Here at Dutch-Smart, we offer herbs for a wide variety of purposes. You’ll find them to boost energy, for a psychedelic trip, and, of course, to promote your health. But if there’s one specific type of herb that can help you ensure a long-lasting, stable romantic relationship, it’s our libido herbs. New research shows that fostering intimacy is a must for maintaining long-term romantic relationships.
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Negative and positive influences
The study, published in Social Psychological and Personality Science, sought to investigate why couples actually break up. “When we think about the question ‘why do couples break up?’ we quickly think of some ‘negative’ events and feelings, such as cheating, lying, arguments, and insecurities,” explains study author Yoo Bin Park, a PhD candidate at the University of Toronto and a member of the MacDonald Social Psychology Research Lab. “However, our team is generally interested in the important role that the ‘positives,’ and in particular feelings of intimacy, play in maintaining relationships.”
This led the researchers to conduct a so-called prospective study with participants who are currently in a relationship. The researchers recruited 4,105 adults and had them complete weekly surveys about their relationship until they broke up (if that happened). Of the initial sample, 111 participants completed a 27-day daily diary study following the breakup, and 76 of these participants also completed a follow-up survey one month after the conclusion of the daily diary study.
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Intimacy the most important factor
After controlling for variables such as gender, age, and relationship duration, Park and her colleagues found that intimacy was ultimately the most important factor in predicting whether or not participants stayed with their partner. In particular, participants who disagreed with statements such as “It’s interesting to learn more about my partner,” “Being with my partner gives me opportunities for personal growth,” and “I enjoy sharing things about myself with my partner” tended to have shorter relationships. This held true even when the researchers accounted for other factors, such as relationship satisfaction and attachment anxieties.
Surprisingly, the researchers found that concern about negative evaluations (“I worry about what my partner thinks of me”) did not seem to strongly predict breakups. “‘Especially for anyone who feels something is missing in their relationship, I think they should take away from this study that it might be the intimate connections they’re missing, and that they need to address that rather than overlooking its importance,’ said Park.
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Lack of ‘reward’
“Couples often break up, not necessarily because they hate each other, but because they get used to the relationship and take the ‘reward’ they get from connecting with their partner for granted. Intimate connection is more than a luxury for a relationship and can in fact be crucial to a relationship’s longevity, so it will be worth investing some time and effort to experience that.”
But there is a caveat. “In this study, we didn’t look at the partner’s perspective. It’s possible that the relationship one partner considers sufficiently intimate doesn’t meet the other partner’s needs for intimacy at all,” Park said. “So I think it will be important and interesting to examine how both partners’ levels of intimacy contribute to the decision to break up —is one partner’s lack of intimacy enough to cause a relationship to fail, or would the relationship survive if at least one partner feels there is enough intimacy in their relationship?”
Whatever the outcome of such a new study may be, we know for sure that our powerful libido herbs can help take the intimacy in your relationship to unprecedented levels. In short: take a look soon, and who knows—you might be going at it like the Duracell bunnies again before you know it!
