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Relationships are complicated. What love means to you and how much you value it is not the value that others place on it. And the same applies to relationships. But what makes relationships even more complicated? A massive outbreak of a zombie plague.
If there’s one thing we’ve learned from The Walking Dead , it’s that there’s nothing more disastrous for a relationship than a zombie apocalypse. People change when lives are at stake – especially their own. As the series showed, no one is themselves anymore when the world as we know it has completely disappeared. Personal struggles are magnified as the survival instinct takes over your behavior. Would you and your loved one make it?
Although The Walking Dead’s survival story is fictional and a zombie apocalypse will likely never happen, we can learn a lot about other people when a crisis situation arises. It’s a test of the relationship . And it takes a special kind of love to survive a dire emergency like a zombie plague. Would Your Relationship Survive the ‘Zombie Apocalypse Test’? Or would your relationship collapse under the pressure?
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Zombie Apocalypse Test
The ‘Zombie Apocalypse Test’ is a thought experiment to test the strength of your relationship. It may sound like a funny test, but if you take it seriously you can learn a lot about your relationship. Just imagine this:
You are at home with your partner and the broadcast of Temptation Island is interrupted by an emergency message. In the news broadcast, which is also broadcast on all channels, you hear that a zombie outbreak has occurred in Utrecht. People wander mindlessly across the street, without a phone in their hand, infecting everyone they touch. According to the news, it won’t be long before the zombies arrive in your city.
How would you and your partner react? Should you hide under the bed or immediately look for weapons? Will you keep your cool, work together and tackle the zombie army as an army or two ? Or do you argue with each other, act irrationally and run off alone?
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Test it yourself
It’s not hard to imagine what will happen to your relationship. When you think about the imaginary scenarios, you quickly discover that it is not just about survival. It also says a lot about the differences between you and your partner. It shows whether you are really a team, how you can complement each other and the strength of the relationship as a whole.
According to Steven Handel of The Emotion Machine – who devised the test – people depend on each other during a crisis. And that requires cooperation, trust and working together to survive. A crisis can bring out the best in people and connect people in unprecedented ways. We were able to see it all ourselves at the beginning of the corona crisis. But a crisis can also bring out the worst in people. We have seen that too.
Relationships in which people are less cooperative and less trustworthy will fall apart in times of crisis. Instead of working together, the people in these relationships will end up competing with each other for food and resources. So a crisis can bring out both the ‘best’ and ‘worst’ in a person, depending on character and personality.
Handel says you can use the “Zombie Apocalypse Test” to analyze any type of relationship : a friend, family member, co-worker or life partner. And then you will automatically arrive at some questions that you will ask about the situation:
- Who is most likely to become a savior ?
- Who is most likely to become a victim?
- Who would you help and who wouldn’t you?
- Who would you give your life for and who wouldn’t you?
“When you ask these kinds of questions, you start to see how certain people would naturally fall into different roles in times of crisis,” says Handel. “And don’t forget the most important question: how would YOU respond to a zombie apocalypse? What role would you fall into? Would you take an “I” perspective or “we” perspective?”
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Ultimately, the Zombie Apocalypse Test isn’t really about determining whether you should break up or not. It is more of a way to gain insight into the role you have in the relationship and what role your partner has. Think about it: would your relationship survive the zombie plague?
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