module 6

Passionate/ Romantic Love vs. Companionate Love

- what is the difference?

Passionate/Romantic love

•Initial stage of a relationship characterized by passion and romance

Couples' Therapy

- Emotion-focused couples therapy (EFCT) •The couple works to identify negative cycles and the threats they feel undermine their emotional security. •It has decades of research evidence supporting its effectiveness. •The therapist's goal is to increase positive interactions on a daily basis •The therapist also coaches the couple through an identification process, helping them to uncover their true and often vulnerable feelings that underlie the conflicts. •Being able to make it through the tough times means you are able to fight with but not tear down the other, disagree while still exhibiting compassion, and love yourself enough to know that loving another person does not necessarily mean you should stay with them. •When we work on making ourselves the best partners we can be, long-term committed partnerships become more viable.

open model structure

- in this structure, the key multiple primary partners are committed to each other but all agree that other sexual or love relationships would be acceptable.

Different Polyamorous Family Configurations

- primary/secondary structure - multiple primary partners structure - open model structure

How Men and Women Express Love

•Men tend to think that love means "action." •Example, acts of service •However, women often want men to express their love through talking about their feelings and processing the relationship in verbally intimate terms

Sternberg's Triangular Theory of Love

•According to the triangular theory of love, love contains three components: passion, intimacy, and commitment •Passion includes constant thoughts about the person, strong desire to be near him or her, and sexual excitement. •Intimacy refers to sharing one's thoughts and feelings, as well and being vulnerable enough to reveal one's true self. •Commitment means that a couple has decided to forego all other liaisons and live in union with one person. They are strongly committed to the welfare of their partner and view life as a shared journey. •Relationships that are high on passion but low on intimacy and commitment are called infatuation. •Infatuated couples have a strong physical attraction and are often together but they don't open up to share their secrets and they don't decide to stop seeing other people to build a life together. •Relationships that are high on commitment and low on intimacy and passion are called empty love. •Empty couples are monogamous and do not seek to dissolve the relationship but they don't share very much with each other and are not physically intimate. •Those who are new to a relationship and have great passion and intimacy but have not yet made a commitment are in the grip of romantic love. •Romantic couples enjoy spending a lot of time together and may talk all night on the phone when apart, sharing all of their hopes and dreams. They have a fulfilling sexual life but have not progressed to building a committed monogamous life together. •A relationship that contains all three components (high intimacy, commitment, and passion) is most likely to be successful, and is considered consummate love. •Consummate couples enjoy doing things together, feel sexual attraction to each other, share hopes, dreams, and secrets with each other, and they do all they can to stay committed and build a secure life with each other.

Professional Help for Enhancing Love

•All relationships take work •They involve conflict •Love alone is not enough to keep a relationship together. •Love may get you in the door, but relationship skills keep the roof over your head. •Success in relationships takes a lot of: •Emotionally honest communication •Mature decision making •Insight into one's own attachment history •Knowledge of cultural expectations •Financial savvy •Clear communication about what you want out of the relationship

Gender Issues

•As the focus on love increased, the rates of divorce increased in comparison to previous generations •With views of love, sex, and marriage changing, as early as the late 18th century, many more women were getting pregnant without being married. •With less responsibility on men to marry their pregnant partners, some women ended up working wherever they could to support their children, even turning to sex work •This rise in unwed motherhood seemed to confirm the fears of the larger society in that it appeared that our new focus on individual pleasure and love could destroy the "traditional family" as we knew it •For the middle and upper classes in the 19th century, the Victorian ideal of feminized love evolved, where women did most of the loving and men avoided emotional commitment. •Women and men were forced to play determined and proscribed roles in the family •Men were expected to be emotionally detached from their wives and children, to be out and about living in the larger society. •Women were expected to love their children, be naturally good at intimacy, and maintain kin and extended community relationships. •In many cultures around the world today, women are considered to be the intimacy "experts" •While women used to be considered emotional, irrational, and lovesick, traits that were seen as deficits, today these same traits are often interpreted as the strengths that make women better at love, and more sensitive and caring.

Baby Love

•Babies attach to their mothers to find comfort, touch, and protection •Love is an emotion that allows us to feel safe and secure, and gives us the desire to physically reach out to others who can comfort us in a time of need. •Human infants use their caregivers as "secure bases" from which to explore the world around them •If their caregivers raise them with love, warmth, and caring, infants develop a sense of security about relationships and can venture out into the world with courage. •Children who experience early attachment disruption (example, children in orphanages) continue to exhibit high alarm-state (fight or flight) hormonal patterns even years after they've been adopted into safe homes. •They don't experience close physical contact as comforting. •This suggests that there are early sensitive periods that are difficult to reclaim if our emotional needs are not met in infancy and toddlerhood.

