Want to spice up your relationship? Or maybe even start a new one off on the right foot. Go on an exercise date. Exercise has a lot of health benefits and it can also result in better connection and attraction among people, and therefore a better relationship.
Exercise Makes You More Attractive
When you think of exercise and attractiveness, your mind might wander to physical attractiveness. And who could blame you with mainstream and social media pushing images of perfectly sculpted bodies. But physical looks are only skin deep (literally). True attraction comes from inside, and exercise can help there too.
Exercise improves your confidence and self-image. One’s confidence, or self-efficacy (belief in your own abilities), tends to be tied to how much exercise you do. When it comes to self-esteem and body image (one’s satisfaction with your own body), these too are greater in people who exercise, and the more frequently you exercise, the greater the self-esteem.
Exercise also improves your mood. As little as 10 minutes of activity can make you feel instantly better. And that feeling of happiness can extend into the next day. It also doesn’t matter what type of activity you do. Team sports, cycling, walking, running or aerobics, all provide benefits, even active household chores. Exercise can also lower the number of emotionally down days you have. And when you’re happy, you smile more. Smiling, being happy and having more self-confidence are all traits people find attractive.
Couples Who Exercise Together, Stay Together
People who exercise report higher satisfaction in their relationships. And this is stronger for people who exercise with their partners. Compared to non-exercisers, married people who exercise reported more positive marital events and less negative ones.
Some of this attraction may be the result of spending time together and sharing an enjoyable experience. However, couples who completed novel and active activities together reported increased relationship quality compared to completion of a boring task, suggesting it’s not just the time together that matters. This is consistent with findings that exercising with another person leads to increased fun compared to exercising alone.
But you don’t need to know the person for exercise to have this effect. Exercising with a stranger can result in attraction to one another. This was tested in an experiment of cross-sex partners randomly assigned to either perform a physical task of low or high intensity. Those participants who performed the more physical task reported greater romantic attraction for their partners.
The attraction is greater if the activity is synchronous such as dancing or walking together. In lab experiments, people who mimicked the movements of their partner felt stronger emotional connection and greater bonding to one another. A later study found the addition of physical exertion amplified these feelings. Compared to a group of people walking randomly, people marching synchronously felt more connection and cooperation with one another. And marching at a faster pace, increased those feelings of connection even more.
It’s All About the Hormones
When you exercise, your body releases hormones such as endocannabinoids and endorphins. Endocannabinoids work on the reward areas of the brain, the same system affected by marijuana, and improve mood, while endorphins are your body’s natural opioids; the feel-good hormones that block out pain. As a result of these hormones, people feel happier after exercise. Even after a single session.
Adrenaline is also released with exercise. It raises your heart rate, breathing and increases your blood pressure. These are all similar responses to being sexually aroused. A classic study that purposely created situations to increase adrenaline release a relationship with sexual arousal. This is termed misattribution of arousal, in which excitement of any sort can be misinterpreted as sexual arousal by the body. Indeed, following a 15 minute exercise session, adults reported greater attraction to pictures of the opposite sex compared to the adults who didn’t exercise. And this attraction increased with greater exercise intensity.
If you like this post, don’t forget to subscribe to my blog at the bottom of the page.
Enjoy listening to podcasts? Check out my show How to Health. A podcast about you and your health.
Leave a Reply