towardinsight's blog

What standard should guide us when we feel wronged in a relationship?There are moments in a relationship when a wave of resentment washes over us for no reason we can quite name. When we are the ones straining under the weight of effort while the other person enjoys an easy comfort, as if nothing were amiss, something inside tips off balance. It would be easy to write this feeling off as mere ov..

Human relationships lend themselves readily to a spatial metaphor: within any relationship, someone functions as its axis, and someone else revolves around that axis. People tend to organize their relationships around one of two such axes. In the self-centered mode, the individual places himself at the center and expects others to accommodate him. In the other-centered mode, the individual trea..

Among the most corrosive experiences in interpersonal life are resentment and disappointment. We instinctively attribute these to an external cause — the perceived shortcomings or betrayal of another person. Yet a closer look at the psychology of disappointment suggests something less flattering: disappointment is rarely a direct, objective response to another's behavior. More often, it is the p..

Human beings are fundamentally social creatures, incapable of thriving in isolation; the quality of our lives is mediated by the networks of relationships we weave. This was empirically underscored by the Harvard Study of Adult Development (comprising the intertwined Grant and Glueck studies), a longitudinal project that tracked more than 700 individuals for over 75 years. Its conclusion was str..