Exploring mindset connections in love and relationships

Okay, I am continuing with Carol Dweck's book, Mindset, and I am surprised to find a relationship chapter. I shouldn't be too surprised, of course, because if you really think about the implications of a growth and a fixed mindset, of course it would apply to everything, including relationships. Now, I've only read a small part of this chapter, so I don't know where she's going to go with this, but there's one part at the beginning of the chapter that sparked something for me, and if I'm lucky, maybe she'll cover it later in the chapter.

She's talking about interviews that they did with people about relationships, and one person, one woman, is telling a story of when she moved to New York, and she met this guy, and they knew right away that they wanted to be together. Now, the whole point of this is, where she goes with it, I should say, is how people deal with the breakup, because this story with this person ends up with them being left, left a note, basically, like a Dear John letter.

The growth mindset people understand that there's something to learn from each situation. They wish the best for the other person, and they wish the best for themselves, whereas the fixed mindset people see it as a judgment of who they are. They often get defensive, and some even fantasize about revenge. But what I found interesting, that she hasn't talked about, and like I said, I hope maybe she does, is I got stuck on the part about the two of them seeing each other and knowing that they were going to be together forever, which obviously didn't end up being true.

I started to wonder if there's a correlation between the belief in a fixed mindset and the belief in love at first sight. More specifically, a correlation between the belief of talent in the fixed mindset and the belief in love at first sight, because both, sorry, love at first sight, not true love, both seek to define something from the initial input, I guess.

In the business sense, you hire people who think, this person is talented, and this is like who they are, and this is who they will always be. In the same way, you can see that in the idea of love at first sight. Oh, we are meant to be together, therefore, and dot, dot, dot, after therefore, because you judge everything through the lens of that destiny.

I think perhaps that belief is just as destructive as the fixed mindset belief in talent, because if you're destined to be together, then you don't focus on growing the relationship, on developing it, on learning skills. You need to make it better in the same way that you don't develop your business skills or your talent in the arts or any other area. So, I just thought that was interesting.

So, like I said twice already, I'm hoping that she covers that, because I do see a huge mirroring between those two things.