The Peculiar Merging of Couples’ Personalities
Psychologists occasionally talk about the “Michelangelo phenomenon”: Over time, romantic partners start to slowly change each other, like sculptors chipping away at blocks of marble. Could I help you find a therapist? one might ask their beloved. What if we started jogging together? Hmm, wearing the fedora again? Eventually—the hope goes—they’ll have chiseled a masterpiece of a companion. The result isn’t always a perfect David, but the point is that relationships mold people. And some researchers have found that when that happens, the art tends to look conspicuously like the artist. They call this convergence—when partners grow more and more alike. Research suggests that couples can begin to resemble each other in personality, well-being, emotional responses, and health. One study followed couples, who had been together for an average of nearly four decades, over the course of eight years; partners matched each other’s baselines in traits such as openness, agreeableness, and neuroticism, and their fluctuations in those traits were synchronized too. Other studies have found that couples start sharing smell and taste preferences, hormone levels, …
