In an episode of How I Met Your Mother, at a friend’s wedding Robin shares her perspective about the components the formation of a romantic relationship requires–chemistry and timing. But as Robin expresses, “timing is a bitch.”
Robin’s assertion raises the question: Is timing everything?
“I am just really focused on my career right now.” “I am working on myself right now.” Do these explanations hold value?
Or are they just excuses we use to rationalize a context we actually don’t care to put the effort in to make work in the long run?
Maybe they just indicate that the person providing them is not relationship ready in the first place.
While you may use others’ opinions, your own personal life experiences, or a sense of intuition as a baseline for whether the timing is right, social psychology terminology may provide a new perspective in regards to this matter.
Timing goes hand in hand with what social psychologists refer to as “the power of the situation.” Studies conducted by psychologists over decades have demonstrated that an individual’s behavior is a function of their personality, but also primarily the situation they are placed in.
For example, how attracted you feel to someone is contingent upon on whether the forces of the world place you near one another (like the same apartment complex or fitness center). This nearness to one another is referred to as the “mere exposure effect.” The concept of the mere exposure effect is that the more time spent near someone, the more you feel comfortable around them. This feeling of familiarity extends to attraction.
While the power of the situation and the mere exposure effect are applicable explanations as to why we feel naturally more connected to someone, we tend to overlook situational factors. Instead, we hone in on personality traits to explain behaviors.
You might assume that others’ behaviors are interwoven into who they are: they can be gregarious or introverted, generous or selfish, charming or unpleasant, but this may be a preconceived way of thinking. We often forget to the factor in the influence of environmental cues at hand.
Picture this context for example: unexpectedly, your long term significant other terminated the relationship and you are struggling to repair the damaged emotional state the impact of the breakup left you in.
After being given a grace period to mope around, your friends who are concerned about the state of your well-being drag you out of your carefully crafted fortress of solitude for a night out.
They promise that it will “be fun and that it will take your mind off things.”
Flash forward a few hours. You are tipsy at best, your friends are intoxicated and stumbling around the bars having a blast.
In contrast, you are miserable and are looking forward to the bars closing so you have an excuse to go home, without your friends protesting for you to stay out.
Just when you think it’s time to chalk the night up to a loss, by chance you cross paths with an amazing and charming individual.
As you chat with this person, you realize you are genuinely enjoying their company but fluctuating environmental factors like physical setting, excitement, alcohol, and social groups can greatly influence this communication exchange: You may just feel excited to be out in a different setting after confining yourself to your apartment for weeks on end. You may feel the effects of your level of tipsiness shifting to a state of intoxication. It may just feel nice to talk to someone who is unaware of your breakup and isn’t looking at you with pitiful eyes.
This hypothetical situation highlights the way environmental cues come into play within conversational contexts.
“People do not behave exactly the same way from the minute they’re born to the minute they die,” says Dr. Dylan Selterman a behavioral psychologist.
He elaborates, “Any particular moment can make us funny, confident, exciting, hesitant, skeptical, introverted, flirtatious, or none of the above. And it’s all temporary—who knows what next week’s situation will bring.”
Moreover, within the previously mentioned hypothetical example about chance encounters, it is quite possible that even if you are enjoying the exchange, your thoughts are likely shift to your lingering feelings for your ex.
This raises the question–can the right person you have been waiting to cross paths with, truly be impressionable if your mind is absorbed by something else at the time of the interaction?
In regards to timing, there are varying levels of exchange according to clinical psychologist Monica O’Neal.
“Certain things can make people less emotionally available or cause them to not have the emotional bandwidth to be available in a relationship. I think the primary things that affect timing are really intense emotional loss says O’Neal.
“So they might be giving a lot and fighting really hard, but it’s still not enough to sustain the type of relationship most people want to be in.”
So while we can invest our time into wishing, hoping, or forcing yourself to make the timing of a romantic connection work; the reality is–if it’s not taking form naturally, let go. It can just be as simple as–it’s not the right situation or the right person for you. When you let go of trying to fix timing that isn’t working, you open yourself to being available for the right person and situation at the right time.
