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The Science of Friends Disliking Your Partner: What Network Approval Really Predicts

The idea that outside disapproval makes love stronger — the 'Romeo and Juliet effect' — comes from a single 1972 study of married and unmarried couples, and it has not held up. Decades of research on social networks and relationships tell a more complicated story: friends' and family's opinions are one of the more reliable predictors of whether a relationship lasts, disapproval tends to predict lower love, trust, and commitment rather than a rebellious boost, and the way people appraise a partner — including friends' appraisals — shifts over time rather than landing as a fixed, final verdict. Here's what the science actually shows about your friends disliking your partner.

140married and unmarried couples surveyed in the 1972 study that introduced the 'Romeo and Juliet effect' — the origin of the popular idea that outside disapproval fuels love 42 yearspassed between the original 1972 'Romeo and Juliet effect' claim and Sinclair, Hood and Wright's 2014 large-scale attempt to replicate it directly 29%of breakups in Felmlee's study involved a 'fatal attraction' — a quality that first drew someone to a partner later becoming a source of dissatisfaction 0instances of the predicted 'boomerang' intensification of love were found when Sinclair, Hood and Wright directly re-ran the 1972 analysis on a modern sample in 2014

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