Investment

• Investment in a relationship consists of how much in terms of quality and quantity, each person has brought to the relationship 
• Investments can lose value or increase over time and this is particularly true of relationships: if the relationship ends, both partners are likely to lose out financially, emotionally, and materially
• There are two types of investment according to the model:

  • Intrinsic investment 
  • Extrinsic investment
• Intrinsic investment - everything that each individual has brought separately to the relationship: money, possessions, time, energy, episodes of self-disclosure
• Extrinsic investment - everything that is a result of the relationship itself that may be lost: children, joint possessions, friends, shared pets
• If both partners have invested in the relationship then it is likely to survive, even if satisfaction is low at times (relevance to the cognitive bias of the sunk-cost fallacy)
• RIM explains why some relationships can persist even when satisfaction levels are low and alternatives exist: Rusbult argues this is due to commitment being more important overall than satisfaction in a relationship