I’m ready when you’re ready.
© 2014 Wadsworth Cengage Learning

 What Is Love?
 Different Types of Relationships
 Maintaining Relationships
 Sexuality

 Consider the marriage and divorce of Princess Diana and
Prince Charles
 What was normal about their relationship? What was not normal?
 How prevalent are affairs? How prevalent is divorce?
 Does the prevalence of something make it “normal?”

 There is no simple answer
 There is more than one kind of love
 The common and essential feature that exist in all types of love is:
“A caring for the other person regardless of one’s personal gain”

 Passionate love (romantic love)
 Strong feelings of longing, desire, and excitement toward a special person
 Companionate love (affectionate love)
 Mutual understanding and caring
 What is the physiological difference between passionate love and companionate love?
Passionate love is associated with increased levels of the neurotransmitter phenylethylamine (PEA)

 Debate of whether passionate love is universal or a cultural convention.
 Although culture may have an impact it does seem that passionate love is found across cultures.
 In other cultures, and in western culture at some points in history, passionate love was seen as a state of temporary insanity, not a good reason to marry someone.
http://youtu.be/AIBcSkk4W0Y

 Why is passionate love important for starting a relationship?
 How is companionate love important for making it succeed and survive?
 What happens when passionate love fails to convert into companionate love?

The triangle on the left represents a relationship that is high in intimacy and passion, but low in commitment. The triangle on the right represents a relationship that is high in intimacy and commitment but low in passion.

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 John Bowlby’s noticed the distress of small children separated from their parents during WWII and studied it.
 He thought that these early experiences would shape how the children would later carry on their adult relationships.
 His original theory identified 3 types of attachment
anxious/ambivalent – clinging types who want to be as close as possible, that the others feel uncomfortable
avoidant – are uncomfortable when others want to get to close and try to maintain some distance.
secure – provides balance and the person is happy to become close and intimate with others and does not worry about being abandoned or hurt.

 Phillip Shaver and other researchers evolved the study of attachment styles.
 Attachment Theory – has two dimensions, anxiety
(attitudes toward the self) and avoidance (attitudes toward the other) to classify people into four attachment styles.
 What are the four attachment styles?
 What are the differences in each?
 How stable are these styles?

 Secure – is a style of attachment in which people trust their partners, share their feelings, and provide and receive support and comfort and enjoy their relationships
(low on anxiety and avoidance).
 Preoccupied (anxious/ambivalent) – is the style of attachment in which people want and enjoy closeness but worry that their relationship partners will abandon them
(low avoidance, high anxiety).
 Dismissing avoidant – they tend to view partners as unreliable, unavailable, and uncaring. (low anxiety, high avoidance).
 Fearful avoidant – people have low opinions of themselves and keep others from getting close. (high anxiety and avoidance).

 How do Erikson, Rogers, and Maslow’s theories agree or disagree with the following statement?
 “First you must love yourself, and only then, are you ready to love someone else”
None of these theories support this and instead the need to belong supersedes self-love.
 What is narcissism?
 How do people with narcissism get along in relationships?
 How does self-acceptance impact relationships?

 How does exposure to temptation impact relationships?
 The success of a long-term relationship depends on how partners deal with temptation to seek new partners.
 Women tend to defend their existing relationship in the face of temptation.
 Men tend to entertain the possibility of a new relationship in the face of temptation.
 Do good relationships get better with time? Most good relationship stay the same with no real change.
 Two primary outcomes for relationships: they stay the same or they get worse.

 Is a theory proposed by Rusbult that uses three factors:
satisfaction – how satisfied are you in your relationship?
alternatives – what is the quality of alternatives available?
investments – how much have you invested, time , effort, emotions and other resources?
to explain why people stay with their long term relationship partners.

 What are the differences in attribution made by happy couples versus unhappy couples?
 Relationship-enhancing attribution style
 Distress-maintaining attribution style
 What other differences in thought processes do happy couples engage in? What other ones do unhappy couples engage in?

 What does research say about the happiness of couples who hold an honest and true view of each other?
 What does research say about the happiness of couples who idealize each other?
 How can we reconcile these theories?

