In the 22nd installment of Sage's Relationship Matters podcast, hosted by Dr. Bjarne Holmes of Champlain College, Dr. Casey Totenhagen (University of Arizona) dicusses recent research on how
the small daily sacrifices we make (e.g., doing the dishes, picking up a partner from work) influence how happy and committed we are in our relationships.
We've evolved to respond more vigorously to threats that are immediate and easy to picture mentally, rather than those that are distant and abstract; we're more sensitive to intentional threats from specific humans, rather than unintentional ones resulting from collective action; we're terrible at making
small sacrifices in the present to avoid vast ones in future; our attention is seized by phenomena that change
daily, rather than those that ratchet up gradually over years.