People who only remain stuck in their own belief system, their own expansion do not make the ideal life partners. What is Self Expansion. What does awakening look like. Engaging life experiences aren't just fun, they're valuable for your bond
- The familiar can be so gratifying. Routines, rituals, and the spaces we frequent tend to keep us nestled in comfort. Oft-visited restaurants, beloved pastimes, and everyday habits stand with us as longtime friends. Not only that, they’re a known quantity when it comes to pleasing our partner. Wondering where to take your beloved to dinner or which meal to cook together at home? Previous experience with the restaurants and meals you’ve relished is a superb guide. Curious about where to go on vacation? Memories of engaging trips you’ve taken together will help. Looking for a date night idea? It’s natural to reflect on what you’ve done before to gauge what you’ll both delight in this time. And why not look to the past? It’s a pretty safe bet that you’ll have a great time. Isn’t that the whole point?
- Yet, there’s also a friend in the uncommon and the unknown, something that takes us outside our comfy stomping grounds and stretches us just a little, guiding us along to see new facets of ourselves and discover fresh elements of the human experience. A trip into such uncharted territory is known as self-expansion. When we self-expand, we’re essentially widening our understanding of who we are, what we’re able to do, and how we view life. For example, a good friend of mine is about to run the Mumbai Marathon for a worthy cause. It’s the first time he’s ever run a marathon. And when he finished the main part his training and started tapering in preparation for the big day, he mentioned that he was feeling like a runner now. By taking on this new endeavor and doing the necessary training, he’s added “runner” to his personal image. In other words, he’s expanded himself.
- But we don’t all have to take on marathon-level challenges to self-expand. Other examples of self-expansion include learning a language, taking a class, dipping your toe into a new hobby, tasting a different type of dish, or enjoying an engaging discussion. Sure, this runs the risk you won’t like it, but psychological research suggests it’s worth the gamble for your bond with your partner.
Self-Expansion and Your Romantic Relationship
- Research points to several meaningful links between self-expansion and relationship wellness. People who expand their image of themselves are happier with their partners, they’re more dedicated to the relationship, and they’re less apt to separate. They’re also less inclined to stray and be unfaithful. Moreover, self-expansion is associated with partners feeling greater sexual longing for each other, having sex, and relishing the experience more. And that’s in addition to the new knowledge, skills, experiences, and enhanced perspectives people get from self-expanding and embracing what’s unique and intriguing in life.
- Now you might be thinking something along the lines of, "Wait a second, I’ve got stuff to do. I don’t have time to learn Spanish, start rolling sushi, take up the waltz, try crêpes, or debate my partner on who really deserves the Iron Throne!” That’s more than understandable. Life gets busy, and it can be tricky to carve out time when a bevy of other distractions, people, and roles are already competing for your time and energy.
- Thankfully, you don’t have to invest a significant chunk of time. When researchers in one study directed couples to take part in stimulating, interesting pursuits together for just 90 minutes per week, partners felt more upbeat in general, and more content and enthusiastic in their relationship a month later. You also don’t need to do stress yourself out with anything that’s too arduous or complicated.
- Evidence points to couples gaining a mood and relationship boost when their self-expanding efforts are at an average level of difficulty, not too simple but not too demanding for them either. What's more, you have flexibility with how you choose to self-expand. You can do it on your own (e.g., taking up a new hobby, making friends in a new reading group), with your partner (e.g., learning a new sport or taking a class together), or both. And you and your partner don’t have to pursue something that is equally new to both of you. People come to the relationship table with different life histories and backgrounds, knowledge, and interests, and they can self-expand when they teach each other and let each other in on their respective worlds. Are you an ardent surfer but your partner has never touched a board? If you teach your partner to surf, you probably won’t be broadening your image of yourself. But your partner will be doing a whole lot of self-expanding, and research suggests that witnessing their self-expansion is linked to a lift in your happiness with them.
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So to sum it all up, it’s possible to weave self-expansion into a bustling life on your own terms, even when it may seem like there isn’t much wiggle room.
The self-expansion model of love
- This model developed out of a confluence of research on attraction and arousal, Eastern psychology, motivation theory, and the social psychology of personal relationships. The model treats love (the desire for a relationship with a particular other) as arising from a desire to expand the self by including that other in the self, as well as by associating expansion with that particular other. The model is described, including its function as a source of heuristically important metaphors for common human experiences of love and its unique focus in relation to other approaches to love.
- Research suggests to predictors of falling in love, motivations for unrequited love, consequences of falling in love, love as including each other in each other's self, and how love changes (and how it can be maintained) in long-term relationships.
- The self-expansion model of love emerges from an integration of two diverse worlds of knowledge. The first world of knowledge was relevant social-psychological theories of basic human motivation, and the little research that existed at the time on attraction and relationships. The second world of knowledge was from classical concepts of love.
- Its a conceptual framework that describes how people think, feel, and act in close relationships. It’s called the ‘self-expansion’ model of human relationships and it is based on the idea that we are constantly seeking new ways in which to expand ourselves, and to “increase our store of ideas, experiences, skills, interests and resources in order to accomplish an ever-evolving set of goals.
- When we fall in love, our new partner’s perspectives and identities automatically become ours too, and this results in a rapid expansion of self which results in a high levels of positive feelings. Every shared conversation becomes an opportunity for personal growth and in time, couples eventually adopt the traits of the other to the extent that they find it difficult to distinguish the differences between them. This does not mean that these couples have lost themselves in the relationships; instead, they grew and expand their perspectives with that of the others. Activities, traits and behaviors that had not been part of their identity before the relationship were now an essential part of how they experienced life.
- The self-expansion model also offers a credible explanation for the typical decline in satisfaction in long term relationships. When two people begin a relationship, there is an initial, exhilarating period in which they ‘expand’ at a very rapid rate. When that expansion slows down, for some couples having children and the experience of nurturing little ones sometimes serves as a way of continuing the expansion process. However, a shared nurturing and admiration for offspring isn’t always enough to sustain the parent’s relationship with each other as the children end up moving out as part of their own self expansion needs. Research demonstrates that to sustain satisfaction in the long-term, couples need to invest in each other’s self expansion.
- It is not just enough for couples to be free of problems and conflicts to sustain a relationship. The more self-expansion people experience from their partner, the more committed and satisfied they are in the relationship. It’s also important that in a relationship, a unidirectional self expansion – where one person’s self expansion at the expense of the other is avoided.
- Many times true love and the resulting self expansion sustains even after one of two have left. Remember the Disney movie UP where Carl leaves for his adventure long after Ellie had gone.
- Honestly this isn’t any secret but quite often an over looked and neglected aspect in a relationship – when the mundane routine takes over everything else. In a relationship when one adds to the other’s experiences, perspectives, strengths, capabilities and compensates for the other’s weakness resulting in making a better person of each other – it sustains happily overcoming the challenges ( sometimes long after one of them has gone).