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Justin J Lehmiller
@justinjlehmiller

25,167 followers

Long relationships are idealized—and if you’ve been together a long time, this tends to be viewed as a sign of success. This assumption is probably the reason why one of most common questions people ask when they find out someone is in a relationship is, “How long have you been together?” We use this to gauge the quality of the relationship because it’s not really appropriate to just come out and ask, “Are you happy with your relationship?" This assumption is also embedded in scientific research on relationships. For example, when I was in graduate school studying the psychology of relationships, I read paper after paper in which researchers used relationship length as a measure of relationship quality. These papers gave the impression that longer relationships are necessarily better and that this is something to strive for. However, I’ve come to see this assumption as flawed. Yes, intuitively, it makes sense that if you’re happy with someone you’ll probably want to keep seeing each other. And this is often the case. But it’s also true that some people in long-term relationships are profoundly unhappy. By the same token, some relationships that are short-lived (measured in weeks or months) are extremely meaningful. They can have a profound impact on our lives and change us in important ways. We tend to think of deep emotional connections as developing over years, but they can also happen really quickly in some cases. Also, shorter relationships can be more intense because you only ever knew that person in the passion phase, which is something that tends to decline the longer you’ve been together. So let’s stop conflating relationship length with relationship quality. A longer relationship doesn’t necessarily mean you’ve succeeded, and a shorter relationship doesn’t necessarily mean you failed or wasted your time. #sexed #sexandpsychology #relationships #relationshiptips #relationshipadvice #healthyrelationships #relationshipquotes