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Page 190A second reason to note the roles of approach and avoidance motivations in our relationships is that the chronic strength of people's motive differ (Gable, 2006). Bad is generally stronger than good, for instance, but some people are very sensitive to negative events that wouldn't much ruffle others—and such people may feel especially threatened by disagreements or conflict with their partners. Indeed, a strong motive to avoid costs leads people to notice all of the annoying things their partners do whereas the motive to approach rewards leads them to focus on all the thoughtful and generous actions their partners take (Strachman & Gable, 2006). (Which point of view do you think makes people more content?) When they make small sacrifices to benefit their partners (such as going to a movie they don't much want to see), people with approach motives are pursuing greater intimacy with their partners; they feel good about their actions, and their relationships profit. In contrast, people with avoidance motives are trying to avoid conflict; they begrudge the sacrifice, and their relationships suffer (Impett et al., 2005). And as you might guess from these patterns, people who have high approach motivations are also generally less lonely and more content (Gable, 2006). They enter social situations eager to make new friends whereas people with high aversive motivations just want to avoid annoying, offending, or upsetting anybody. Evidently, there's more long-term profit in focusing on obtaining rewards, rather than cutting costs, in our close relationships (Impett et al., 2010b).

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, the independent operation of approach and avoidance motivations means that being happy may involve different strategies than those that are involved in not being unhappy. We want to avoid painful conflict and other costs, of course, but if we wish our relationships to prosper and to be fulfilling, we need to do more than simply avoid any unpleasantries. We need to combat boredom: We must strive to meet our partners' approach goals by providing them joyous, interesting, and exciting experiences (Strong & Aron, 2006).

This conclusion is also at the heart of a self-expansion model of human motivation that holds that we are attracted to partnerships that expand the range of our interests, skills, and experiences (Aron & Aron, 2000). Novel activities, the development of new talents, and the acquisition of new perspectives are all thought to be inherently gratifying (Nardone & Lewandowski, 2008), and that's why new loves are often so exhilarating: Newfound intimacy typically involves increases in knowledge and changes in mutuality that enhance and expand our self-concepts (Tucker & Aron, 1993).

But self-expansion usually slows once a new partner becomes familiar, and that's when many partnerships begin to feel more bland and ordinary than they initially seemed. The key to staying happy, according to the self-expansion model, is to combat boredom by creatively finding ways to continue your personal growth. Thus, as well as continually seeking out novel activities and challenges (Aron et al., 2000), consider the value of intentionally inventing new ways to play and have fun (Aune & Wong, 2002) and laugh together (Lee, 2008) during your daily routine (Graham, 2008). Monotony can make any relationship seem stale, but innovation and novelty may keep boredom at bay.

Page 191So, rewards and costs are different, and minimizing our costs isn't the same thing as increasing our rewards. And as our discussion of boredom suggests, relationships begin when a couple's interactions are rewarding, but that can change with time. Indeed, despite the partners' best intentions, many relationships gradually become less satisfying as time goes by. Let's take a closer look at how rewards and costs change as relationships develop.

Rewards and Costs as Time Goes By

Here's the situation: You've started dating a new person and things are going great. Your satisfaction is rising fast, and the two of you are quickly growing closer. Does continual bliss lie ahead? Probably not. After a period of initial excitement that is characterized by a rapid increase in satisfaction, most relationships—even those that are destined to succeed and prosper—hit a lull in which the partners' pleasure stalls for a time (see Figure 6.5). This can be disconcerting, but it shouldn't be surprising; according to a model of relational turbulence created by Leanne Knobloch and Denise Solomon (2004), we should expect a period of adjustment and turmoil as new partners become accustomed to their increasing interdependence. In particular, as the partners spend more and more time together, they disrupt each others' routines. Instead of waiting to be asked Page 192out on a date, for instance, one of the partners may start assuming that they'll spend the weekend together, and that may interfere with the other's plans. The partners may also encounter some resistance from their friends as the new relationship absorbs more of their time and they see less of their old companions. Uncertainty and doubt can also accompany emerging commitment; both partners may wonder where the relationship is going and what the future holds, and the more uncertain they are, the more turbulent the situation is likely to be (Knobloch & Theiss, 2010). Altogether, the turbulence model suggests that an unsettled period of adjustment and reevaluation is likely to occur at moderate levels of intimacy in a developing relationship as the partners learn to coordinate their needs and accommodate each other.

