“For better or worse, we aren’t always as accurate as we might like to believe when it comes to the way that we think about our romantic relationships.”
– Aidan Smyth
Aidan Smyth, a Master’s student in Psychology in collaboration with Dr. Johanna Peetz and Carleton alumnus Adrienne Capaldi is researching what happens after a breakup when people may no longer be motivated to see their relationships with their ex-partners in the best possible light.
Said Smyth: “My colleagues, Dr. Johanna Peetz and Adrienne Capaldi and I were interested in whether people recalled their past relationships as worse, after a breakup, than they said they were when they were still in them.”
The results of this study suggest that, after a recent breakup, people recall their former relationships as worse than they said they were while there were still dating their former partners. In other words, after a breakup people thought they weren’t as happy with their ex-partners as they actually had been.
You can read the whole article here:
Grad Research: Are Our Relationships Actually as Good As We Thought?