 Are love and sex the same thing? They definitely overlap and in many cases they are often intertwined.
 Recent social theory proposed by Lisa Diamond, is that they have two basic biological bases, which can sometimes result in confusion.
 The sex drive is focused primarily on the other gender and is important in mating.
 The attachment drive gender neutral. We cab be attached to many different people. What happens when the two systems reinforce each other? What happens when they are in conflict?
 Diamond’s research focused on female sexuality through time.
 Love comes from the attachment drive, and that drive is independent of gender. Attachment can lead to sexual desire, and sexual intimacy can promote attachment so the two are not entirely independent

 Social constructivist theories – are theories asserting that attitudes, and behaviors, including sexual desire and sexual behavior, are strongly shaped by culture and socialization.
 Evolutionary theory – is a theory of sexuality asserting that the sex drive has been shaped by natural selection and that its forms tend to be innate.
 Social exchange theory – is a theory that seeks to understand social behavior by analyzing the cost and benefits of interacting with each other; it assumes that sex is a resource that women have and men want.
 Which theory do you think is most valid and why?

 Research suggests that the stereotype that men have a stronger sex drive than women is true.
 One of the biggest differences between men and women is the desire for casual, uncommitted sex.
 What is the Coolidge effect?
 The sexually arousing power of a new partner
 What gender differences are observed with regard to the Coolidge effect?
 Sex drive can be similar at the passionate beginning of the relationship.
 How do the genders differ in their ability to separate sex and love?
 Men can separate sex and love in the fact that they enjoy sex without love more.
 Women, however, enjoy love without sex more.
 Although there is a stereotupe that men are more influenced by culture it is actually women’s sexuality that seems more influenced.
 What is erotic plasticity? Is the degree to which the sex drive can be shaped and altered by social, cultural, and situational forces.
 Which gender has higher erotic plasticity?
Women’s sexuality seems more influenced by what sex means than men.

 How does homosexuality challenge theories about sexuality? It exists all over the world and survives generation after generation posing a challenge to these theories.
Social constructivist theory – if culture shapes sexuality, why then is anyone homosexual?
Evolutionary theory – if the sex drive is shaped by natural selection and success at reproduction, then again homosexuality should have vanished.
 How does the “exotic becomes erotic” theory attempt to explain homosexuality?
 What are the challenges to this theory?
 How might nature and/or culture explain homosexuality?

 How common is extramarital sex?
 What relationship exists between extramarital sex and break-ups?
 What is the difference between being a risk factor and proving causality?
 Why can researchers not prove causality?
 How do people use the self-serving bias to justify their own extradyadic sex?

 How is jealousy a cultural phenomenon, and how is it not?
 How do forms, expressions, and rules of sexual jealousy vary by culture?
 Can society eliminate jealousy?
 How can evolution explain jealousy?
 What gender differences exist regarding jealousy of sexual versus emotional connections?

 What would be worse?
 For the person you love to have a one-time sexual encounter with another person without any emotional involvement?
 For the person you love to have a lasting, emotionally intimate relationship with a member of your gender – but one that did not include sexual intercourse?

 How is jealousy a product of both the person and the circumstances?
 On average, how accurate are suspicions of infidelity?
 How does the interloper’s talents affect jealousy?
 How does the interloper’s gender affect jealousy?

 What is social reality?
 How important is its role in jealousy?
 Why does social reality make people more jealous?

 All cultures regulate sex in some ways
 Why do cultures focus more on suppressing women’s sexuality than men’s?
 How might the erotic plasticity of women influence culture’s suppression?
 How might paternity uncertainty explain it?
 How strong is the double standard?
 Which gender supports it more?

 Long-term monogamous mating is more common among humans than other animals
 How does culture play a role in monogamy, and in divorce?
 How does culture influence love and sex?

 Love and attachment are both influenced by culture
 Several predictors of relationship success exist
 Sexuality can be explained in evolutionary and cultural terms
 Jealousy can be harnessed and controlled by culture, but not eliminated by it