Intimacy

•Being vulnerable and open and being able to share yourself with another person without losing your own identity •Those who lack the skills/ experiences of intimacy often feel isolated and can leave early adulthood feeling a sense of meaningless as they enter middle age •Love, attachment, intimacy, and emotional connection with others are important for both our psychological health and the survival of our species

Biological Aspects of Love

•Charles Darwin argues that emotions have adaptive value and that our emotional expressions serve to communicate our needs to others in order to help us survive •Separation from loved ones can lead to signs of despair, characterized by lethargy, lack of sleep, appetite reduction, etc. •Loneliness in adults is related to higher levels of heart disease and lower immune functioning •Stories of elders dying of a "broken heart"

Historical Trends

•Feelings of romantic love exist in virtually every culture around the world. •Historically, the institution of marriage was meant to bind two families together for the mutual political or financial benefit of families and communities. •While people have always fallen in love, they have not always expected it to occur within the context of marriage. •European royalty often had love affairs with people outside of marriage. •Sex with one's spouse was solely for procreation and if the wife did not produce a male heir, mistresses could sometimes legally bear royal sons

Polyamory

•In many Western cultures, people believe in finding one true love who will meet their every need •emotional, mental, physical, and spiritual needs •Many people question the idea of monogamy and do not think humans are meant to be monogamous •Many cultures practice some form of polygamy •But beyond polygamy, polyamory, loving more than one person, is gaining in popularity in heterosexual and in LGB relationships •To make a polyamorous relationship (or any relationship) succeed, partners need to: •talk to each other constructively •be creative in handling problems •make crucial decisions together •have a satisfying sex life •make compromises •share feelings and ideas even while disagreeing

Modern Ideas

•In modern American culture, we are socialized to believe we will find the "one", our soulmate •Couples today marry for love, for happiness •People also question this traditional idea, that there can only be one partner with whom we spend our lives •This has lead to polyamory becoming recognized as a legitimate relationship structure in the Western world

Androgynous Love

•In recent generations, gender role expectations have been loosening •Androgynous love is based on the intimacy in both partners, where sex, love, and intimacy are combined in one relationship •The rise in divorce in the 1920s is often attributed to women's new sought-after power, individuality, and rights, their attempts to free themselves from social constraints and seek relationship freedom •Marriage became a form of self-fulfillment, no longer a duty •Androgynous gender roles (both partners exhibiting masculine and feminine traits) became more normalized.

Kissing

•Kissing dates back to ancient Greece and Rome •Studies across cultures show that the majority of people kiss •The study of kissing is called philematology •Researchers believe kissing evolved from the practice of our ancestors sniffing other people's faces to decide if they were healthy. •Kissing allows for an exchange of bacteria that might help build up our immune systems •In one experimental study they found that when couples were instructed to kiss for 30 minutes, the partner who suffered from allergies no longer had allergic reactions to things like pet dander! •During a kiss, all of our senses become involved in assessing the other person •We smell them, taste them, and feel them •Airborne chemicals called pheromones tell us whether the person is desirable or not •In our evolutionary past, this may have helped us determine the genetic suitability of a potential mate •Lips are packed with touch receptors that shoot signals right up to the somatosensory cortex of our brains. •When we engage in prolonged kissing, our blood pressure declines, stress hormones decrease, and serum cholesterol levels are reduced •We can also contract dangerous viruses like herpes, the flu, and mononucleosis from kissing

Adult Attachment

•Like children, adults seeks out attachment figures to help them regain a sense of security when stressed •Securely attached people tend to have constructive conflicts with their mates, where problems are solved without blaming, shaming, screaming, or violent confrontation. •People with an insecure/anxious/preoccupied attachment style have sometimes experienced inconsistent care from caregivers and often enter adult love relationships with intense fears of betrayal and abandonment. •They desire love and intimacy, yet they often sabotage relationships through being too clingy and emotionally unstable •People with dismissing/avoidant styles avoid intimacy at all costs. •They may have relationships with others but they do not allow themselves to be vulnerable. •They put up walls, do not share emotions, and often appear cold and distant. •Fearful/avoidant people feel such anxiety over intimacy that they choose to disengage in order to avoid the potential pain of getting too involved with others. •Most learn their styles of attachment and emotion regulation from families of origin

What is love?

•Love is a physiological reaction that engenders proximity-seeking behavior •Love is described as a search for friendship, beauty, and spiritual connection •Love tends to include a strong sense of attachment to another person and can involve both extremely pleasurable and intensely painful experiences •Scientists have not yet developed an agreed-upon definition of the concept of love. •Love may be a process that provides evolutionary advantages because seeking communion with others increases one's own chance of survival. •Love is defined as the subjective feeling of emotional connection with another person, often accompanied by intense desire to be near, care for, protect, or share one's life with that person.

Relationship Development

•Once we've built a more committed relationship, we begin to give ourselves to another person and share a more intimate type of love. •We can begin to experience limbic coregulation, which means that our bodily rhythms become synchronized with each other. •We can help each other develop our emotional regulation abilities. •When we live with others in an intimate relationship, our hormonal cycles and diurnal rhythms related to sleep, hunger, and sex become more synchronized. •As a consequence, we often find it difficult to sleep when the other person is gone, and our eating and regular activities feel "discombobulated."

Macrosystem Forces

•Researchers found that romantic love is most important to those living in Western nations and less important for those is Eastern nations and developing nations •Importance of romantic love is inversely related to the availability of large extended kin networks

Companionate love

•This type of love is one of affiliation, deep respect, and a "best friendship" •When people have been together for a long period of time, they tend to experience companionate love.

Gender differences in men/women with their friends

•Women like to talk just to be heard by their friends. This act in itself relieves stress. Women talk to solve problems, to have their feelings confirmed, and to share secrets with their friends. •Men often feel intimate connections to their partners by just being in the same room doing something together.

primary/secondary structure

•a couple is committed to each other and any other liaisons are considered secondary, meaning they can never interfere with or join the first relationship.

multiple primary partners structure

•there can be polyfidelity in this structure, or group marriage/partnership, where all partners involved are married or committed to each other but no one strays outside of that group.