Why do people stay in unsatisfying romantic relationships? A new study suggests it may be because they view leaving as bad for their partner. The study, being published in the November 2018 issue of the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, explored the possibility that people deciding whether to end a relationship consider not only their own desires but also how much they think their partner wants and needs the relationship to continue.
Study that finds it's not just the investment of time, resources and emotion
[Source]: University of Utah
[Abtract]: How interdependent are stay/leave decisions?[requires js]
(Score: 3, Interesting) by etherscythe on Tuesday October 23 2018, @05:35PM (5 children)
Depends how you define marriage. Legally, marriage is a contract. However, our culture has built it into a central form of identity and status. If you're in it for the comfortable retirement and your partner knows that, great. If you're in it for the social benefits and your partner is too, great. If your goals are mismatched, though, you need to make sure you're both OK with where you are and where you're going. It's wise to be prepared for people to evolve as individuals, too. People do change, especially over the lifetimes modern medicine and nutrition have made possible.
...or you're human, and you're in touch with your needs. Not everyone has the same desires. Just because personal needs are important to you does not make you mentally ill, no matter what the bible-thumpers might say. This does not guarantee disaster - it's possible for an open relationship to solve issues like this, if you're sufficiently emotionally mature and committed to each others' happiness. This, of course, is not
foreveryone."Fake News: anything reported outside of my own personally chosen echo chamber"
(Score: 3, Insightful) by The Mighty Buzzard on Tuesday October 23 2018, @10:38PM (4 children)
Orgasms aren't a need for mentally healthy people, they're a desire. They're even a desire that it's dead simple to take care of yourself. You can tell they're a desire by how nobody has ever died or even been crippled by lack of orgasms. So, yes, if you are so utterly unable to overcome your animal nature with your rational mind that you see sex as a need, you are mentally ill.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by etherscythe on Thursday October 25 2018, @05:50PM (3 children)
Yeah, in third world countries where things like food can be hard to come by, it doesn't really rate. However, in Maslow's Heirarchy of Needs, I would definitely say it could rank as high as 3rd tier. It's a social need as much as a physiological one. We don't live in a third-world country, I suspect - maintaining our lifestyle is rather more complex than your gross oversimplification.
Now, in terms of those people who claim that they are somehow owed a particular form of relief from someone else, or that their urges exceed their ability to keep their hands to themselves, then I will completely agree with you. Those people need strong behavioral correction of some kind.
"Fake News: anything reported outside of my own personally chosen echo chamber"
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Thursday October 25 2018, @11:08PM (2 children)
I stated it simply because the definitions of the words clearly have zero overlap. You're letting education make a fool of you. Needs are what you have to have. Period. All the rest are desires.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by etherscythe on Friday October 26 2018, @05:12PM (1 child)
The world is not so black and white - mental health has requirements not so well understood. You can say that social needs are a desire and not a need, but the medical field has a term that describes what happens in the absence of those soft factors: "failure to thrive". It is a condition which significantly reduces survival and recovery rates. Ask a POW, if you can find one. I have it on good authority that this is not just theoretical.
We are playing a game of semantics, but I say that such a narrow definition of "need" is useless for practical purposes in the world of actual people, and not just zoo animals.
"Fake News: anything reported outside of my own personally chosen echo chamber"
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Friday October 26 2018, @08:00PM
The definition of the word "needs" is black and white though. Literally unless you have some funky color scheme in your browser. If you want social crap to be thought of as a need, prove it. Either way, sex is never going to be numbered among your needs because mentally healthy people can both survive and thrive without having any sex whatsoever. They may be unhappy about that aspect of their life or not but wanting something does not make it a need.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.