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 breastfeeding, 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 selfesteem 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 expartner 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.