We have just talked about how to maintain deep connections in a world that pushes towards the surface. But beneath this superficial world, something even more subtle is at work: a set of social forces that shape our behaviour day by day, often without our awareness. Understanding them is not an academic exercise. It is one of the most practical forms of self-knowledge you can develop.

People generally consider themselves autonomous agents. We make decisions, hold opinions, behave from a personal centre. Partly, that is true. But social psychology has demonstrated, repeatedly and convincingly, that a significant proportion of our behaviour is shaped by the social context we find ourselves in, by the people around us, by group norms, by perceived expectations and by mechanisms of influence we don't notice precisely because they operate below the level of conscious awareness.

Conformity: more powerful than we think

Solomon Asch conducted a simple and disturbing experiment in the 1950s. Participants were shown lines of different lengths and asked to identify which one matched a reference line. The correct answer was obvious. But when the other participants in the room, who were trained actors, deliberately gave wrong answers, approximately 75% of the real participants followed the incorrect answer at least once. Not out of foolishness, not out of impaired perception. Out of the social pressure of disagreement.

What Asch's experiment shows is not that people are weak or easily manipulated. It shows that the human brain is built for social belonging. Disagreeing with the group activates the same areas of the brain as physical pain. Conformity is not a rational choice; it is an extremely ancient social survival mechanism that often operates faster than critical thinking.

The relevance for relationships is direct. How many of your beliefs about what a relationship should look like, about what is normal or acceptable in a couple, about what success in your personal life means, are genuinely yours? How many did you absorb from your social group, from your family, from the culture you grew up in, without ever having truly examined them?

Social norms as invisible governors of behaviour

Social norms are unwritten rules about what is acceptable, desirable or expected in a given context. They are not laws, they are not codified anywhere, but their power is often greater than written laws, precisely because we internalise norms and apply them from the inside rather than under external constraint.

Robert Cialdini, the author of one of the most influential books in social psychology, "Influence", studied the mechanism of social norms extensively. One of his classic experiments shows that the most effective way to persuade people to reduce their energy consumption is not to talk to them about the environment or about money, but to show them that their neighbours consume less than they do. Social norms are more motivating than rational argument.

The same mechanism operates in relationships. If in your social circle divorce is rare and viewed as failure, you will be far more reluctant to consider that option even when it is justified. If in your social environment it is considered normal for couples to be unhappy but to stay together "for the sake of stability," you will normalise a situation that, viewed from outside the group's norms, you would recognise as problematic.

Social comparison and its effect in relationships

Leon Festinger described in 1954 his theory of social comparison: people have a fundamental tendency to evaluate themselves in relation to others, especially in the absence of clear objective standards. This tendency has not disappeared in the modern era. It has intensified, because social networks have given us access to a practically infinite number of comparison points, all presented in their most favourable version.

The effect in relationships is doubly damaging. On one hand, we compare our relationship to the public image of other people's relationships and get the impression that ours is less happy, less romantic, less functional. On the other hand, we compare partners. Not necessarily consciously, not necessarily with bad intent, but the process is active. And it introduces into the relationship an external standard, constructed from selective and often false images, against which authentic reality cannot possibly win.

I have come to believe that one of the healthiest decisions you can make for your relational life is to deliberately reduce your exposure to social comparison. Not out of ignorance, but out of psychological hygiene.

The reference group's influence on relational decisions

The reference group is the group against which we measure ourselves most strongly, usually close friends, colleagues or family. Its influence on relational decisions is enormous and rarely acknowledged as such.

Who approves within your reference group matters. If your close friends don't like your partner, their disapproval will create real pressure, even if it is not expressed directly. Conversely, if your social group validates a relationship that isn't good for you, that validation can significantly delay your recognition of the problem.

I am not saying you should ignore entirely the opinions of those around you about your relationship. External perspectives can be valuable, especially when you are too close to see clearly. But there is an important difference between taking into account the perspective of a friend who knows you well and wishes you well, and letting the group's norms decide for you what kind of relationship you should have.

The influence of the family of origin: the earliest reference group

The family we grew up in is the first and most powerful reference group we have. The models of relationship we witnessed there, the way parents or carers managed conflict, intimacy, communication and power within a relationship, created internal templates that we carried with us into every subsequent relationship.

What is interesting, and sometimes painful to acknowledge, is that these templates don't operate as beliefs you can easily examine. They operate as assumptions about how the world works. "Men don't talk about feelings." "Women must sacrifice themselves for the family." "If they love you, you shouldn't need to ask for anything." These beliefs aren't written on a wall. They are embedded in the way we interpret a partner's behaviour, in what we expect, in what seems normal to us.

Identifying them doesn't mean condemning your family or searching for someone to blame. It means making visible what operates invisibly and giving yourself the option to choose differently.

Real autonomy begins with awareness of influence

The paradox of individual freedom is that you cannot be truly free from an influence you don't recognise. As long as social norms, group pressures and family templates operate below the threshold of your awareness, they decide in your place. Becoming aware of them doesn't eliminate them entirely, but it reduces their power and restores to you a genuine degree of choice.

And in relationships, authentic choice, free from social automatisms, is perhaps the deepest form of respect you can have for yourself and for the other person.

Think of an important decision you have made in a relationship, or one you keep postponing. How much of it is genuinely yours, and how much is the echo of your group's norms, your family's expectations, or your comparison with others?