Self-Expansion and Growth in Relationships

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By: Chase Amante

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Back in the old days, when I was much more a relationship-focused kind of guy than
a seduction-focused kind of guy, I built this model for relationships, since I
hadn’t seen any good concrete models out there and I thought it could be useful.
The idea didn’t get a whole lot of interest from folks at the time, so I didn’t
bother to do a lot of writing on it or really lay the model out anywhere, but it
was called GISS, and the “G” in GISS was the central point the others connected to,
and it stood for “Growth.” Growth was the keystone of a relationship that supported
the other three pillars and was the key defining aspect of what made a solid,
successful partnership. I’m recalled to this today by a fascinating article I just
read in the New York Times titled “The Happy Marriage is the ‘Me’ Marriage”, which
could just as easily be about long-term relationships in general as it could
marriages specifically. The central element of the ‘me’ in the title of the article
is, as it turns out, all about shared personal growth in one’s relationship. The
title might perhaps have been a bit more suiting were it worded “The Happy
Relationship is the ‘We’ Relationship”, but the point is it’s about that keystone
element that’s so essential to the proper running of a long-term relationship.

The thing this article, by a gal named Tara Parker-Pope, does that I found quite
good is it ties three different pieces of research together into a coherent picture
of how growth impacts long-term relationships positively. The research is also all
new to me, an uncommon thing for a guy who scans the major science publications
daily and keeps a keen eye out for socio-psychological studies in particular. It
talks about the powerful force that association plays in close long-term
relationships. Emotional association, something I ought to write a proper post on,
is the term for when a person feels so close to you that they feel like the two of
you are “bound”. They feel what you feel (or what they think you feel), and retain
a sense of responsibility toward you that compels them to strongly seek to avoid
hurting you and actively seek to help you succeed in all different kinds of ways.
Parker-Pope’s NYT article zeroes in on this specifically, discussing research
findings that people with strong emotional association to their partners actually
have a harder time identifying words that describe only them than they do
identifying words that describe both them and their partners. An individual in a
closely bound relationship is quicker to identify words that describe both
partners. The article also, and this is the point most relevant to us here in this
post, identifies research where people who were more engaged and growing in their
relationships identified their relationships as more closely bound than
relationships where the partners were bored and unstimulated. In other words… the
research provides confirmation that growth in a relationship does indeed serve as
the crux of a close, happy union.

What Growth Is, and Why It’s So Important

So, growth is the key to relationships. The other three pillars – investment,
strength, and security – are important, but they fall apart in the absence of
growth, just like the VAC model falls apart in the absence of forward momentum
during a seduction. There are two sides to the growth coin in a relationship model,
which I’ll term here self-expansion and forward momentum. I’m going to talk about
both; the article referenced focuses mainly on the self-expansion side of things,
and the author is right to focus on it, and I’ll explain why; but first, let’s
define these two sides to growth. Self-expansion is the term for growing and
developing and improving the self. When you go on a self-improvement kick, you’re
practicing self-expansion. When you learn more, you’re self-expanding. When you
have new experiences, that’s self-expansion. Challenges are self-expansion.
Problems you overcome are self-expansion. Forward momentum is the term for a
feeling of progress and advancement in a relationship. The first dessert you share
is forward momentum in a relationship. So is your first kiss. The first time you
get intimate together is forward momentum. Meeting each others’ friends is forward
momentum. Meeting one another’s parents is forward momentum. Getting pregnant is
forward momentum. Moving in together, getting married, having children, all these
are forward momentum. They’re steps that feel like progress is being made in the
relationship. The reason why growth is so vitally, unavoidably crucial to a
relationship is the same reason as why forward momentum is absolutely essential to
a seduction: it’s because if something isn’t making progress, it’s stagnating and
decaying. Your relationship is either getting better, or it’s getting worse;
there’s no such thing as neutral. You must maintain growth to maintain a close and
successful relationship. That study cited at the end of the NYT article – here’s
the exact study, “Marital Boredom Now Predicts Less Satisfaction 9 Years Later”,
published in Psychological Science in 2009 by Irene Tsapelas of Stony Brook
University, Arthur Aron of Oakland University, and Terri Orbuch of the University
of Michigan – that study is probably the most important one mentioned in that
article for this reason: it clearly, demonstrably shows, in very elementary
fashion, that relationships short on growth are also short on satisfaction. To have
a close, bound, fulfilling relationship, growth must be present. But like most
important things in life, most people have no idea what they’re doing when it comes
to seeking growth in a relationship, and they go about it in entirely the wrong
way.

