Resistance Is Futile: Teaching About Merging Selves In Close Relationships
Aimed at integrating cutting-edge psychological science into the classroom, columns about teaching Current Directions in Psychological Science offer advice and how-to guidance about teaching a particular area of research or topic in psychological science that has been the focus of an article in the APS journal Current Directions in Psychological Science.
Do you complete your partner’s sentences? Maybe you’ve recalled memories of a great trip you took with them only to later realize they were not on that trip with you at all—rather, you inserted them into it. Both sentence completion and memory fabrication indicate you might be merging with your partner.
The psychological merging of one person into another has been fodder for science fiction for decades. In Star Trek, a race of humanoids called the Borg travel the galaxy merging other species into their own collective consciousness, a process that is futile to resist. Resisting the same merging in our own close relationships may be similarly futile. Emery et al. (2025) provide a new review of how people integrate aspects of each other in close relationships and even create new, unique selves. They pose three questions about close relationships: “Do we merge with the other person? Do we try to make ourselves more distinct from each other? Do we create an emergent relationship self?” The answer is yes—relationship partners seem to do all of these things. Sitting squarely in the field of relationship science, the authors integrate for the first time, work on selves, goals, processing and reality (see Table 1 in Emery et al., 2025).
Emery et al. (2025) build on early work on self-expansion, the integration of aspects of a partner into one’s own self-concept (Aron et al., 1992). The authors highlight potential consequences of merging, such as:
- partners supporting and taking on each other’s goals,
- processing the world together—such as sharing food, which increases the intensity of evaluations of the meal,
- merging realities and liking the same songs or disliking the same activities.
The mechanisms fostering merging include mutual self-disclosure and repeated interactions. Such merging can have positive or negative consequences.
On the upside, merged relationships in which partners share goals and cognitive processing tend to be closer and more satisfying. Couples may blend in some domains before others, first merging realities, say, before merging goals. Sharing realities makes shared goals more likely to be accomplished. On the downside, merging can be problematic. If two people are merged and then break up, the psychological damage will be greater than if the two people were not well merged. Of note, merging can also take place in different ways, either increasing the similarity between each person in the couple, increasing differentiation between the two people in a couple, or creating a new emergent relationship self, an area most in need of additional research.
This new focus on merging spearheaded by Emery et al. (2025) provides a palatable way to increase engagement in psychological science. The student activities are designed to help students actively engage with the material and provide a way for them to apply the concepts to their own relationships.
- Have students explore their own relationship merging. Make copies of Aron et al.’s (1992) measure of Inclusion of the Other in the Self (https://sparqtools.org/mobility-measure/inclusion-of-other-in-the-self-ios-scale/). Students get seven pairs of overlapping circles, each showing different degrees of overlap. One circle represents the student, the other represents their relationship partner (or sibling, or parent). They pick the pair of circles that best represents the level of overlap between them and the relationship partner. Once they select a circle, ask students to consider the extent to which they experience merging of selves, goals, processing, and reality, as unpacked by Emery et al. (2025). Completing this measure for different relationships will allow you to discuss how merging can vary across relationships.
- For an activity to get students out of their seats and engaged in the material, use the Pairing Game (Ellis & Kelley, 1999); for full instructions see Lewis & Gurung, 2003). Use two suits of playing cards (e.g., 2 to King in red and black), randomly hand each card to students who then place them face out on their heads without looking at them and then try to find partners. They try to get the higher card to pair with them only saying “Will you be my partner?” and agreeing or disagreeing. You will see most students pair up with a partner with a card of very similar value. The activity can be as short as 15 minutes or extended to an entire class period to discuss various themes related to close relationships. This exercise allows you to illustrate the similarity hypothesis and also many different relationship processes, such as settling for someone different from ourselves and staying with a partner for the long term. The active nature of the game always gets students talking and will allow you to then unpack more of the material on what happens in relationships and why the phenomenon around merging can take place.
- Pick one of the many romantic movies available (e.g., Love Actually, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, The Notebook). Shows clips and a synopsis, exploring how the couples show many of the features of merging discussed in Emery and colleagues’ article.
Feedback on this article? Email [email protected] or login to comment.
Additional References
Aron, A., Aron, E. N., & Smollan, D. (1992). Inclusion of Other in the Self Scale and the structure of interpersonal closeness. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 63(4), 596–612.
Ellis B. J., & Kelley H. H. (1999). The pairing game: A classroom demonstration of the matching phenomenon. Teaching of Psychology, 26, 118–121.
Lewis, B. P., & Gurung, R. A. R. (2003). Mixing, matching, and mating: Demonstrating the effect of contrast on relationship satisfaction. Teaching of Psychology, 30(4), 303–306.
APS regularly opens certain online articles for discussion on our website. Effective February 2021, you must be a logged-in APS member to post comments. By posting a comment, you agree to our Community Guidelines and the display of your profile information, including your name and affiliation. Any opinions, findings, conclusions, or recommendations present in article comments are those of the writers and do not necessarily reflect the views of APS or the article’s author. For more information, please see our Community Guidelines.
Please login with your APS account to comment.