A Simple Way to Restore Some Missing Romance

When you’re mired in challenging times with your partner, you may question why you ever got involved with this person. Maybe it’s been a tough couple of weeks and both of you are struggling not only with your own personal stresses, but also occasional bouts of bickering. Although you know you love your partner, right now it seems as though your feelings are anything but loving.

As you rummage through the reasons you even are a couple, maybe your mind drifts back to past earlier days when romance was running high and conflict wasn’t even a remote possibility. If only you could return to that blissful state, maybe things wouldn’t be so bad right now, even with all the outside stresses you’re facing. New research suggests that this might not be such a bad idea.

Romantic Nostalgia and Relationship Satisfaction

As noted in a study by Texas Christian University’s Julie Swets and colleagues (2023), nostalgia is a state of mind that may be underrated as far as its potential to mitigate against relationship conflict. Defining nostalgia as a “social emotion,” it is experienced by the “nostaligizer” as a “sentimental longing for the past.” One of its key benefits, based on prior research, is its ability to counteract a negative state of mind, including such myriad inner torments as loneliness, fear of death, and boredom.

To offset conflict, the specific version of nostalgia involving relationship reminiscing may take the form of what the authors describe as “relational savoring.” Reminiscence can be a “bittersweet” experience, as when disturbing memories surface with the good ones. But in the state of savoring, you only “intensely focus on and/or prolong positive emotions.”

Although prior research provides some support for the value of relational savoring, the TCU authors note that these studies were conducted on friends, and/or did not consider the value of reminiscing as a way to counteract conflict. The purpose of their two-part investigation was to understand whether adding conflict to the equation could strengthen support for romantic nostalgia.

Testing Nostalgia’s Role in Offsetting Conflict

Starting with a correlational study, the authors first tested whether people high in relationship conflict but also high in nostalgia among their online sample of 137 participants (with an average age of 37) would report greater relationship commitment. As predicted, relationship nostalgia showed a significant effect in augmenting satisfaction among high-conflict participants.

Because the study was correlational, however, it could not demonstrate causal effects. Another limitation was that the authors didn’t distinguish between personal and relational nostalgia. This led the authors to their second experimental test.

In Study 2, 769 online respondents rated their feelings of relationship commitment and satisfaction after being placed into one of three nostalgia manipulations. The analysis permitted Swets et al. to compare the impact of the nostalgia manipulation on these outcomes, taking self-reported relationship conflict into account. To measure conflict, the authors used a standard instrument with questions such as “My partner and I have a lot of disagreements.”

You can try out the romantic nostalgia induction by reading the following prompt:

Please think of a past event that has meaning for your relationship with your romantic partner. This should be an event that you shared with your partner and that you think about in a nostalgic way. Specifically, please try to think of an important part of your relationship’s past (e.g., event or episode) that makes you feel most nostalgic

How nostalgic did this make you feel? Participants in the TCU study reported that yes, this simple exercise was enough to make them feel nostalgic toward their partner.

The findings did not turn out to be quite as strong as the authors had predicted, although the results trended in the same direction as the original correlational study. Putting the two studies together, the authors believe that it was commitment more than satisfaction that appeared sensitive to “sentimental longing for a relationship’s past."

Nostalgia Essential Reads

The Rise of Analogue Nostalgia

Looking Back and Forward: Early Recollections and Nostalgia

Turning a Thought Experiment Into Reality

The strong theoretical basis for this study is important to take into account when looking at these marginally significant, though suggestive, findings. Swets et al draw from research and theorizing not only on nostalgia, but on commitment, an important concept in romantic relationship research. You might not always be “satisfied,” in other words, but you can still feel that you want to stick with your partner (e.g. “I want our relationship to last for a very long time”).

This research can be considered an initial foray into a potentially important and rich area that could have benefits for couples that are in trouble, or even those couples going through a glitch in their usually smooth-running interactions. As the authors suggest, “Simply reflecting on a shared sentimental memory during an ordinary day could potentially offset conflict."

You could think of this nostalgia induction as offering a similar, simple, exercise that would take little effort if you inserted it into your thought processes as an ordinary day, or maybe a bad one, unfolds. Much like the mindfulness notification you might get if your smartwatch pings you, this could also serve the function of redirecting your thoughts from the stressful direction in which they’re heading onto ones that could serve as a buffer.

Another important takeaway from this study was its focus not only on satisfaction but commitment. Satisfaction is a fleeting state, but commitment is what gets you through over the long haul. As Swets and her colleagues note, there is less of a focus on this outcome than on satisfaction in prior relationship intervention research.

To sum up, seeing your relationship over the long haul, both past and present, may be one practical tool to add to your romantic arsenal. Take a moment, either alone or with your partner, to remember and cherish those moments of togetherness.