The turbulence model is depicted in Figure 6.6. When intimacy levels are low in a beginning relationship, interdependence is minimal and there is negligible interference from one's partner and little doubt about the future of the partnership. However, as the partners draw closer, they need to adjust to increasing limitations to their autonomy, rising uncertainty, and, perhaps, mounting ambivalence from their friends, and this phase—the transition from Page 193casual dating to more serious involvement in the relationship—can be tumultuous (Solomon et al., 2010). If the relationship becomes more established and intimacy increases further, things settle down as doubts diminish, friends adjust, and the partners grow more adept at being interdependent. Successful relationships survive the turbulent transition to the partners' new status as a recognized couple, and a new but more gradual increase in satisfaction may occur as the relationship continues to develop. (Take another look at Figure 6.5.)

So, it's customary for increasing delight with a budding relationship to suddenly level off for a time as the partners adjust to their increasing interdependency. Are there predictable changes in satisfaction over longer stretches of time in established relationships? There are, and I've got good news and bad news for you. Let's begin with the bad news, which starts with Figure 6.7. Pictured there are the annual reports of marital satisfaction from 538 newlywed couples, many of whom were tracked for 10 years (if they stayed married that long). As you can see, the typical trajectory of marital bliss involved a gradual erosion of delight that resulted in people becoming less satisfied as the years rolled by (Kurdek, 1999). Even worse, recent studies that probed carefully for different trajectories of marital satisfaction over 4 (Lavner & Bradbury, 2010) and 20 years (Anderson et al., 2010) found that in a number of couples—about one in every six—the declines in contentment were much more severe. Some newlyweds find their dreams dashed rather quickly.

Page 194The good news from the recent studies is that, despite the general trend pictured in Figure 6.7, a number of couples—about one in every five—don't experience any decline in their delight at all. Most marriages don't last as long as 25 years (Roberts, 2007), but some do, and clearly, it really is possible for some couples to live happily ever after.

What distinguished those who stayed happy from the majority who experienced a decline in their delight? There were several influences, and none of them will surprise a careful reader of our prior chapters. Spouses who stayed content tended to be low in neuroticism and high in self-esteem; they discussed touchy issues with affection and humor and without anger; and they encountered relatively few stressors such as economic hardship or ill health (Anderson et al., 2010; Lavner & Bradbury, 2010). Over time, then, the outcomes of their interactions were undoubtedly more positive than those of couples who were more fretful, insecure, surly, and beset with hassles and burdens—and interdependency theory argues that that's why they stayed more content.

It also turns out that happy couples keep their expectations in check so that their CLs don't get too high. Remember that it's hard to be satisfied when you expect things to be magnificent, and sure enough, on average, people who begin their marriages with the highest expectations of how special and wonderful wedlock will be are the least happy spouses a few years down the road. James McNulty and Ben Karney (2004) followed 82 newlywed couples across the first 4 years of their marriages and found that, over time, the happiest couples were those who had had the most realistic outlooks about what wedded life would be like. In contrast, spouses who had unrealistically positive expectations tended to be disappointed once the honeymoon was over. (In fact, more than one-fifth of the couples followed by McNulty and Karney were divorced after only 4 years.)

Indeed, I can offer several reasons why prudent and cautious expectations about the futures of your intimate relationships are more reasonable and sensible than romantic idealism is. First, we all know how to be polite and thoughtful, and we can behave that way when we want to, but it takes work. Once a courtship is over and a partner is won, for instance, people usually stop trying so hard to be consistently charming. The same people who would never fart noisily on a first date may become spouses who fart at will at the dinner table, perhaps dismissing their lack of propriety by saying, “Sorry, I couldn't help it.” The point is that they could help it if they wanted to—they just didn't go to the trouble to do so (Miller, 2001).

