I've changed. Are you leaving me now?

Do you remember the Disney favorite movie, Aladdin? Jasmine, the princess was whisked away on a multi-colored carpet by Aladdin with tunes of “A Whole New World” following their trail. Or what about Beauty and the Beast in which Belle dug deep into a Beast’s soul to fall in love, ignoring his imperfections? However, let’s revamp this into our own movie. Let’s say that Jasmine and Aladdin had gotten married. Jasmine birthed multiple children and her flawless appearance started to morph into that of the Beast. Would Aladdin and Jasmine’s marriage be strong enough to endure her physical changes? What if, because of Jasmine’s imperfections, she changed?

According to psychology research at Washington University in St. Louis, MO, a physical appearance serves as the key factor in a person’s personality. In this experiment, individuals were asked to pose as they choose and judges were asked to interpret their personality from their pose. Essentially, the more insecure the pose, the more insecure the person might be. Imagine that insecure person within a relationship...a woman that comes into a relationship with the Barbie-reminiscent measurements that transform to Pillsbury Doughboy traits. This experiment conclusion is indicative that her personality likely transforms as does her shape. The initial attraction prior to establishing a relationship involves the personality! Therefore, this transformed mate could, in essence, become a complete stranger.

Aside from confident individuals that accept themselves as they are, we now have one of two issues. You have a mate that has become unappealing to the eye, thus causing the other party to lack attraction to them. Or, you have a mate that has become unappealing to the eye and created this illusion that they are unattractive to their mate. Both issues present stress on a relationship. It becomes almost detrimental to a relationship to not enhance that flawed self-image through simply correcting the imperfections and tackling the mind… the gate to all the insecurities.