

Love Makes You Increasingly Ignorant of Your Partner - edw519
http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2010/10/love-ignorance/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+wired%2Findex+%28Wired%3A+Index+3+%28Top+Stories+2%29%29&utm_content=My+Yahoo

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dkarl
The study makes a very incorrect assumption, which is that a person's report
of their own tastes and habits will be more reliable than their partner's.
Living in stable circumstances, settling into a mindless routine, a person's
self-image diverges from reality. The person lives in the fantasy; the partner
sees the reality.

For instance, even in just a four-year relationship, I ended up getting in
arguments with my girlfriend about whether she liked eating Chinese food,
watching new movies, going kayaking, or seeing a certain kind of music. I'd
say she didn't. She'd disagree, saying, "Of course I like that, I've always
liked that," and I'd counter, "It's been two years since we last did it and a
year since I gave up suggesting it."

I would say in that case that I knew my partner, and she was ignorant of
herself.

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corruption
Honestly, the world isn't black and white like that. And I can see why you
argued about it; that would drive anyone mad being told what they do and don't
like based on a histogram of time spent in the last 2 years.

There are many explanations for not spending time doing things you like;
competing priorities is the main one (i.e. I like other things more than them)
and also environment (perhaps you enjoy kayaking but hate the drive to get
there, or don't want to go with johnny and max because you don't like max).

Just because you don't do something doesn't mean you don't like it. It's a
false dichotomy.

~~~
dkarl
When the inconveniences of normal daily life stop you from doing the things
you like to do, that's a sign of depression, not normal behavior.

~~~
corruption
I never said anything to the contrary. I said that it's a false dichotomy;
just because you don't spend time doing something doesn't mean you don't like
it, just that you may not like doing it as much as other activities.

I love playing games, but never do because I like other things (learning
mainly) far better. I also love kayaking, but would much prefer to go to the
gym because of convenience. That doesn't mean I don't like playing games or
kayaking; I really enjoy doing both. Get it?

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brown9-2
_It’s also possible that older couples in the new study come from a generation
in which men and women generally knew less about each other to begin with than
couples do today, Hertwig says._

How is this not the more-believable hypothesis to draw from the study's
results?

Is it that it makes for a less interesting headline?

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shasta
The study also found that love increasingly makes you ignorant of what decade
it is and where you put your hearing aid.

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ryanwaggoner
It's worth noting that these couples were all recruited from Berlin, so there
may be an element of cultural bias being exhibited. I'm not saying I
necessarily doubt the conclusions, but I have to imagine that if you studied
married couples from rural Japan, the slums of Rio, Manhattan, and nomadic
tribes in central Asia, you'd find very different things.

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karzeem
It might be more appropriate to use the older couples as a baseline and say
that young couples pay an abnormally high amount of attention to one another's
preferences. Same findings, just a different way of putting it.

The level of attention young couples pay to one another is probably just so
high that it's unsustainable and fades with time.

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brc
To me the cause is obvious - the longer you're together, the less you try and
establish what you like and dislike. Your partner puts a plate of bacon in
front of you and you eat it : they assume you like bacon. You might tolerate
bacon but not like it, but you eat it because it was prepared for you and
there's no reason to say 'I don't like bacon'. Same goes for movies : you just
accept watching movies with your partner that you don't particularly care for,
but you do it because you're spending time together. The partner assumes you
like that movie because you went along and didn't complain.

In other words, it's likely that the study miscontrues 'like' for 'doesn't
actively dislike'. I can watch romantic comedies without complaint, I don't
like romantic comedies as a genre. It's just easier to eat the food, watch the
movie than it is to start a federal case over it. After all, if you've been in
a relationship for a while, chances are there might be kids, and you probably
just relish the ability to watch any movie in peace and quiet.

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JustinSeriously
Proof that love makes you blind.

