It can actually tell you a lot about the state of your relationship.
Whether you’re with your other half for years or seeing someone for a few months, you might have questioned if this is the person you’ll end up with for life.
Relationship experts have lots of advice when it comes to nurturing that relationship and working on things when times get tough but this latest tip is the most insightful we’ve heard in a while.
It comes courtesy of James and Suzann Pawelski, two psychologists who penned Happy Together, which focuses on using positive psychology to improve and maintain happy relationships.
In a piece featured in Psychology Today, they explain how the below question can reveal a lot about how healthy your relationship is and how likely it is to go the distance.
Is your partnership primarily based on the usefulness you get out of it, the pleasure you derive from it, or the goodness you see in it?
Although this is mainly self-explanatory, it’s clear how your answer can indicate the direction in what way the coupledom might go.
In case you’re not convinced, this theory actually comes from ancient philosopher Aristotle although his thinkings were based on platonic friendships, rather than romantic unions.
As James and Suzann detail in the aforementioned piece:
“Aristotle says we tend to love three different kinds of things: those that are useful, those that are pleasurable, and those that are good. And he claims that there is a type of friendship that corresponds to each of these three categories”.
It’s all about whether you see the relationship as something that works for you and what you can get out of it or if it’s something that’s good for both of you.
As you can probably guess, option number one and two are about you and what you can get from the situation rather than the goodness you see in each other.
Although the third option may include usefulness and pleasure too, it’s not solely based on these motivations. It’s about both people working at the relationship and this is why this type of union is most likely to go the distance.
