Wednesday, September 28, 2011

Chapter 6: Romance, Love, and Loving Relationships

1. Summary:
            Chapter 6 focuses on what is considered love and the positive and negative attributes of love. The chapter begins with a discussion on self-love and how loving yourself gives you more confidence and may help you love others. Important qualities of friendship are examined and the chapter explains that love includes all of the same qualities of love with the addition of sexual longings, self sacrificing caring and placing a love relationship above all other relationships. The chapter explains that a relationship often begins as a friendship and develops into love but true love seldom develops with someone who would not be a friend. A decrease in face-to-face communication has occurred as the use on technology increases perhaps causing the number of close friends a person has in their life to decrease as well. Friendships and how they relate to love are discussed at the end of this section chapter. This section distinguishes the difference between sexual arousal, a physiological response, and sexual desire, a psychological state, and how sexual desire can lead to romantic love.
            The next section explores how a equal amount of caring, intimacy, and commitment is essential in healthy loving relationships. Caring entails responding to and helping others by providing support and being conscious of one’s needs. Intimacy involves feeling close physically, affectively, and verbally. With caring and intimacy, commitment is often the next quality obtained in loving relationships. Commitment includes an obligation to be loyal and to stay in a relationship, plans of a future together, and the ability to compromise when problems arise. Commitments involve affection, companionship, and trust.
            This chapter introduces perspectives and theories about why and how we love. Biological perspectives claim evolution, biology, and chemistry are responsible for love. Romance is seen as a function in which children are produced. It examines chemicals like dopamine which trigger love and create specific feelings in relationships. One flaw with this viewpoint is that chemicals like dopamine are also found in cocaine users and gamblers making it difficult to clearly determine how hormones “cause” love. Sociological perspectives & some psychological theories claim that culture, not chemicals are responsible for why and how we love. The Attachment theory suggests people are motivated to be connected with other people because this is the only true security we have in life. The chapter suggests that people who form close, loving relationships in early childhood are most likely to form close, loving relationships in adulthood. According to this theory, three styles of attachments exist that often change when experiences and influences change in a person’s life; secure style in which a person easily form close relationships with others, avoidance style where it is uncomfortable for a person to become close to others, and anxious/ambivalent style when a person finds that others do not want to form the close relationships they want. Reiss’s wheel theory of love maintains that there are 4 stages of love: 1) Partner’s establish rapport; they form an initial interest by identifying their similarities 2) Partner’s come closer together through self-revelation 3) Partner’s develop greater mutual dependency and become more intimate 4) Partner’s experience personality need fulfillment. These stages often change or fluctuate back and forth depending on different situations that normally occur in a relationship. This theory does not consider the fact that these situations usually vary in intensity. Sternberg’s triangular theory of love claims that love is made up of intimacy and passion which leads to romance, physical attraction, romance and sexual desire usually followed by decision/commitment when partners decide to love each other and make a long-term commitment to love each other. The trouble with this theory is that it is unrealistic to call one relationship a “perfect match” and not another; plus partners may not always feel the same way their mate does at every stage of their relationship. Lee’s styles of loving holds that there are 6 basic styles of loving: 1) eros, which personifies “love at first sight;” couples are initially passionate; 2) mania, which is characterized by jealousy and possessiveness; 3) lodus, which is, quite the opposite of mania, characterized by carefree, no commitment, playful love; 4) storge is typified as compassionate love that develops overtime; 5) agape is characterized by unselfishness, patience, and non-controlling love; 6) pragma is marked by practicality and sensibility. The Exchange theory was discussed in chapter 2, as the social exchange perspective, which is marked weighing the costs and benefits of love from adolescence to later in life; our perceptions may change as to what is considered a benefit versus a cost as we mature.
            Next the chapter considers some of the positive functions of love. Stating that love makes human want to live, which may explain why people who lack love sometimes turn to suicide as their only way out of their problematic lives. Love also improves a person’s physical and emotional health which in turn decreases rates of suffering, disease, and premature deaths. Along with better health, love allows us to have a higher quality of life by obtaining the support necessary to boost ones self-esteem and confidence. With everything considered, love is fun and enjoyable; however, it doesn’t just appear on its own, one has to find it.
            The next section analyzes statistics that indicate married men between the ages of 30-49 are more likely to be in love. According to several surveys, men fall in love faster and suffer more when a relationship ends. Men are also more romantic according to the surveys and likely to think about past relationships more often. However, men are more likely to overlook a love, which could lead to marriage. Women enjoy the emotional aspects of becoming close to another person and are more likely to verbalize their feelings than men. And while women are more likely to put effort into making a relationship work, they are quicker to move on than men when a relationship fails. There are actually more similarities than differences in the way men and women approach love. Obstacles that accompany love are examined including the need to deal with a decline in interpersonal communication due to modern technologies; the influence demographics may have on one’s love experience; society’s double standard and emphasis on individualism. People in relationships must often come to terms with personality and family conflicts as well as experiences that have influenced one’s feelings toward love.  Surviving unrequited love is another obstacle for some as well as coping with the negative view some people have about gay and lesbian love, while other must work to understand that heterosexuals and same-sex love are actually very similar.
Negative behaviors that often cause a love to go wrong are discussed including   narcissism and jealousy; a narcissist is characterized by extreme selfishness and believes that he is better than everyone else. A narcissist can become very hostile and dangerous if rejected. Jealousy often comes from an unhealthy insecurity, low self confidence and possessiveness. It can be destructive and harmful in a relationship especially if it leads to stalking or cyber stalking. Other unhealthy, controlling behaviors that may arise in love relationships include; physical and emotional abuse, withdrawal of love by one partner, and inflicting a feeling of guilt on another.
            Chapter 6 distinguishes the similarities and difference between romantic love and long-term love stating that both involve trust, understanding, and honesty. However, as exciting as romantic love can be it often involves game-playing and selfish behavior and is usually immature and short lived; while long-term love is constant and involves compassionate and commitment and creates a sense of security. The chapter finally concludes with a discussion about the various ways love is interpreted and expressed by other cultures. Many societies embrace romantic love, but there are a number of countries in which arranged marriages are more prominent than romantic love because family connections are considered more important than individual relationships.