Second, interdependency magnifies conflict and friction. We spend lots of time with our intimate partners and depend on them for unique, especially valuable rewards, and that means that they are certain to cause us more frustration—even inadvertently—than anyone else can. For instance, we're more affected by the moods (Caughlin et al., 2000) or work stress (Lavee & Ben-Ari, 2007) of intimate partners than by the similar difficulties of others. Frequent interaction also means that trivial annoyances may gradually cause real grief through sheer repetition in the same way that the light tapping of a slowly dripping faucet can drive you mad when you're trying to sleep at night (Cunningham et al., 2005).

Page 195Third, intimacy means that others know your secrets, foibles, and weaknesses. That gives them ammunition with which to wound and tease us when conflict occurs. But even when they have no wish to do us harm, their access to sensitive information practically guarantees that they will accidentally reveal some secret (Petronio, 2010), hurt our feelings (Kowalski, 2003), or embarrass us (Miller, 1996) sometime or other. They can unintentionally hurt us in ways others can't.

Fourth, even if people are usually aware of most of their incompatibilities and problems before they marry, there will almost always be some surprises ahead. These tend to be of two general types. First, there's learning the truth about things we thought we knew. Good examples of this are the fatal attractions I mentioned in chapter 3. You may know and even like the fact that your lover is fun-loving and spontaneous, but you may not appreciate how irresponsible, flighty, and unreliable that same behavior may seem after a few years of marriage when you have babies and a mortgage to contend with. Speaking of babies, the other type of unwelcome surprise is learning undesired things that you didn't know at all, and the real facts of parenthood are often good examples. If you don't have kids, you might assume that parenthood will be fun, your kids will be invariably adorable, and raising children will bring you and your partner closer together. The reality, however (as you know if you do have kids), is that “after the birth of a child the prognosis for the course of the marital relationship is unequivocally grim” (Stafford & Dainton, 1994, p. 270). I can safely say that parenthood is an extraordinary and often marvelous adventure, but it is unquestionably hard on the relationship between the parents. Children are endless work, and most parents experience a steep and unexpected decline in the time they spend having fun together (Claxton & Perry-Jenkins, 2008). When babies arrive, conflict increases, and satisfaction with the marriage (and love for one's partner) decrease (Doss et al., 2009), and this occurs around the world (Wendorf et al., 2011). If the parents don't expect such difficulties, they're going to be surprised.

Finally, all of this means that close relationships are often much different from the blissful, intimate idylls we want them to be, and the difference between what we expected and what we get can leave us feeling cheated and disappointed, sometimes unnecessarily so (Amato et al., 2007). To the extent that even great relationships involve hard work and sacrifice, people with misplaced, glorified expectations about relationships may end up disappointed in their outcomes even when they're doing better than everyone else.

So, through (a) lack of effort; because (b) interdependency is a magnifying glass; and through (c) access to weaponry, (d) unwelcome surprises, and (e) unrealistic expectations, people usually encounter unanticipated costs, even in good relationships (Miller, 1997b), and most spouses' satisfaction actually declines during the first years of marriage. These are all normal processes in close relationships, so it's naïve to think that you won't encounter them. More annoyances and nuisances lie ahead than you may have thought.

This may seem gloomy, but it isn't meant to be. Indeed, I don't want this analysis to seem pessimistic at all! To the contrary, knowledge is power, and Page 196I suspect that being aware of the usual trajectory of marital satisfaction and thoroughly understanding these issues can help people avoid needless disappointment, and it may even help them to forestall or avoid a creeping decline in outcomes that would otherwise occur. If informed caution leads you to form reasonable expectations, you should be optimistic that your close relationships will succeed; a positive outlook that is rooted in good sense is likely to make lasting satisfaction more, rather than less, attainable (Churchill & Davis, 2010).

And importantly, if nothing else, this perspective reminds us of our constant responsibility to be as pleasant as possible to those whose company we value. We want great outcomes, but so do they, and even if they like us, they'll go elsewhere if we don't give them enough reward. This is a consequential idea, and it leads to some subtleties of the social exchange perspective that we have yet to consider.