The Downfall of Forward Momentum Over the Long Term

I’m actually very excited by that study cited just above. Its thinking on
relationships is quite good; the abstract highlights the main problem with growth
that I’ve noticed most relationships run into, and that was the big headscratcher
for me when I first started doing my thinking on growth. That was the problem of
what to do when you run out of ways to continue forward momentum. Here’s the
problem I started getting worried about once I started thinking about growth: most
people view growth in relationships the traditional way – via perceived growth.
Which means, if you want to grow your relationship, first you start dating. Then,
you get together physically. Then, you go exclusive. Then you move in together,
then you get married, then you have kids. Or something similar to that order; maybe
one comes before the other, or another comes a little later or a little earlier,
but it generally progresses in that fashion. But then, what do you do when all
those things are done? That’s when most people’s long-term relationships stagnate
and fall into decline. People start getting depressed, bored, and unhappy; some
want out, some rebel, some just sink into a funk. Some bury themselves into their
work and tell themselves this is just the way life is, and you have to just grin
and bear it. Regardless, once a couple runs out of forward momentum, their
relationship quite often stagnates, and the joy it once held for them fades. My
first thought was, “Well, you just slow down the rate of forward momentum, so
there’s always something to look forward to in the future.” You move as slowly
through the steps as you can, to avoid running out of forward aspirations. For
instance, you put off meeting a girl’s friends as long as possible; maybe you don’t
actually meet her friends and she doesn’t meet yours at all until you’ve been
together six or seven or eight months. Maybe you don’t meet each other’s parents
until you’ve been together a few years. Some guys race through the steps of
relationship forward momentum, what’s known as a “whirlwind romance,” and it’s
exciting and exhilarating and absolutely thrilling for both parties. But then, once
they’re married to their girl and the two of them have settled into an apartment
together somewhere and the first baby is on the way… what then? That’s why you hear
so many people reminiscing on when their love was fresh and new. That’s where you
get the phrase, “New love is true love.” Once the novelty fades, and all the
forward progress that could be made has been made, it starts feeling like there’s
nothing left to do but sit around and maintain what’s already been achieved. That’s
why the movies are about two people falling in love, not about two people who’ve
been living together for ten years and have a couple of kids. Because it’s nowhere
near as interesting or exciting; it doesn’t really feel like there’s anything that
couple is still working to attain together.

Self-Expansion to the Rescue

[L]aboratory and shortterm field experiments suggest a causal effect of reducing
boredom (by shared participation in exciting activities) on relationship quality
(e.g., Aron et al., 2000).

Hope, as demonstrated in that quote from the research by Tsalepas et al., is not
something so easily vanquished, and it turns out that forward momentum is only one
side of the growth coin. The other, as we touched on earlier, is self-expansion. I
started realizing self-expansion when I looked for a way to slow forward momentum.
Because you can’t just slow forward momentum and replace it with nothing; there
needs to be a feeling of continual growth in a relationship, or women begin to
rebel. They want progress, and they need it, or they start panicking. It depends on
the girl, of course; some women are less combative and will tolerate longer periods
of stagnation than others. I, however, at the time I was doing all this thinking on
long-term relationships, was dating a girl who was probably one of the most
dynamic, passionate women on planet Earth, and she was never going to tolerate
stagnation for a second, as well she shouldn’t have; she was an incredible woman,
and deserved the best. The instant it felt like growth had paused, she’d start
rebelling hard. The realization I came to though was that even when we weren’t
making forward momentum, when we were traveling together and working on new things
together, all was okay. I moved out to California, and she was flying back and
forth between there and Washington, DC every three weeks to see me and hunt for
jobs, for close to six months. It was a dynamic time where we were working hard on
a project together, to get her out to San Diego and get her a good job that would
advance her career, and we became closer than ever. When she finally found work,
she was overjoyed, and she was thrilled for her first six or seven months in San
Diego. In the meantime though, I made a huge error that would cost me not long
after I started making it: I let things stagnate. She’d had a big victory, and was
riding the satisfaction of that victory, and I fell into the trap of thinking I
could abandon growth and her happiness would just go on and on. Of course, it
doesn’t work that way, and without forward momentum, and without self-expansion,
things soon fell apart. It was an unfortunate lesson, and as I told her, it was a
shame it was one I had to learn with her, rather than with an earlier girlfriend
where I could’ve come to the relationship having already learned the lesson and
knowing to avoid making that mistake, but it was the way it was. I learned the
lesson, though: abandon growth, and your relationship will fail. I also, from the
ashes of that relationship, came to a new realization: self-expansion could
substitute for forward progress. You didn’t have to be continually focused on
making the traditional steps of a traditional relationship; replace that with self-
expansion, and you’d do just as well. Here’s another quote from that paper by
Tsapelas and company:

The experimental and other research (e.g., Graham, 2008) demonstrating this effect
[of relationship quality being enhanced by a reduction in boredom] is based on the
self-expansion model (Aron & Aron, 1986), which indicates that the excitement often
experienced during relationship formation arises from rapid development of
closeness, the rate of which inevitably declines over time. However, if partners
experience excitement from other sources (such as novel and challenging activities)
in a shared context, this shared experience can reignite relationship passion by
associating the excitement with the relationship.
In somewhat simpler terms, the loss of closeness, excitement, and passion in a
relationship that comes with an end to forward momentum can be regained by
replacing forward momentum with joint self-expansion. It’s so nice when the
research dovetails so cleanly with what you’re experiencing anecdotally in the
field.
How to Use Self-Expansion
There are a variety of ways to best use self-expansion to replace forward momentum
and keep a relationship energetic and fresh, or reenergize a fading relationship.
More important than listing a number of ideas for these though, is first painting
the elements of a successful effort at joint self-expansion – because there are a
lot of ways to do it wrong. Elements of Successful Joint Self-Expansion

It must be something she is passionate about. If you move a girl to a new city or
country she hates, or try to get her involved in developing a hobby or business
idea she has no interest in, it’s going to fail as an effort at self-expansion. If
on the other hand she loves the ocean and you convince her to get PADI certified
with you and start scuba diving, you’ve just found an outstanding self-expansion
project that will sustain you heavily for the next year or so, and will play a
smaller role in helping you maintain growth after the initial learning phase as you
continue going on scuba adventures from time to time. If you move to a new city
she’s excited about, that’s a great self-expansion project that will likely sustain
her for a year or so. If you launch a new business selling something she enjoys
being involved in, and have her actively managing and growing a part of the
business as you work on it with her jointly, that’s a self-expansion project that
will have an initial excitement phase of a year or so and provide some smaller
long-term benefits like scuba.
You must be embarking on at least one new major adventure together per year. If you
noticed in that last bullet, I was giving timelines for how long each self-
expansion project provides a boon to your relationship, and it’s generally around a
year or so. Smaller projects won’t last as long; occasionally you might find a
project that lasts a little longer. Typically though, just like in relationships,
there is a 2 year drop after which what formerly was stimulating and exciting
becomes old news. This is because of the loss of novelty – the longer someone has
done something, the less she learns from it, the less stimulating and exciting it
seems, and the less she feels like it is causing her to grow.
You must do this thing together. Another trap you may be tempted to fall into is
setting a girl up on a new project or endeavor, and leaving her to it. For
instance, she’s interested in acting; so you help her find acting lessons, wish her
good luck, then drop her off at the acting studio and drive off to grab a beer with
your pals. Nope, this doesn’t cut it as joint self-expansion. Whatever it is you’re
doing, it must be done together. She must associate the learning and growth with
you, which means you must play a major role in the new experiences she has. Whether
that’s as her mentor, as her student, or as her partner, it doesn’t matter; but
whatever it is, she must be learning, and she must be learning with you.
Summed up, successful self-expansion type growth is all about stimulating your girl
– and yourself – with a novel situation where she is being forced to adapt, change,
and grow, and doing it together with her jointly. Believe it or not, that’s the
key, I’m coming to think more and more, to general happiness in life, period:

