Love and Relationships

History of Romantic Love

Friendships vs. Romantic Love
How Do I Know If This Is Really Love?
Companionate Love
Love Without Sex
Prerequisites For Love
Attachment Theory Of Love
Robert Sternberg’s Triangular Theory Of
Love
John Lee’s “Many Colors Of Love”
Jealousy
Maintaining A Relationship
 History of Romantic Love
• From culture to culture, and in different time periods, the
concept of romantic love has one thing in common—
idealization of another.
• To an American in love, their emotions tend to
overshadow everything else…To a Chinese in love, their
love occupies a place among other considerations.
• Romantic love was considered to be a way for isolated
individuals to achieve identity and meaning in a society
that no longer provided meaning through a fixed social
structure, religion, or family relations.
• In clanships and modern collective societies, marriages
are arranged and romantic love is generally prohibited.
• Romantic marriages may not be universal, but love is
apparently “a very primitive, basic human emotion, basic
as fear, anger, or joy”—one that escapes all the
restrictions and barriers imposed by numerous cultures.
• There are instances in antiquity in which romantic love
and sexual desire were linked, such as the homoerotic
love in classical Greece or between patrician men and
slaves in imperial Rome.
• Romantic love as idealization of another really
emerged in medieval times when men returning
from the Crusades transformed the cult of the
Virgin Mary into courtly love. Here, courtiers
expressed their undying love for a beloved, whom
they worshiped from afar. Sexual relations were
never considered.
• It was not until the 16th or 17th centuries that
romantic love began to be linked with marriage.
 Friendship vs. Romantic Love
• Studies by Keith Davis revealed several characteristics
that are essential for friendships:
• (1) enjoyment of each other’s company most of the time;
• (2) acceptance of one and other as is;
• (3) a mutual trust that each will act in his or her friend’s
best interests;
• (4) a respect for each other;
• (5)mutual assistance of one another during times of need;
• (6) confiding in one another;
• (7) an understanding of each other’s behavior; and
• (8) spontaneity. Generally speaking, men and women experience
friendship in the same way.
• Research found that a large majority perceives a difference
between love and “being in love.”
• When they had people place their social relationships into
categories, they found that people put far many more people in
the “love” category than in the “in love” category, and that
people placed in the “in love” category were also included within
a “sexual attraction/desire” category.
• Davis and others report that most lovers find that
their mood depends more on reciprocation of their
feelings in romantic relationships than it does in
friendships. Romantic relationships also rate
much higher in ambivalence than friendships.
• Thus, while romantic relationships are generally
more rewarding than friendships, they are also
more volatile and frustrating than friendships.
 How Do I Know If This Is Really
Love?
• Researchers have found that feelings of romantic love
are associated with an increase in three brain chemicals
called dopamine, norepinephrine, and pheylethylamin
and a decrease in brain levels of serotonin.
• Falling in love, with the release of these chemicals,
literally gives the person a natural high.
• The problem is, of course, that almost any kind of
excitement or stress will cause a pounding heart and
other physiological responses.
• A cognitive component is necessary before one
can interpret these responses as a particular type of
emotion.
 Companionate Love
• Companionate love has been defined as “the affection we
feel for those with whom our lives are deeply entwined.”
• It is based on togetherness, trust, sharing, affection, and
concern for the welfare of the other.
• The love between a parent and a child is usually the type
we refer to as companionate love.
• Scientists have discovered that companionate love is
associated with two neuropeptides, oxytocin and
vasopressin.
• Oxytocin is the hormone released during breast-feeding, labor,
and orgasm. Perhaps it is these substances that give long-term
lovers a sense of calm, peace, and security.
• Passionate love is defined as “a state of intense longing for union
with another… A state of profound physiological arousal.”
• Passionate love is more sexualized than companionate love and
tends to decline with time.
• Passionate love, however, does not always come first in a
relationship, for some people do not consider romance to be their
most important goal when establishing a relationship. Some
people desire companionship more than anything else.
• Companionate love very often includes a good,
satisfying sexual relationship as well.
 Love Without Sex
• Love and sex share many things in common,
including the fact that both may be intensely exciting
experiences involving physiological changes that
may be expressed in many ways.
• Women in particular are apt to find sex unenjoyable
unless it is within a loving relationship.
• Men on the other hand, are much more likely than
women to enjoy sex without emotional involvement.
