4 Reasons Relationships Get Hard Even After You Find Someone

Four Ambushes That Arrive Once a Relationship Settles

Psychological changes after meeting your ideal type
Even when you get a partner, four problems show up. When you fall in love with your ideal type, you first gain stability and intimacy. But then these four will ambush you.

Returning to Your Emotional Set Point: Hedonic Homeostasis

Happiness levels that drift back over time
This is the idea that, over time, your happiness returns to its original baseline. Even the hottest love eventually settles back into your everyday emotional state.

The Brain Gets Numb: Hedonic Adaptation

Familiarity steals the thrill
Hedonic adaptation is the theory that over time the brain adjusts and the excitement fades. The early butterflies disappear, and your partner's presence starts to feel like a given.

Every Gain Has a Cost: Trade-Offs

Personal freedom as the price of love
A trade-off is the economic idea that when you gain something, you lose something. For example, earn lots of money and you lose time; get cosmetic surgery and you lose money; gain love and you lose freedom.

Seeing the Bad More Than the Good: Negativity Bias

The instinct to focus on flaws over strengths
Negativity bias is the psychological tendency to feel bad things more strongly than good things. One thing that hurt your feelings ends up dominating your mind more than nine kind things.

Relationship Crises and the Privileges of Being Single

The start of conflict and the value of unlimited choice
In the end, because of these four, the romance fades and only the friction remains. People cheat or fight. So there's no need to envy couples too much. You've got unlimited choice over the menu, the movie and the travel destination, right? Well, you've got to comfort yourself somehow.