Feeling like you are making steady progress and learning in the things that matter
to you.
Find something that matters to the both of you, and start making progress in it
together in a way that you are both learning and being stimulated, and you’ll
suddenly find you’re both engaged, energized, and stimulated – and quite happy
together. Finding new avenues for major self-expansion on an annual basis might
sound like a tall order, but it’s really not. Once you get into the cycle of
seeking to improve yourself, and she gets into the cycle of seeking to improve
herself, and the two of you are improving together and creating synergies in your
partnership and teaching other and advancing each other, you’ll start getting ideas
for things to do together popping up all the time. I recommend having a place you
write these down that you can come back to so you don’t lose or forget old ideas.
Maybe a Google Documents file that you’ve shared with her and the two of you can
edit and update with ideas and plans for things you want to do together, or maybe
just a notebook you keep on your own of ideas you’ve had spring to mind or things
she’s said that it sounds like she wants to do. One big new project a year is for
sure doable. Just, again, make sure it’s something she wants to do and feels
inspired about; I’m getting a picture in my head of some guy reading this article,
then dragging his poor girlfriend or wife off on some mission she doesn’t want any
part of. Find something you both can be inspired about. You should never have to
push a girl to be involved; if she’s tired or doesn’t want to do it, trying to
compel her to do so is not the answer. Let her relax, and come back to it when she
wants to. Only pull her in if you feel she’s really gotten lazy and think she will
get excited about it again when you get her doing it. Here are a couple of thoughts
off the top of my head for some joint self-expansion projects: Big Projects (for
long-term self-expansion)

Starting a business together

Learning a new language together
Moving to a new city or country together
Learning a new skill together, like dancing or scuba diving
Launching an exercise program together
Taking up and learning a new art together, like painting, photography, or playing
an instrument
Small Projects (for intermittent boosts of fun and excitement that add mini
relationship milestones and cut routine / monotony / boredom)

Outdoors activities like hiking, running, or jet-skiing together

Travel to new and interesting places (find out specifically what she’s interested
in about travel, too – buildings, new cultures, people, new foods, activities,
etc., so you know what to make sure to include on your travels)
Independent learning (e.g., you both are interested in a particular topic, and have
engaging conversations sharing what you’ve learned recently or new ideas or
conclusions you’ve come to)
Making a short film together, about your travels, an activity you’re doing
together, your sexual escapades, or whatever you like
Adventurous sex, like new positions, adding toys, or getting into public /
exhibitionist sex or sex in memorable places like the beach or a forest or the
backseat of your car
~~~~~~~~~~ You spend time in the world of seduction, you hear a lot of doom and
gloom on relationships. Because, generally, guys good at picking up girls are often
not all that much more talented at retaining them then other guys are – heck,
sometimes the reason they get so good at getting girls is because they struggle to
hold onto them in the first place. Compound that with what you see in your
seduction career as you become more and more prolific – you take girls as lovers
who have loyal and devoted boyfriends and husbands who are completely clueless as
to their liaisons with you; you see relationships failing all around you despite
people’s best efforts; you see the anger and hostility people bare toward each
other when relationships fail as they lie and stab each other in the back and
betray each other. Relationships can be one of the most wonderful things in life,
but they can also be one of the ugliest, most blood-chilling things too. But they
aren’t destined to fail, if they are maintained properly. Everyone talks about how
it’s both partners’ responsibility to make a relationship work long-term. It isn’t
though. It’s the man’s, and his alone. Almost every relationship I’ve seen fail
that I have, it’s because the man stopped trying, and the woman lost faith. You
stop trying, your relationship fails. You cannot stop growing the relationship; you
cannot get complacent. You need to let your woman know what she needs to do and
what she needs to be (in a very tactful way) in order to maintain her interest, and
you need to stay on top of the ball in maintaining hers. The other three pillars of
a relationship are vital as well, of course, and without any one of them, the house
a relationship is built upon will fall. But growth is the central key that binds it
all together; you must have growth to make your relationship work over the long
haul. And because there is only a finite amount of forward momentum to be had, the
growth you inevitably must turn to is joint self-expansion. The good news is, the
more joint self-expansion you do, just like anything, the better at it you get –
the easier you come up with new, compelling ideas for things you and your girl can
do together; the better a job you do selling those ideas and inspiring a girl and
getting her onboard; and the better a job you do sustaining the growth and
excitement they provide, and the discipline to keep the two of you on-track. Growth
is the keystone of a long-term relationship, and joint self-expansion is the cement
that keystone is made from. Don’t ignore it, and get working on it today, or the
next time you find yourself in a relationship. You’ll be glad you did, and your gal
will be too. Always, Chase Amante

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Chase Amante
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Chase woke up one day in 2004 tired of being alone. So, he set to work and read
every book he could find, studied every teacher he could meet, and talked to every
girl he could talk to to figure out dating. After four years, scads of lays, and
many great girlfriends (plus plenty of failures along the way), he launched this
website. He will teach you everything he knows about girls in one single program in
his One Date System.

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