Chapter 11- Close Relationships:
Passion, Intimacy, and Sexuality
• What Is Love?
• Different Types of Relationships
• Maintaining Relationships
• Sexuality
Close Relationships:
Passion, Intimacy, and Sexuality
• Princess Diana and Prince Charles
• People who marry live longer, healthier lives
• People who stay married live longer and
•
•
better than those who divorce
Happy marriage is an important consideration
What does the research tell you about the
advantages of marriage?
What Is Love?
• Passionate Love
•
•
– Strong feelings of longing, desire, and
excitement toward a special person
Companionate Love
– Mutual understanding and caring
Physiological difference
– Presence of PEA
Love and Culture
• Passionate love as a social construction
– Romantic love is found in most cultures
– Forms and expression vary by culture
– Attitude varies by culture and era
Love Across Time
• Passionate love is important for starting a
•
relationships
– Exists for a brief period of time
Companionate love is important for making it
succeed and survive
Tradeoffs - Sex In and Out of Marriage
• Married people have sex more often, more
•
•
•
satisfying
Married people more likely indicate physical
or emotional satisfaction from sex
Single people spend more time at each
sexual episode
Single people have more sexual partners
Sternberg’s Triangle
• Passion
•
•
– Emotional state with high bodily arousal
Intimacy
– Feeling of closeness, mutual
understanding and concern
Commitment
– Conscious decision; remains constant
Different Types of Relationships
• Exchange relationships
•
– More frequent in broader society
– Increases societal progress and wealth
Communal relationships
– More frequent in close intimate
relationships
– More desirable, healthier, and mature
Attachment
• Bowlby
•
– Influenced by Freudian and learning theory
– Believed childhood attachment predicted
adult relationships
Shaver
– Identified attachment styles to describe
adult relationships
– Anxious/Ambivalent – Secure - Avoidant
Attachment Theory
• Theory developed along two dimensions
•
– Anxiety and Avoidance
Four attachment styles
– Secure attachment
– Dismissing avoidant attachment
– Fearful avoidant attachment
– Preoccupied attachment
Attachment Styles
• Secure attachment
•
– Low anxiety; low avoidance
– Positive attitude toward others and self
Preoccupied attachment (anxious/ambivalent)
– Low avoidance; high anxiety
– Positive attitude toward others; negative
attitude toward self
Attachment Styles
• Dismissing avoidant attachment
•
– Low anxiety; High avoidance
– Negative attitude toward others; positive
toward self
Fearful avoidant attachment
– High anxiety; High avoidance
– Low opinions of self and others
Attachment and Sex
• Secure
•
•
– Generally have good sex lives
Preoccupied
– May use sex to pull others close to them
Avoidant
– Have a desire for connection
– May avoid sex, or use it to resist intimacy
Self-esteem and Love
• Popular belief that you need to love yourself
•
before you can love others
– Not demonstrated in theory or facts
Self-esteem
– Low self-esteem – may feel unlovable
– High self-esteem – may feel more worthy
than present partner
Self-Love and Loving Others
• Narcissists
•
– High self-esteem; strong, unstable self-love
– Harmful to relationships
– Less committed to love relationships
Self-acceptance
– More minimal form of self-love
– Linked to positive interactions
Maintaining Relationships
• Good relationships tend to stay the same
over time
– Popular myth that they continue to improve
– Key to maintaining a good relationship is to
avoid a downward spiral
Is Bad Stronger Than Good?
Good and Bad Relationship Partners
• Bad interactions are stronger than good
• Positive interactions must occur at least five
•
times as often as negative
Reciprocity of negative behavior
– Sign of a downward spiral for the
relationship
Investment Model
• Three factors to explain long-term
•
relationships
– Satisfaction
– Alternatives
– Investments
Considered together they predict the
likelihood of maintaining the relationship
Thinking Styles of Couples
• Difference in terms of attribution
– Relationship enhancing
• Good acts - internal; bad - external
factors
– Distress-maintaining style
• Good acts - external factors; bad internal
Thinking Styles of Couples
• Optimism in the relationship
•
– Happy couples have an idealized version
of their relationship
Devaluing alternatives
– People in lasting relationships do not find
others appealing
Being Yourself: Is Honesty the Best Policy?
• Discrepancy between idealization view and
complete honesty
– People in passionate love often idealize
and overestimate their partners
– Relationships thrive when couples retain
their best behavior in front of their partner
Sexuality
• Humans form relationships based on two
•
separate systems
– Attachment system
• Gender neutral
– Sex drive
• Focus on opposite sex (procreation)
Love comes from attachment drive;
independent of gender
Theories of Sexuality
• Social Constructionist Theories
• Evolutionary Theory
•
– Gender differences based in reproductive
strategies
Social Exchange Theory
Sex and Gender
• Men have a stronger sex drive than women
•
– Coolidge effect
Separating sex and love
– Men are more likely to seek and enjoy sex
without love
– Women are more likely to enjoy love
without sex
Food for Thought
Eating in Front of a Cute Guy
• People eat sparingly in the presence of
•
attractive person of the opposite sex
– Reduced eating correlated with desire for
social acceptance
Restraining food intake may be more
important to women seeking to make a good
impression than to men
Homosexuality
• Homosexuality challenges theories of
sexuality
– Most cultures condemn homosexuality
– Natural selection does not support it
Homosexuality
• EBE – Erotic becomes exotic (Bem, 1998)
•
– Explains sexual arousal is labeled from the
emotional nervousness resulting from
exposure to exotic
Difficult to test and verify this theory
Extradyadic Sex
• Most reliable data suggests infidelity is rare in
•
•
modern Western marriages
Tolerance for extramarital sex is fairly low
Extramarital sex is a risk factor for break ups
– Can not demonstrate causality
Reasons for Straying
• Men desire novelty
•
– Sometimes engage in extramarital sex
without complaint about their marriage
Women’s infidelity characterized by emotional
attachment to lover
– Usually dissatisfied with current partner
Jealousy and Possessiveness
• Cultural theory of jealousy
•
•
– Product of social roles and expectations
Sexual jealousy found in every culture
– Forms, expressions, and rules may vary
Society can modify jealousy but can not
eliminate it
Jealousy and Possessiveness
• Evolutionary theory of jealousy
– Men – ensure they were not supporting
someone else’s child
– Women –if husband becomes emotionally
involved with another, may withhold
resources
Jealousy and Possessiveness
• Jealousy can focus on either sexual or
•
emotional connections with another
Men may focus more strongly on sexual
aspects than women
Causes of Jealousy
• Jealousy is a product of both the person and
the situation
– Many suspicions of jealously are accurate
– Paranoid (false) jealousy is fairly rare
Jealousy and Type of Interloper
• The less of a threat from the other person, the
•
less jealousy
– Jealousy depends on how their traits
compare to the third party
Both men and women are more jealous if the
third party is a man rather than a woman
Social Reality
• Social reality
•
– Public awareness of some event
– Important role in jealousy
High social reality = High jealousy
– The more other people know about your
partner’s infidelity, the more jealousy
Culture and Female Sexuality
• All culture regulate sex in some ways
• Cultural regulation is more directed at women
– Erotic plasticity
– Paternity uncertainty
Culture and the Double Standard
• Double standard
– Supported more by women than men
– Weaker than usually assumed
What Makes Us Human?
• Long-term monogamous mating is more
common among humans
– Culture plays a role in monogamy
– Culture gives permission for divorce
– Culture influences love and sex
• Face-to-face position is used by most
people
