What If Everything You Believe About Love Is Wrong?

What you don’t know about relationships could lead to heartbreak.

When I was a kid, I was a bit of an annoying “know-it-all” type. In some ways, maybe I still am.

My mom would often remind me that being smart was knowing what you don’t know. Later in life, I came across a quote from Mark Twain: “It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.”(He may have said it better. Just don’t tell my mom that.)

That quote stopped me cold the first time I applied it to relationships.

I spend a lot of time talking and teaching about dating and love. Standing in front of large rooms of people gives me a unique perspective, I get to watch everyone’s immediate reaction to the relationship facts, figures, and insights I’m sharing. What that information means for their own relationships is written all over their face.

When it’s not good news, people get what I call the “uh-oh” face. It’s an incredulous expression — a mixture of confusion and trepidation. As in, “uh-oh, this isn’t what I thought was true, and it’s not good for my relationship.” The “uh-oh” face is the exact opposite of the happily content, self-satisfied expression people get when their existing viewpoint turns out to be correct.

We all love to be right.

Sadly, when it comes to our love lives, we’re wrong more than we realize.

What we believe about relationships may be well-established fact, or it could be well-intentioned fiction.

You’ve heard the saying that love is blind. It also makes us a little deaf and dumb. No one wants to admit it, but you’re carrying around beliefs about love that leave your current and future relationships quietly vulnerable. This series exposes those blindspots.

Once you see them, you can’t unsee them. The key is what you do once you realize you may have it wrong.

You Need to Get It Right

Think of all the most important parts of your life. Where are your relationships on that list? My guess is that they’re at the top. Family, friends, coworkers, etc. But, likely the most essential is the spot reserved for your romantic partner. As David Brooks from the New York Times says, “The most important decision any of us make is who we marry. Yet there are no courses on how to choose a spouse.” There needs to be…or at least a substack dedicated to the psychology of relationships. : )

Once you’re in a relationship, questions persist.

• “Have I found “the One” or could I do better?”

• “Am I settling?”

• “Am I expecting too much or being too harsh?”

• “Am I in love?”

• “Why is my partner like this?”

• “Is my relationship normal?”

Every question is fair to ask. Honestly, it would be a little odd if you didn’t wonder. Doubts are part of being human and a part of relationships.

Relationships are important.

Time is short.

You need to get it right.

The research gets more uncomfortable from here.

This piece is the introduction to a series on the myths quietly undermining most relationships. Why Smart People Make Bad Relationship Choices: The Myths Ruining Your Love Life is the paid continuation and shares the specific beliefs that are doing the most damage, and what the science actually says instead.

$75 for the year. Less than one therapy session, and unlike therapy, it doesn’t end after 50 minutes.

Don’t Create Problems You Don’t Have

Sometimes, we overdo the problem finding.

Early on in dating, everything feels perfect and amazing. As time goes on we start noticing things like how loudly our partner chews, the mess they leave around the sink, how they drive, their spending habits, the list goes on.

If you’re not careful, you may start finding problems where they don’t exist. This “problemicity” can encourage you to dwell on inconsequential issues or partner attributes, seek out unnecessary conflict, or imagine scenarios that will never happen. Even when your relationship doesn’t have any major issues you inflate small problems into bigger ones (Levari et al., 2018). It’s almost like the calm serenity of a good relationship is unsettling, so people create drama and issues where there are none. These manufactured problems are a mirage and another way we can get love wrong.

You can blame your negativity bias or tendency to focus on the bad aspects of experiences (Rozin & Royzman, 2001). Unfortunately we’re more likely to take the good for granted, but easily remember how our partner inconveniences us, doesn’t do what they should (e.g., taking out the trash), or makes insensitive comments.

Is your partner annoying, or are you easily annoyed?

You Don’t Know as Much as You Think

How will your relationship turn out?

It’s a simple question, but who’s the best person to answer that. The obvious answer is you. After all, it’s your relationship so you have the most inside information. No one knows you, your partner, or relationship dynamic better than you.

Not so fast…allow me to share one of my all-time favorite studies. Researchers wanted to see who really was the best judge of a relationship (MacDonald & Ross, 1999). To do that they asked over 100 students to make predictions about their relationship’s future. The researchers also their roommate and their parent to make the same predictions, and indicate how confident they were about their guesses. Later, the researchers checked back in to see who was right.

Naturally, the students were the most confident about their predictions. Roommates and parents weren’t as confident in their predictions because they acknowledged that they couldn’t possibly know everything that was going on in the student’s relationship.

