Myrna Đurić

Hi, thank you so much for having me.

Yeah, totally.

This was indeed the starting point of the project.

It's also reflected in the scientific literature as well that we tend to kind of study really these strong emotional experiences in relationships.

So, you know, we tend to think about, okay, what happens when people have positive feelings towards their partners?

What happens when they have negative feelings towards their partners?

Maybe they have simultaneously positive and negative feelings.

But what has really been under-researched is indeed what if you don't have any kind of strong emotional experiences at all, which is indeed indifferent.

So the way that I would say it kind of looks in relationships is indeed not having a strong emotional reaction to your partner either way.

So neither a positive one or a negative one.

Feeling kind of emotionally numb towards your partner is like another word I would use or indeed just kind of feeling neutral basically towards this person.

Kind of they don't really make you feel that much.

Yeah, I mean, honestly, kind of how it looks in the day to day is really something that we need to study more.

And, you know, the studies that we've done so far has really only scratched the surface.

So the way we've studied it up to now has been more kind of in terms of longer term relationship processes.

So when, you know, people kind of feel it in their relationship over kind of longer periods of time, basically, and report on it.

But

What it looks like in a day to day kind of interaction is something that I'm honestly also fascinated by and something that we really need to do more research to to kind of understand.

What's possible is that, you know, some people are maybe even on a day to day, not really showing or kind of engaging in positive or negative behaviors towards their partner.

They're just kind of withdrawn and distant.