Leaving a long-term intimate relationship is never an easy thing to do. When things are not going well in our relationships, our minds often stray towards thoughts of how much better our lives would be without our current partner. But acting on a desire to leave requires great effort—packing our things, setting up a new life for ourselves, and making the final announcement that the relationship is over, not just to our partner but also to our family and friends. It also demands a high degree of confidence that leaving is better in the long run than staying. In contrast, staying in a relationship isn’t so much a decision we have to act on rather than simply accepting the status quo. As long as we get up each morning and muddle through our daily routine, we are staying in the relationship, whether we’ve made an intentional decision to do so or not.
Intuition
We already intuitively know, namely that when people are satisfied with their relationships they stay in them. However, people who are dissatisfied with their relationships don’t necessarily leave. In fact, many unhappy couples endure a life sentence together, sometimes out of perceived social pressure to do so, and other times because they’ve resigned themselves to the idea that this is the best they can do.
What then predicts whether a couple in a committed relationship will eventually break up? We evaluate the outcome of every interaction we have with our partner, mentally tallying each as positive or negative. If the outcomes are mostly positive, we’ll feel satisfied with the relationship. And if the negatives outweigh the positives, we’ll feel dissatisfied.
Similarities & Dissimilarities
At the same time, we also compare the actual outcomes of the relationship with the imagined outcomes of being in an alternative situation instead. Even if the “balance sheet” is more positive than negative, we may still feel dissatisfied if we believe we could do even better elsewhere.
Compatible personalities, shared interests, and trust are all characteristics that people often name when they explain why they’re satisfied with their relationship. However, incompatible personalities, lack of shared interests, and broken trust are generally not sufficient, in and of themselves, to motivate people to act on their desire to leave the relationship. In contrast, they generally attributed negative movements to unfavorable circumstances that made the relationship difficult to maintain, or else they explained it in terms of conflict.
We all know couples who stay together even though they’re unhappy with their relationship, and we wonder why. Some unhappy couples stay together because they cannot imagine an alternative situation that is any better than what they currently have.
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