No Set Point Yet

Psychological researchers have described what they call “the hedonic treadmill” theory.  According this theory we each have a certain emotional range within which we live and function.  Negative and positive life events may jerk us out of that range temporarily.  Soon, however, we return to our own “normal” and get on with life as we know it.

In one study, for example, winners of big lottery jackpots quickly returned from the euphoria of newfound wealth to whatever their previous emotional norms were.  Spinal cord injury victims seemed also to come back from debilitating depression into a close approximation of their former emotional range and to do so relatively quickly.

The experience of widowhood seems to provide some data that challenge these generalizations.  Widows and widowers seem to establish their new normal at a somewhat lower level of subjective well-being than they experienced when married.

On average, the before and after difference isn’t all that large.  But then, on average we’re all pretty, well, average.  “People who had strong reactions to marriage or widowhood did not adapt back to their former baseline,” write the authors of one influential study.  “Instead, these people appeared to establish a new baseline following the event.”

(See the article at http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=4&ved=0CGMQFjAD&url=http%3A%2F%2Fciteseerx.ist.psu.edu%2Fviewdoc%2Fdownload%3Fdoi%3D10.1.1.119.9139%26rep%3Drep1%26type%3Dpdf&ei=OeK3T6OHKKX_sQKf8oSLDA&usg=AFQjCNHUgQEQU0k63RDOvPbr8tVomRwQNA)

In terms of experience, I had a startling initial reaction.  Everyone in Anne’s life had experience a terrible and deeply significant loss.  I would never wish to say that somehow my loss or grief were “worse” than that of her mother, brother, our sons, or other family and friends.  I know that simply isn’t true.  The difference I experienced was that everyone else seemed to be able to go back to their lives pretty much as those lives were before Anne died.  I didn’t have that option.  That was certainly true in emotional terms.

Researchers note that the ways in which one is married have a big impact on the reactions experienced in widowhood.  I’ve never been great at having a rich and well-developed network of friends and acquaintances.  I’m not that good at having a number of friends, and for the most part I don’t experience that as a lack in my life.  I’m not sure I’m very good at being wired in very tightly even to family members.  Instead, I put all my relationship eggs in one basket.

In Anne I found my best, closest and in many ways, only friend.  Others came and went in my life.  She was truly the one relational constant in my adult life.  The authors of the study above note that “the person who is very satisfied with his or her life because his or her marriage is wonderful has more to lose if his or her spouse dies.”  I can provide personal data on that one.

I experienced a total collapse of my interpersonal reality because of the high quality and narrow focus of my marriage relationship.  People around me (including my current spouse) observed that widowers of happy marriages tend not to stay single for long.  Perhaps this is the folk wisdom version of what cognitive psychologists call “hedonic leveling.”  Spousal death in a  miserable marriage is experienced as a less tragic loss than is a death in the midst of a happy marriage.

Had I stayed widowed and single, I would likely have survived and adapted.  That adaptation would have been a somewhat less happy life.  Consciously or not, I was unwilling to settle for such a condition if I could help it.  I am fortunate to have found a new relationship, friendship and marriage as deeply satisfying and nurturing as my first marriage.

I am not suggesting, however, that the set point theory above is somehow inaccurate in my case.  As happy as I am in my new life, I do know that my daily affect and normal range are in a different place for me.  I spend more energy and intention on being happy, content, grateful and positive.  Some of that effort is the result of greater awareness that I can indeed choose those emotional states.  Some of that effort, however, is necessary to counterbalance the small “downward pressure” I often feel in my emotional core.

Whether that set point will return to a previously higher level in the years to come, only time will tell.  The researchers predict that it will at some point.