.

Positivity is also important in the continuation stage for a long-term romantic relationships as it can help the partner to reduce stress levels and make the partner feel more comfortable in the interaction. Positivity makes the partner easier to face the disappointments that occur in their relationship as they will ignore the negative thing s and focus on the positive events. The research showed that married partners are more likely to become happy and remain their commitment if the positive interaction and negative interaction in a ratio that is higher than 5 to 1 (Murray, Holmes, & Griffin. 1996). The conflict between partners can be decreased and the relationship can become more stable because of positivity.

In conclusion, openness and positivity are important in the attraction and continuation stage of intimate relations. In the attraction stage, openness attracts people by build a positive attitude to others while positivity can make people get a better feeling during interaction and therefore can attract others. For continuation, quality of the relationship will increase and tend to keep on with higher openness while positivity help reduces stress level and make the partner feel more comfortable in the interaction. Both of the qualities help people to avoid conflict and make the relationship become more stable, helping the partners have a long- term relationship.

References:

Anant, H. (2015). A study of the impact of openness and trust on the quality of interpersonal relations within organizations. International Journal of Recent Advances in Organizational Behavior and Decision Sciences, 1(3).

Block, J. (2003). Naked intimacy: How to increase true openness in your relationship. Chicago: Contemporary Books.

Curtis, R. C., & Miller, K. (1986). Believing another likes or dislikes you: Behaviors making the beliefs come true. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 51(2), 284-290.

Frei, J. R., & Shaver, P. R. (2002). Respect in close relationships: Prototype definition, self-report assessment, and initial correlates. Personal Relationships, 9(2), 121–139. doi: 10.1111/1475-6811.00008

Flora, J., & Segrin, C. (1998). Joint leisure time in friend and romantic relationships: The role of activity type, social skills and positivity. Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, 15(5), 711-718.

Forgas, J. P., Levinger, G., & Moylan, S. J. (1994). Feeling good and feeling close: Affective influences on the perception of intimate relationships. Personal Relationships, 1(2), 165-184.

Goldsmith, B. (2014). Honesty Can Make or Break a Relationship. Retrieved from https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/emotional-fitness/201411/honesty-can-make-or-break-relationship.

Kevan, L. (2014, October 16). Want to Improve Your Social Media Sharing? Harness the Power of Positivity in Social Media [Web log post]. Retrieved from https://www.business2community.com/brandviews/buffer/want-improve-social-media-sharing-harness-power-positivity-social-media-01039931

Le, B., Korn, M. S., Crockett, E. E., & Loving, T. J. (2011). Missing you maintains us: Missing a romantic partner, commitment, relationship maintenance, and physical infidelity. Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, 28(5), 653-667.

Seltzer, L. F. (2017). Feeling Understood - Even More Important Than Feeling Loved? Retrieved from https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/evolution-the-self/201706/feeling-understood-even-more-important-feeling-loved.

Sternberg, R. (1986). A Triangular Theory of Love. Psychological Review, 93(2), 119-135.

Thompson, Charee & Vangelisti, Anita. (2015). What Happens When the Standard for Openness goes Unmet in Romantic Relationships?: Analyses of Stress, Coping, and Relational Consequences. Journal of Social and Personal Relationships. 33. 10.1177/0265407515574468.

Wang, Y., & Xia, L. (2019). The longitudinal relationships of interpersonal openness trait, hostility, and hostile attribution bias. Aggressive Behavior, 45(6), 682-690.

Weber, M., & Ruch, W. (2012). The role of character strengths in adolescent romantic relationships: An initial study on partner selection and mates' life satisfaction. Journal of Adolescence, 35(6), 1537-1546.