Research reveals that, on average, having a new romantic partner pushes out two close friends from your inner circle
Falling in love comes at the cost of losing close friends, because romantic partners absorb time that would otherwise be invested in platonic relationships, researchers say.
A new partner pushes out two close friends on average, leaving lovers with a smaller inner circle of people they can turn to in times of crisis, a study found.
The research, led by Robin Dunbar, head of the Institute of Cognitive and Evolutionary Anthropology at Oxford University, showed that men and women were equally likely to lose their closest friends when they started a new relationship.
Previous research by Dunbar's group has shown that people typically have five very close relationships – that is, people whom they would turn to if they were in emotional or financial trouble.
"If you go into a romantic relationship, it costs you two friends. Those who have romantic relationships, instead of having the typical five 'core set' of relationships only have four. And of those, one is the new person who's come into their life," said Dunbar.
The study, submitted to the journal Personal Relationships, was designed to investigate how people trade off spending time with one person over another and suggests that links with family and closest friends suffer when people start a romantic relationship.
Dunbar's team used an internet-based questionnaire to quiz 428 women and 112 men about their relationships. In total, 363 of the participants had romantic partners. The findings suggest that a new love interest has to compensate for the loss of two close friends.
Speaking at the British Science Festival in Birmingham, Professor Dunbar said: "This was a surprise for us. We hadn't expected it.
"If you don't see people, your emotional engagement with them drops off and does so quickly. What I suspect is that your attention is so wholly focused on the romantic partner you don't get to see the other folks you had a lot to do with before, and so some of those relationships start to deteriorate."
The questionnaire allowed people to mention whether any of their closest confidants were "extra romantic partners". In all, 32 of those quizzed mentioned having an extra love interest in their life, but these people did not lose four friends as might be expected. Instead, the extra person in their life bumped their original romantic partner out of their innermost circle of friends.
In a separate study, Dunbar's team looked at how men and women maintained friendships on the social networking website Facebook. They found that women's Facebook friends were more often friends from everyday life that they spent time with, while men tended to collect as many friends as they could, even if they hardly knew them.
"Boys seem to be in a competition to see who can have the most Facebook friends and that could be a form of mate advertising. One of the cues women use for male quality as a mate is the number of other girls chasing them, so signing up lots of girls as Facebook friends seems to be a good idea," said Dunbar.
Falling in love comes at the cost of losing close friends, because romantic partners absorb time that would otherwise be invested in platonic relationships, researchers say.
A new partner pushes out two close friends on average, leaving lovers with a smaller inner circle of people they can turn to in times of crisis, a study found.
The research, led by Robin Dunbar, head of the Institute of Cognitive and Evolutionary Anthropology at Oxford University, showed that men and women were equally likely to lose their closest friends when they started a new relationship.
Previous research by Dunbar's group has shown that people typically have five very close relationships – that is, people whom they would turn to if they were in emotional or financial trouble.
"If you go into a romantic relationship, it costs you two friends. Those who have romantic relationships, instead of having the typical five 'core set' of relationships only have four. And of those, one is the new person who's come into their life," said Dunbar.
The study, submitted to the journal Personal Relationships, was designed to investigate how people trade off spending time with one person over another and suggests that links with family and closest friends suffer when people start a romantic relationship.
Dunbar's team used an internet-based questionnaire to quiz 428 women and 112 men about their relationships. In total, 363 of the participants had romantic partners. The findings suggest that a new love interest has to compensate for the loss of two close friends.
Speaking at the British Science Festival in Birmingham, Professor Dunbar said: "This was a surprise for us. We hadn't expected it.
"If you don't see people, your emotional engagement with them drops off and does so quickly. What I suspect is that your attention is so wholly focused on the romantic partner you don't get to see the other folks you had a lot to do with before, and so some of those relationships start to deteriorate."
The questionnaire allowed people to mention whether any of their closest confidants were "extra romantic partners". In all, 32 of those quizzed mentioned having an extra love interest in their life, but these people did not lose four friends as might be expected. Instead, the extra person in their life bumped their original romantic partner out of their innermost circle of friends.
In a separate study, Dunbar's team looked at how men and women maintained friendships on the social networking website Facebook. They found that women's Facebook friends were more often friends from everyday life that they spent time with, while men tended to collect as many friends as they could, even if they hardly knew them.
"Boys seem to be in a competition to see who can have the most Facebook friends and that could be a form of mate advertising. One of the cues women use for male quality as a mate is the number of other girls chasing them, so signing up lots of girls as Facebook friends seems to be a good idea," said Dunbar.
世界就是這麼巧，我認識三個朋友，差不多同一時間交了女朋友，一個拍拖後還是做回自己，沒什麼特別的改變 ; 另外一個拍拖後變得成熟，做事認真了，整個人變得 lovable ; 最後那個拍拖後則變得不負責任起來，尤其在工作上。是本身個人的問題還是受另一半影響，只有他們自已才知道。 你不負責任、變得懶散，本來一點也沒有問題，但是如果直接影響到別人的話，那麻煩你承認自己的過失及清理自己造成的蘇州屎。
朋友告訴我，她被自己女友的好朋友討厭，那個朋友一起出來見面吃飯都是俾面性質。我呢，剛剛相反，我討厭另一個朋友的女友，我的態度是盡量避而不見，「俾面」呢樣野，俾得太多我會好攰，而且 quota 已經在公司被濫用得慘不忍睹。 朋友說她的死因有三個，我聽起來倒不覺得是什麼特別的罪狀，就是罪不至死吧 ; 反而我這個嘛，我跟十個人說，也會有十一個人走出來認為她該死。
其實什麼罪狀也不重要，那只是一個讓你死得眼閉的藉口，最重要的是剛剛相識時，你給人的第一個 impression, 中國人不是有一句話叫「先入為主」嗎? 當然囉，第一次見面? 咸豐年代的事情，誰會記得? 但偏偏我們這些小心眼的小女人就最愛看最愛記著這些細節。
沒有留言:
發佈留言