By Frederick Fabella
How does our inherent survival mechanism teach us which environments are safe? It is only through regular exposure to particular places and situations and realizing that these do not cause us any harm...
How does our inherent survival mechanism teach us which environments are safe? It is only through regular exposure to particular places and situations and realizing that these do not cause us any harmful or unpleasant experience, that we develop this feeling of safety.
This also occurs with the people around us. Constant exposure to someone who does not pose a threat or at the very least represents a neutral presence tends to make us feel safe when that person is around. And this is how Mere Exposure Effect operates on us even on an unconscious level.
Being exposed to the same people each day creates in us this sense of safe familiarity. But we can take this further. People will usually fall in love with the person they see regularly, whether it's a neighbor, a classmate or a coworker. And Mere Exposure Effect is the reason. Constantly seeing and interacting with an individual will make us feel safe in that person's presence. This then can easily lead to liking the individual. And it won't take much more before the liking graduates into attraction.
Mere Exposure Effect is the common mechanism through which we fall in love. However, we also need to consider that this also happens to be among the more significant threats to a relationship. Allow me to share the story of a guy who lost his girlfriend this way.
They became a couple back in college. Now this is the predictable result since as classmates, they shared the same school environment, the same school work and the same school challenges. Mere Exposure Effect led them to become a couple. But when they graduated, they of course found work separately. And eventually, the girlfriend was exposed to other guys. And because this one guy in work was always around her, one thing led to another and she eventually fell in love with her coworker with whom she shared the same office environment, the same office work and the same office challenges.
Therefore, a significant threat to an individual's relationship are the people with whom his or her partner sees and talks to on a daily basis. Those of us whose relationships ended because of the constant attention given to our former partner by someone else know all too well this painful truth. One way to counteract this potential threat is through consistent romantic maintenance. Some guys would fetch their partners from work daily or be in constant communication with each other through their phones. It takes a lot of hard work. But if the relationship is worth keeping, then this kind of maintenance should not be a problem. In this instance, "more" exposure beats Mere Exposure. Prevention is always better than what would be an otherwise futile cure when it is already too late.
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