Ignoring your partner is not always a bad thing

You have most likely been ignored by your partner after asking for a favour or demanding for a change in your relationship. Certainly, you did not like it that you were ignored.

The taste of sourness in your mouth betrayed your fear that you are not cared for, appreciated, or that your opinion is not valued. Well, you are not alone.

Ignoring the other partner in relationships is common. But as bad as it may appear, it is actually not entirely a bad thing. This has been discovered by a new study that was conducted by the University of California, US.

Nonetheless, it matters in which kind of relationship ignorance is fruitful. Apparently, ignorance in relationships where partners are in the low-income cadres does not harm. The situation is reversed in higher-earning relationships.

To come up with these conclusions, the researchers conducted two experiments with heterosexual couples whom they followed for a period of one and a half years.

In the first evaluation, they recruited 515 couples. All of these couples had at least one child or were expecting a child.

Forty percent of them were at or below the poverty line, or could be described as low income earners.

DEMAND-WITHDRAWAL

The researchers then visited their homes and asked them to engage in a series of discussions about the things they wanted their partners to change.

“We discovered that couples who suffered from demand-withdrawal of one partner did not have less fulfilling relationships,” said Jaclyn Ross, who led the study. “On the other end couples who had higher incomes scored low levels of relationship satisfaction when one partner ignored the demands or requests of the other.”

In the second part of the study, the researchers recruited 414 newlywed couples. They visited these couples at their homes four times over a period of two years and three months.

“Ironically, we found out that couples in the low earning grades experienced more dissatisfaction in their marriages when the husband always succumbed to demands,” the study said.

The satisfaction disparity in these two groups of couples was attributed to the well-off couples’ expectation that their demands must be met contrary to the expectations of the low-income couples.

“Despite the availability of resources among wealthier couples, the higher expectation that partners will make accommodations for each other’s demands and needs underlie the main problems,” said Dr. Thomas Bradbury who co-authored the study.

The study also noted that low-income earning couples will often not dwell on ignored demands due to their risk potential.

On the contrary, well-off couples will bring in the perception that the ignorant partner is unwilling to meet a request or make a sacrifice for the family.

The findings of this study were published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.