Love's Veil: Turning a Blind Eye to Temptation

A true commitment means resisting temptation, even when it seems to be lurking everywhere. Evidence suggests that the more in tune you are with your partner, the less likely you are to give that hottie a second glance.

by Gian Gonzaga, Ph.D.

Living in Los Angeles can make being in a relationship hard. The person sitting next to you in the café is almost always attractive, and people are still playing volleyball on the beach in their swimsuits in December when most others in the rest of the country are pulling their parkas out of the closet. There is always some temptation…some attractive alternative.

Of course, you know that if you indulge it means the end of your relationship, and you will lose all the current and future benefits of your relationship. Often, that thought is enough to motivate most people to avoid the temptation. And yet some give in to temptation, and many relationships end due to infidelity. Relationships ebb and flow, and there will always be temptation, so why do people sometimes resist and at other times fall prey?

Much research has been done to investigate this question, and it turns out there are things in our relationships that help us resist these temptations. For example, when we are in a committed relationship, we tend to view our partners with a rosy glow. Think of the last time you listened to your friend prattle on about the great qualities of his or her partner while thinking, “Really, he/she isn’t that great.” You’ve probably done the same thing when in a relationship. Sandra Murray and her colleagues at the State University of New York at Buffalo have studied this process of enhancing your partner through positive illusions. They showed that the tendency of people to enhance their view of their romantic partners in this way protects the relationship. It makes people more satisfied with their relationship and less likely to let it dissolve. After all, if your partner really is that great, you aren’t going to want to go out with someone else.

But that isn’t all. People in relationships also tend to look for the bad sides of attractive alternatives. Dennis Johnson and Caryl Rusbult, who were researchers at the University of North Carolina, showed that the more invested people were in their relationships, the more they tended to put down possible alternatives to the relationship. For example, in one study, participants were given photos and mock dating service applications to judge. Those who were very committed to their romantic partners tended to view the potential partners as less attractive, less dependable, less funny, etc., than those who were not very committed to their romantic partners. This tendency was the strongest when the participants were told that the alternative was highly attractive. In other words, when the threat to the relationship was the strongest, people were the most likely to point out the downsides of the alternative.