Here’s the really fascinating part: despite students’ abundant confidence, they were the LEAST accurate in their prediction of the relationship’s future. In fact, students thought the relationship would last nearly 2-3 times longer than what their parents/roommates predicted. Roommates were the most accurate, followed by the parent.

What gave the outsiders the advantage? Objectivity. They weren’t in love. They weren’t biased. Instead of using their hearts, parents and roommates used their head. When you’re too emotional, it compromises your judgement and affects decision making, making it difficult to see things clearly (Lerner et al., 2015).

We all give ourselves too much credit for the amount of insight and self-awareness we have into our own lives. As you can see from this study, that overconfidence creates a potentially tragic combination of feeling really good about terrible predictions.

We make this mistake a lot. For example, “I can definitely be the one who helps my emotionally unavailable and potentially narcissistic partner become an amazingly caring partner. I can change them.” No you can’t. You won’t see it as easily as an objective outsider who isn’t blinded by their feelings..

To avoid these types of mistakes, it’s important to consider outsider’s perspectives (whether that’s mom, dad, friend, roommate, coworker, therapist, or coach). When it doubt, check in with the female’s best friend. Research shows she often has the most complete information about what’s going on in the relationship (Agnew et al., 2001).

Because outsiders often see things that you’re missing entirely, their opinions are informative. I’d add from my experience that friends are reluctant to give strong or absolute feedback (“You should dump him.” “They’re not good for you.” etc.) However, if close friends give tepid or halfhearted feedback (“He seems alright.” “They’re pretty ok.” etc.), take that as a strong indicator that your friend has doubts, but may be scared to say.

Conclusion

Nobody’s perfect. Everyone believes in myths that undermine their relationship and have blind spots that make the truth difficult to see. In the rest of the series we’re going to do a deeper dive into the top 10 myths that hold our relationships back. Stay tuned…

Knowing you might have it wrong is step one. The paid archive is step two, starting with Why Smart People Make Bad Relationship Choices, the direct follow-up to what you just read.

$75 for the year. Less than one therapy session, and unlike therapy, it doesn’t end after 50 minutes.

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Know someone who enjoys psychology or relationships? Please help share relationship psychology with others:

The articles in this series are based on my book: Stronger Than You Think: The 10 Blind Spots that Undermine Your Relationship… and How to See Past Them (purchases, shares, ratings, and/or reviews are greatly appreciated).

Here’s what you can look forward to in the rest of this series:

Why Smart People Make Bad Relationship Choices: The Myths Ruining Your Love Life

1. What If Everything You Believe About Love Is Wrong?

2. The Gender Myth: How 'Men vs. Women' Thinking Destroys Intimacy

3. Perfectly Flawed: How Realistic Expectations Create Lasting Love

4. Chemistry Beyond the Checklist: Why Looks and Status Aren't Enough

5. The Intimacy Trap: When Sex Becomes a Relationship Test

6. Change Them or Choose Them: You Can't Do Both

7. The Martyr Myth: How Self-Sacrifice Sabotages Love

8. The Proximity Paradox: Why Closeness Isn't Always Connection

9. Conflict as Connection: The Surprising Truth About Arguments

10. Needy vs. Needed: Reclaiming Your Emotional Independence

11. Stronger Than You Think: Surviving Break Up

If you haven’t already, you can check out the previous series: The Psychology of Relationships 101 Curriculum

References

Agnew, C. R., Loving, T. J., & Drigotas, S. M. (2001). Substituting the forest for the trees: Social networks and the prediction of romantic relationship state and fate. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 81, 1042-1057

Lerner, J. S., Li, Y., Valdesolo, P., & Kassam, K. S. (2015). Emotion and decision making. Annual Review of Psychology, 66, 799–823.

Levari, D. E., Gilbert, D. T., Wilson, T. D., Sievers, B., Amodio, D. M., & Wheatley, T. (2018). Prevalence-induced concept change in human judgment. Science, 360(6396), 1465–1467.

MacDonald, T. K., & Ross, M. (1999). Assessing the accuracy of predictions about dating relationships: How and why do lovers’ predictions differ from those made by observers? Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 25(11), 1417-1429.

Rozin, P., & Royzman, E. B. (2001). Negativity bias, negativity dominance, and contagion. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 5(4), 296–320.

Photo by Valentin Antonucci

Note: Please forgive any typos or errors. Non-AI writing has its imperfections. Consider it the patina of a personal touch.