sensation-seekers still have a wide variety of relationships (maybe
more than most), and the way that their behaviors affect their
friendships, intimate relationships, and families, changes on a case-
by-case basis. Consider two of the couples featured in this chapter
and how things worked out differently for each of them.
Despite the frightful date, Cindy and Tom continued to see
each other and later married. But things didn’t work out. Sensation-
seeking Tom relied on Cindy to be his down-to-earth anchor – but
ultimately Tom didn’t really want an anchor. They divorced three
years later.
Other couples, like Gina and her husband, find ways to
combine the interests and comfort of differing levels of sensation-
seeking by embarking on experience-seeking activities together.
“My husband and I have been to every winery in the state of
Illinois. Over 110,” Gina shared. “It was actually my husband’s idea,
because we got to looking at the map, and he was like, ‘We could do
this. It’ll take us several years, but we could do this.’ I was excited. It
tapped into a new part of my experience-seeking side. Now we have
a notebook with a different winery on every page. It shows the
wines we sampled, and what we got out of it. The experience has
been amazing, going to all these different places. It’s something we
enjoy together.”~
It’s clear that high sensation-seeking has a profound impact on day-to-
day relationships. From jokes to dating to picking topics of conversa-
tion, high sensation-seekers’ personalities shape their connections
with others. But your personality doesn’t just kick in after 5pm. You
carry it around with you everywhere you go. Even at work.113 / The Relationships of High Sensation-SeekersDownloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. Access paid by the UCSF Library, on 11 Nov 2019 at 14:21:35, subject to the Cambridge