When you first get with your partner – or even well into your relationship – it’s surprisingly normal to feel some ambivalence, or conflicted emotions, about your partner. “People in close relationships can, and often do, experience ambivalence (i.e., mixed feelings) toward their romantic partner,” shared the researchers for a new study into the phenomenon.
Recently published in the journal Social Psychological and Personality Science, the research aimed to explore the emotion further. After all, the researchers said, though the feeling is common, research into it is scarce.
Many of us might feel uncomfortable sharing any feelings of uncertainty with our partner. But the study revealed that not only are there multiple types of ambivalence, but that some of them are much more corrosive to your relationship than others.
The study looked into four types of ambivalence
It can be easy to assume that feeling any kind of ambivalence towards your partner means that you’ve got a foot out the door. But this study examined “four different types of ambivalence (i.e., objective, subjective, implicit-explicit, and implicit ambivalence)” and explored how they actually affected the well-being of people and the quality of their relationships.
Objective ambivalence “reflects the degree to which people explicitly hold both positive and negative evaluations at the same time,” the study said. The term covers the unbiased overall view of a person’s relationship, without considering how strongly the positive or negative emotions skew in the participants.
Subjective ambivalence covers the biased experience people have of those feelings – sort of like the RealFeel climate of your relationship.
The study also looked into implicit-explicit ambivalence, which they say “refers to the mismatch between people’s self-reports and their implicit evaluations.” And finally, the researchers examined the effects of implicit ambivalence, which “refers to the structure of the attitude, but occurs at an implicit level when people have strong positive and strong negative automatic evaluations.”
So what did they find?
The research involved four intensive studies involving over 1,000 romantic couples and individuals in a romantic relationship. The research involved participants completing questionnaires, filling in a diary, and following up on couples after a year.
The first two types of ambivalence – objective and subjective – had the worst outcomes for couples, while implicit-explicit ambivalence and implicit ambivalence didn’t seem to have much of an effect at all.
“Objective and subjective ambivalence were significantly and negatively associated with personal and relational well-being, while implicit-explicit and implicit ambivalence showed no significant association,” the researchers shared.
“That association was stronger for subjective ambivalence compared with objective ambivalence,” they add.
Essentially, the study suggests that subconscious feelings of ambivalence don’t affect your relationship until you become aware of them. Put differently, the automatic feeling isn’t the problem so much as your reaction to it is.
“People may be most threatened by the awareness of their ambivalence given the strong desire to see their partner positively and the potentially relationship- and life-altering implications that acting upon one’s evaluations may have,” the study said.
They added that “this idea is also consistent with research showing that ambivalence is most influential when people ruminate about their relationship (Kachadourian et al., 2005), that is, when the salience of the conflict is strong.”
So, while having some mixed feelings about your partner are common, being constantly conscious of your uncertainty (or your partner’s) can be a major red flag.
Help and support:
- Mind, open Monday to Friday, 9am-6pm on 0300 123 3393.
- Samaritans offers a listening service which is open 24 hours a day, on 116 123 (UK and ROI - this number is FREE to call and will not appear on your phone bill).
- Beat, Adult Helpline: 0808 801 0677 and Youthline: 0808 801 0711 or email help@beateatingdisorders.org.uk (adults) fyp@beateatingdisorders.org.uk (youth support)
- CALM (the Campaign Against Living Miserably) offer a helpline open 5pm-midnight, 365 days a year, on 0800 58 58 58, and a webchat service.
- The Mix is a free support service for people under 25. Call 0808 808 4994 or email help@themix.org.uk
- Rethink Mental Illness offers practical help through its advice line which can be reached on 0808 801 0525 (Monday to Friday 10am-4pm). More info can be found on rethink.org