Growing Into Your Partner: The Psychology of Long-Term Love
Sunday, August 24, 2025.
What Does Research Say About Growing Into Your Partner?
Romantic comedies sell us the myth of instant compatibility: find “the one,” cue fireworks, cue happily ever after.
But real couples will tell you something else. They’ll say, “We weren’t perfect at first. We learned each other. We grew together.”
So what does research actually say about growing into your partner? That’s not just a sentimental notion. It’s one of the core ways long-term love works.
In the 1990s, psychologists Sandra Murray and John Holmes discovered that happy couples don’t view each other with cold-eyed objectivity.
They see each other better than reality. These “positive illusions” turn flaws into tolerable quirks:
Stubborn becomes “persistent.”
Quiet becomes “thoughtful.”
Messy becomes “creative.”
This isn’t denial—it’s generosity.
And couples who practice it report greater satisfaction and commitment (Murray, Holmes, & Griffin, 1997). Long-term love depends, in part, on the ability to soften your gaze.
Ideals Aren’t Fixed—They Bend
Many people carry a checklist of traits they think they need in a partner. But experiments show those lists are far more pliable than we admit. In a 2025 study, Aline da Silva Frost and Paul Eastwick trained people to value a trait—youthfulness. Afterward, participants not only preferred that trait in strangers; they suddenly saw more of it in their current partners.
Attraction, in other words, isn’t set in stone. Our ideals flex to fit the people we choose. We don’t just find someone who matches our type—we bend our type to fit the person across the table.
Changing Priorities Over the Years
A 2023 study by Driebe and colleagues followed people’s partner preferences across thirteen years. Some values endured: warmth and trustworthiness remained constant. Others shifted: attractiveness and adventure declined in importance, while stability and resources gained ground, especially once children entered the picture.
What matters in your twenties isn’t what matters in your forties. Couples grow into each other in part because we grow into ourselves.
The Michelangelo Effect: Love as Sculpture
The Michelangelo phenomenon (Drigotas et al., 1999) offers a powerful metaphor. Think of your partner as marble. Done poorly, chiseling leaves scars. Done well, it reveals the best version of them.
Supportive partners affirm each other’s aspirations. They help draw out hidden strengths, encouraging one another to move closer to their “ideal selves.” Over time, couples literally shape each other’s growth. The research shows this sculpting predicts higher self-esteem, deeper intimacy, and stronger bonds.
Of course, chisels can be misused. Partners who criticize or control can chip away at confidence instead of character. Growing into each other requires encouragement, not coercion.
Expansion of Self: From “Me” to “We”
Arthur and Elaine Aron’s self-expansion model describes another part of this story. Falling in love often means expanding your sense of self to include your partner—their hobbies, their friends, even their quirks. In healthy relationships, this expansion feels like growth: two people become a shared system, each enriched by the other’s world.
This expansion helps explain why couples often say, “I wouldn’t be who I am without them.” In a very real way, they’re right.
How It All Fits Together
These concepts—positive illusions, shifting ideals, the Michelangelo effect, self-expansion—are not isolated. They describe the same process from different angles:
Positive Illusions: we see each other generously.
Shifting Ideals: we adapt what we value.
Michelangelo Effect: we help sculpt each other’s growth.
Self-Expansion: we merge our identities over time.
Together they show why “growing into your partner” isn’t a consolation prize—it’s the quiet mechanism that makes long-term love possible.
Final Thoughts
What does research say about growing into your partner? That it’s not only real, it’s the rule. Couples stay together not because they find someone flawless, but because they cultivate a way of seeing, supporting, and expanding each other.
Love, then, isn’t a finished product. It’s a workshop. And if you’re lucky, the person you married keeps revealing new shapes in the marble—shapes you help each other uncover, year after year.
Be Well, Stay Kind, and Godspeed.
REFERENCES:
Aron, A., & Aron, E. N. (1986). Love and the expansion of self: Understanding attraction and satisfaction.Hemisphere Publishing.
da Silva Frost, A., & Eastwick, P. W. (2025). Experimental tests of the role of ideal partner preferences in relationships. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin. https://doi.org/10.1177/01461672251339575
Driebe, J. C., et al. (2023). Stability and change of individual differences in ideal partner preferences over 13 years. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. https://doi.org/10.1037/pspp0000457
Drigotas, S. M., Rusbult, C. E., Wieselquist, J., & Whitton, S. W. (1999). The Michelangelo phenomenon: Partner affirmation and self-movement toward one’s ideal self. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 77(2), 293–323. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.77.2.293
Murray, S. L., Holmes, J. G., & Griffin, D. W. (1997). The benefits of positive illusions: Idealization and the construction of satisfaction in close relationships. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 23(6), 586–604. https://doi.org/10.1177/0146167297236003