• For most people in our culture, sex without love is
a passing stage in relationships.
• The emphasis in the US of sex within a loving
relationship is a culturally learned value.
• Love is a feeling, not an act.
 Unconditional Love
• Romantic love tends to be considered conditional
love, or what Maslow called deficiency love.
• We fall in love with someone and remain in love
because he or she satisfies certain needs and
fulfills desires, and because it is positively
reinforcing to be with him or her.
 Prerequisites For Love
– Self-Acceptance
• In order to love another, it is first necessary that one be
able to love oneself. The first prerequisite for a loving
relationship, therefore, is a positive self-concept.
• People who feel positive about themselves are confident
and self-sufficient—they do not require continual
external validation.
• T accept oneself is to accept one’s shortcomings as well
as one’s strengths.
 Self-Disclosure
• Self-acceptance and trust in ourselves give us the
potential to trust and love others, but for love to really
develop, there must be self-disclosure by both parties,
resulting in an exchange of vulnerabilities.
• For some people, emotional intimacy may be more
difficult than sexual intimacy.
• Emotional intimacy is achieved only after a couple has
shared a reasonable level of self-disclosure and each
has accepted his or her partner’s state of awareness.
 Attachment Theory of Love
• Three styles of attachment:
• (1) secure—children who learn that parents are a
source of security and trust;
• (2) anxious-ambivalent—children whose parents are
inconsistent, which eventually leads to uncertainty;
• (3) avoidant—children develop negative attitudes of
others because their parents neglect them or either
under-stimulate them or over-stimulate them.
• Adults with a secure attachment style do not fear abandonment
and find it easy to get close to others.
• They have positive views of themselves and others, are well
liked by others, and strive for a balance of closeness and
independence.
• Adults with an anxious-ambivalent attachment style generally
have negative attitudes about themselves and are insecure in
their relationships.
• They fear rejection and try desperately to get close to their
partners, in the process giving up much of their independence.
• Avoidants have negative views of others and
therefore have difficulties with feelings of
intimacy and letting someone get close to them.
• They desire independence.
 Robert Sternberg’s Triangular
Theory Of Love
• The triangular theory of love suggests that all the
different positive emotions that people can have
for other individuals can be understood by the
combination of three components.
• The top vertex of the triangle is intimacy.
• Intimacy refers to those feelings in a relationship
that promote closeness or bondedness and the
experience or warmth.
• The right-hand vertex represents decision/commitment,
which includes the decision to love another person and
the commitment to maintain the relationship over time.
• When all three components are absent, the result is
nonlove.
• This characterizes most of our casual relationships, where
there is no love or friendship in any meaningful way.
• If the intimacy component is expressed alone without
passion or decision/commitment, it results in liking.
• The word liking is not used in a trivial manner to
refer to casual acquaintances, but instead refers to
the feelings of closeness, bondedness, and warmth in
true friendships. When passion is felt in the absence
of the other two components, the result infatuated
love, or what we call “love at first sight.”
• A person feeling passion alone is obsessed with the
other person as an ideal, rather than as the individual
he or she is in reality.
• The decision and commitment to love another
person without intimacy or passion is experienced
as empty love.
• In our society, empty love often occurs at the end
of stagnant long-term relationships, but in other
cultures where marriages are arranged, it may be
the first stage in a long-term relationship.
 John Lee’s “Many Colors Of
Love”
– The Primary Colors
• Eros is a highly idealized love based on physical
beauty. According to Lee, every erotic lover has
specific ideal physical type that turns him or her on.
• The erotic lover is inclined to feel “love at fist
sight” and wants to have an intimate relationship
immediately.
• Erotic lovers are very affectionate and openly
communicate with their idealized partners.
• Ludus is a self-centered type of love. The ludic
lover avoids commitment and treats love like a
game, often viewing the chase as more pleasurable
than the prize.
• Ludic lovers have no romantic ideal and never see
any one person often enough to become dependent
on them, or vice versa.
• Storge is an affectionate type of love that develops
from friendship slowly over time.
• The storgic lover does not have a physical ideal
and does not go looking for love, but instead
develops feelings of affection and commitment
with a partner through experiencing activities that
they both enjoy.
 The Secondary Colors
• Pragma is a rational or practical style of loving
resulting from combining ludus and storge.
• Pragmatic lovers have the manipulative
confidence of ludic lovers and consciously look
for a compatible mate.
