The ‘Butterfly Effect’ Could Explain Why Your Relationship Is Falling Apart - VICE

You didn’t see it coming. No one ever does. One day you’re fine. Months later, you’re sitting across from each other at dinner with nothing to say, both trying to figure out when things got this bad.

There’s a name for how little moments can add up like that. Meteorologist Edward Lorenz coined the term “butterfly effect” to explain how a small change in one part of a system could eventually have drastic consequences elsewhere. In relationships, it can be the time you didn’t look up from your phone, the good news that you met with a “that’s cool,” or the decision you made without asking. At the time, each one is easy to brush off. Months or years later, those moments can add up to something much bigger.

John Gottman spent a lot of time researching this very thing. During decades of observational research at the University of Washington’s “Love Lab,” Gottman studied what he called bids for connection, the everyday attempts one partner makes to get the other person’s attention or affection.

It could be a comment about the weather, a funny video you wanted to share, or a sigh after a terrible day. Gottman found that couples who stayed together responded positively to those bids 86% of the time. Couples who later divorced did so only 33% of the time. The difference came down, in part, to thousands of small interactions.

Kindness can have the same cumulative effect. A study in the Journal of Social Psychology found that doing acts of kindness for one week increased happiness, with greater increases among people who did more of them.

In a relationship, kindness could be picking up some takeout for dinner so they don’t have to cook, making coffee before the other person asks, or doing something nice on a random Wednesday for no reason at all. Those small things can make being with someone feel easier.

The same thing can happen in the way couples communicate. A weird tone, an unanswered text, or a conversation where somebody leaves feeling dismissed can seem easy to move past. A study in Frontiers in Psychology found that how partners respond to each other’s good news was strongly associated with relationship satisfaction, alongside how they handled conflict.

So the response to “I got the promotion” can matter just as much as the argument about the laundry. Excitement, questions, and genuine interest tell your partner you’re with them. A distracted “awesome” before going back to your phone sends a very different message.

That becomes even more important when the decision affects both people. A study examining decision-making in relationships found that people who reported making thoughtful, deliberate relationship decisions also reported greater commitment and satisfaction, along with fewer instances of outside involvement.

Say your partner takes a job in another city and tells you after the apartment hunt has already started and they’ve checked U-Haul prices. It would be hard not to think that your opinion means nothing to the other person. 

The practical side of all this is almost irritatingly basic. Look up when your partner talks to you. Care when they tell you something good happened. Ask before making decisions that affect both of you. Revolutionary stuff, right up there with drinking water and going to bed at a decent hour.

That’s the butterfly effect in a relationship. Usually there isn’t one giant moment you can point to. There are just a lot of small ones that kept getting brushed off until they weren’t small anymore.