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APPLIED SCIENCE EXPERT AMY ALKON
Empowering you through science for your best health and boldest life
Wife In The Fast Lane
Mary
I'm a 31-year-old woman, and I've been dating my boyfriend for 10 months. I was hoping to get married eventually. Well, my friend goes to this famous "relationship coach" who says that if a guy doesn't ask you to marry him within the first year, he never will. Is that true? It's making me feel anxious and worried that I'm wasting my time.
--Two More Months?
It's comforting to believe that somebody has the magical knowledge that can get us to happily ever after. That's why there was a movie called "The Wizard of Oz" and not "The Dishwasher Repairman of Oz." In fact, we crave certainty and get freaked out by uncertainty. Psychologically, a guarantee of something bad happening is way more comfortable for us than the mere possibility that it could. This sounds a little nuts, but it makes evolutionary sense, because uncertainty leaves us on constant alert, which is both psychologically and physiologically draining. When research subjects are given a choice -- get an electric shock for sure right then and there or possibly get surprised with a shock later -- they overwhelmingly opt for the certain zapping in the present. And neuroscientist Archy de Berker found that people experienced greater physical stress responses (sweating and enlarged pupils) when a shock came unpredictably than when they knew it was coming. This is why it can be tempting to buy into an "expert's" doom-and-gloom timetable -- despite countless examples disproving their "Marry before the year's out or spinsterville forever!" pronouncement. And consider something else: University of Pisa psychiatrist Donatella Marazziti finds that people in love are basically hormonally inebriated for a year or two. Also, it's typically adversity -- which tends to be in short supply during a year of romantic picnics and spa vacations -- that shows what two people are made of and how well they, as a couple, weather life's kicks in the teeth. You know...like after you encourage your partner to be true to that inner voice -- and he listens: "Thanks to you, honey, I'm quitting my soul-killing six-figure job to become a professional pogo stick artist."bottom of page