Michelangelo phenomenon
a process in which relationship partners support each other’s efforts toward achieving personally desired goals and particularly toward attaining an ideal self. Because committed partners must reconcile their personal goals with the needs and goals of their partners, partner encouragement or discouragement represents an important factor in how a person pursues a goal, as well as the likelihood of its attainment. [first identified in a 1999 article, “Close Partner as Sculptor of the Ideal Self,” by U.S. social psychologists Stephen M. Drigotas (1966– ), Caryl E. Rusbult (1952–2010), and colleagues; their coinage refers to the artist Michelangelo’s description of his sculptural work as releasing the beautiful form already present in a block of marble]