Understanding Love and Relationships

What is Love

• Committed lovers have fun together, but also experience tedious times.
• Lovers express themselves freely.
• Problems are not seen as indications that the relationship is over.
• Lovers work to maintain their relationship.

Understanding Love

• Most people desire to be loved and expect to be in committed relationships.
• Being in a committed relationship involves emotional and sexual intimacy with someone, often including raising children.
• Love involves accepting partners as they are, not trying to change them.
• People in loving relationships feel free to be themselves, exposing their feelings, frailties, and strengths.
• Almost three-quarters of young adults believe in "one true love."
• Most people have said "I love you" to only one or two partners.

The Biology of Love

• Biologists identify three drives related to love: sex drive, attachment drive, and partner preference.

Love Chemicals

• Testosterone and Estrogen: Important for male and female sexual behavior, increasing libido and causing the desire for sexual encounters.
• Dopamine, Nor-epinephrine, and Serotonin: Typically found during the attraction phase of a relationship.
  • Serotonin is responsible for "OCD" traits, such as constantly thinking about a loved one.
  • Nor-epinephrine causes sweaty palms and heart palpitations.
  • Dopamine plays a crucial role in mate selection.
• Oxytocin and Vasopressin: Closely linked to long-term bonding and relationships characterized by strong attachments.
  • Oxytocin, known as the "cuddle hormone," is released when people hug or during breastfeeding.

Two Component Theory of Love

• Different emotions can produce similar kinds of physical arousal.
• Physical arousal can "produce" specific emotions, leading to "passionate love emotions."
• In an experiment, aroused men (through exercise) rated women as more sexually desirable than non-aroused men.
• Arousal from drugs, caffeine, exercise, or stimulating movies can be mistaken for feelings of attraction/love.

Aloneness vs Loneliness

• Aloneness: Spending time in solitude, which can lead to benefits like creativity, rejuvenation, and recovery.
• Loneliness: The feeling of being isolated from desired relationships.
• Social Loneliness: Less interpersonal interaction than desired.
• Emotional Loneliness: Fewer intimate relationships than desired, resulting from a lack of romantic and/or family intimacy.

Intimacy

• Erikson claimed establishing intimacy is a central task for young adults.
• Components of intimacy: Openness, mutual sharing, trust, self-abandonment, and commitment.

Dimension of Intimacy

• Dimensions of intimacy (identified in research):
  • Orientation to the other and the relationship, focusing on feelings, thoughts, and behavior.
  • Caring and concern for the other.
  • Sexuality: emphasizes mutuality rather than personal concern.
  • Commitment to the other.
  • Communication: the amount revealed, listening, and frequency of communication.

First Impression and Attraction

• First impressions are important.
• How do we form an impression about a person?
• General appearance is important.
• 50-80% of meaning is conveyed by non-verbal cues.
• Verbal cues, specifically opening lines, are very important.
• Physical attractiveness is initially important.
  • People expect attractive individuals to be successful.
  • Attractive individuals are expected to have a socially desirable personality type.
• Similarity:
  • People are initially attracted to those with similar values and attitudes.
  • People feel more comfortable with those who are similar.
  • Communication is easier with those believed to be similar.
• Proximity/familiarity leads to attraction.
  • People are liked when they are near to us, or close in the same setting.
  • Nearness leads to familiarity.
  • Exposure to someone increases liking if the initial feeling was neutral or positive.
• Other factors to attraction:
  • Chemistry: Neurophysiology shows brain patterns of people in love are similar a person with mania.
  • Self-esteem: People are generally attracted to those with similar levels of self-esteem.
  • People are attracted to those who enhance their self-esteem, but affection must be exclusive.

Dating

• The PAIR Project (a longitudinal study) findings:
  • Men's investment in the dating relationship is important role than female's investment.
  • Women's concerns sense with future problems during dating are generally well founded after marriage.
  • Dating experiences normally carry over into marriage.
  • The couples first two years of dating provides about the marriage ahead.
• Kindness + concern creates a positive emotional climate of in marriage.
• Divorce cannot be predicted from how spouses function shortly after marriage.

Assortative Mating: A Filtering Process

• People tend to marry others of similar race, age, education, religious background, and social class.
• Large "pool of eligibles" decreases in size due to filters like propinquity, demographics, social characteristics, physical attraction, personal and lifestyle factors.
• People gradually eliminate those they believe will not be suitable spouses.
• People are willing to date and are engage in relationship with a wider range of individuals than they would marry.
• Mate is found by selecting and narrowing possibilities.

Dating: Interesting Results

• Intimacy develops faster online than in face-to-face relationships.
• Higher levels of self-disclosure is often a factor in online relationship.
• The quality of self-disclosure also matters.
• Passion and online intimacy becomes closely related.
• Online love is possible.

Stages: Relationship Development

• Stage 1: Initial Meeting and Awareness
  • Social factors lead to the clustering of relatively similar people together.
  • People in same social class tend to have same values and similar attitudes.
  • Passion plays a significant role in this stage.
• Stage 2: The Selection Process
  • Operated in the context of people's norms within a social group.
  • People often compromise when selecting a partner.
• Stage 3: Developing Intimacy
  • an important mechanism: Self-disclosure.
  • Four things are shared in self-disclosure: emotions, needs (personal and general), thoughts, beliefs, attitudes, fantasies and self-awareness.
  • Sharing must be mutual.
• Applying Systems theory: Two boundaries are dyadic boundaries and personal boundary.
• Dyadic boundary: Safe to share personal information with one's partner.
• Personal boundary: Certain aspects are not shared with a partner.
• Intimacy develops with shrinking personal boundaries.
• During this stage, each partner is dependent on the another fulfil some needs
• Each partner has power in the relationship.
• Stage 4: Maintaining or Dissolving the Relationship
  • Partners reflect on costs and benefits of relationship.
  • Social exchange theory / Symbolic interactionism.
  • People change, altering their needs and wants.

Explore the complexities of love, from committed relationships and self-expression to the biology and chemistry involved. Discover the roles of testosterone, estrogen, and other 'love chemicals'. Learn about the drives that shape our desires.