Trick Yourself Out Of Relationship Boredom
Starting to get that variety-is-the-spice-of-life sex itch? Trick yourself out of it.
There isn't a being on earth who hasn't fought the occasional philandering itch. Sure, you may grab hold of your morality and never go through with it in the end—we believe you, but it stands as one of life's cruel truisms. Indeed, a grass-is-greener-on-the-other-side aching happens often once coupled up. Cheating Myths Debunked
Thankfully, we can blame this on being human. Alas, it isn't exclusively our sexual partners and spouses from whom we want variety. No, not at all. We'd like a mix-up from just about everything in our lives—from clothing, music, food to a penchant for red or white wine depending on the evening.
Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh have figured out a way to outsmart your inner want-want-want baby and get your head back to desiring and devouring what you do have. Marriage Has It’s Charm, Partly Because Divorce Is So Lousy
Researcher Jeff Galak, a marketing professor at Carnegie Mellon says the root of this problem lies in "variety amnesia." We're inwardly very greedy little children and tend to forget how much we actually have been exposed to and instead dwell on whatever it was we're sick of.
"We demonstrate that simply thinking about the variety of similar experiences one has had since last being exposed to the now-disliked stimulus accelerates recovery from satiation," Galak and his colleagues write in the Journal of Consumer Research in an article published online last month and slated for the print edition in December. "Such simulations act as 'virtual' variety, providing much of the same reduction in satiation as actual variety," the authors write.
For example, once feeling the bed-hopping itch, go through the mental catalogue of all the potential sex partners you've been exposed to that day, week, etc. Galek is willing to bet carving aside the time to take that mind journey will cut down on the appetite.
Worth a try, right?
Sometimes I wonder, as Bookmama has mentioned, how much of our consummerism culture re-enforces this mindset of wanting constant variety, the newest, latest, shiniest thing. I'm guessing this study was done entirely over here. I'd like to see how different the results would be in other countries, especially ones that have really strong family values, as in the parents are taken care of by their children when old age takes away old freedoms, where families still have to rely on each other for their daily needs...it would be interesting to see how much of this is really cultural versus just being part of the human condition.