• They are not looking for an exciting romance or
affair, but instead want love to grow out of
friendship.
• Pragmatic lovers want their partners to reciprocate signs of
thoughtfulness and commitment, but do not like excessive
displays of emotion or jealousy.
• Sexual compatibility is not unimportant, but it is treated more
as a technical skill that can be improved upon if need be rather
than as the result of chemistry.
• Mania is a love-style characterized by an intense, obsessive
emotional dependency on the attention and affection of one’s
partner.
• The manic lover is intensely jealous and repeatedly needs to be
assured of being loved.
• Agape is a selfless, altruistic love-style that puts
the interest of the loved person ahead of the
lover’s own interest, even if it means great
sacrifice.
• This is the style of loving proposed by Saint
Augustine as a goal for all Christians, and the kind
of love to aspire to.
 Jealousy
• Shakespeare describes jealousy as “the green-eyed monster
which doth mock the meat it feeds on,” in Othello.
• Jealousy is an emotional state “that is aroused by a
perceived threat to a valued relationship or position and
motivates behavior aimed at countering the threat.”
• There are both cognitive and emotional components to
jealousy.
As an emotion, it is hard to describe, but it usually involves
anger, humiliation, fear, depression, and a sense of
helplessness.
• Research has shown that people with low self-
esteem who are personally unhappy with their
lives and those who place great value on things
like popularity, wealth, fame, and physical
attractiveness are more likely than others to be
jealous individuals.
• Jealousy is most likely to occur in cultures that
consider marriage as a means for guilt-free sex,
security, and social recognition.
• Some researchers claim that men are much more
likely to become jealous to the perception of a
partner’s sexual infidelity, whereas women are
much more likely to experience jealousy as a result
of a partner’s emotional inexperience jealousy as a
result of a partner’s emotional infidelity.
• Men, for example, may be likely to think that if a
partner is emotionally involved, she is also having
sex.
 Maintaining A Relationship
• These include:
• (a) physical attractiveness—men generally attach more
importance to this than women; (b) proximity—people
are most likely to fall in love with someone they interact
with often;
• (c) similarity—people tend to be attracted to others who
have similar love-styles, interests, values, intellectual
abilities, personality traits, and degrees of attractiveness;
• (d) reciprocity—we tend to like people who show that
they like us.
• People who are similar are not only attracted to
one another, they are also more likely to stay
together.
• However, even when a couple is well matched,
they are going to have to learn to deal with
change.
 The Decline of Passion
• As the passion subsides and fantasy is replaced with
reality, the result is often disappointment.
• In a study, it was found that the divorce rate peaked
around the fourth year of marriage.
• The reason most frequently given by couples in the
process of divorce is that they had “fallen out of love”
and were bored.
• The key to maintaining a relationship is replacing
passion with those things that lead to companionate love.
 Growing Together/Growing
Apart: Will Companionate Love
Develop?
• “The possibility of achieving a deep friendship
with a spouse represents the most exciting goal of
marriage.”
• Growing apart- Having fewer common interests
over time.
• Growing together- Maintaining common interests
over time.
• Positive, instead of negative, interactions are often
determined by how couples interact when there
are disagreements.
• Gottman advises that wives do not express
contempt, that husbands do not “stonewall,” and
that both avoid facial expressions of disgust.
 Coping With Breakups
• One thing that everyone engages in during a breakup is
obsessive review, a “constant, absorbing, sometimes
maddening preoccupation that refuses to accept any
conclusion.”
• Emotionally, you feel isolated, missing your ex-partner
and everything he or she brought to your life.
• But you can also end up socially isolated as well.
• Friends you had in common with your ex-partner may
have to pick sides, or, because they fell awkward, may
avoid both of you.
• The third, common experience that people often
have to deal with is that their ex-partner is still
around. If you are the one who was left, he or she
is a constant reminder of the rejection.
 Becoming More Intimate
• 1. Both individuals in a relationship need to accept
themselves as they are. Learn to accept your ideas and
feelings as legitimate.
• 2. Each individual in a relationship needs to recognize his or
her partner for what that person is. It can only occur when
one recognizes one’s mate for what he or she really is—
weaknesses as well as strengths.
• 3. Each individual must feel comfortable to express himself
or herself. People are often hesitant to express any doubts,
irritation, or anger to their partners in a loving relationship.