2. What was interesting/what did you learn:
            I found the section that discussed how men and women experience love differently very interesting. The chapter claims that polls show men can be more romantic and more likely to be in love than women and suffer more when a relationship ends. This really caught my attention because, I always thought since girls were more emotional than boys they would be more likely to suffer from trouble in their relationships. I also believed females dwelt more on the past and fell in love faster than boys. The section titled, “Are Women or Men More Romantic,” makes it sound like men are the emotional ones who fall in love too easily and get their hearts broken more than women. Personally, I have always thought the opposite was true.
            I also found Reiss’s wheel theory of love very fascinating. I think the 4 stages: rapport, self-revelation, mutual dependency, and personality need fulfillment are very practical to follow. I like the way the theory is presented by personifying the stages like spokes on a bike, which makes the theory comprehensible as the wheel may keep turning to produce a deep and lasting relationship or it could stop when specific events or issues occur that may cause the relationship to come to a temporary or permanent halt.

3. Discussion Point:
            I also found the section in which different societal views of love were discussed very intriguing. As a person who really dislikes public display of affection (PDA), the part about societies, like many Middle Eastern countries, designating the act of men and women embracing each other in public as a taboo stimulated my interest and raised several questions. Is it really necessary for couples to show their love for one another by publicly displaying sexual intimacy for the whole world to see? Can’t love be communicated verbally without distracting or grossing out others in public? Should erotic activity be banned for private settings only?
I was also intrigued by the discussion in the same section about countries like Saudi Arabia and other Indian cultures that denounced and banned the celebration of Valentine’s Day. Why is Valentine’s Day important in the U.S.? And do lovers really need to have one day singled out to show how much love they have for the other? In other words, should people really be spending money just to communicate their love for one day? After all, aren’t healthy, loving relationships ones that demonstrate day in and day out that they love each other? 

2 comments:

  1. I'm totally with you on all of the above. Valentine's Day has become too significant in the US. It seemed like the book viewed healthy relationships as ones that weren't based on just physical attraction and material ways of making each other happy. Valentine's Day is a holiday that is kind of dedicated to that. I think it can also relate back to discussions about gender roles. What are the male's responsibilities on Valentine's Day? Is it the man's job to find a place to go to dinner, buy the flowers and chocolate and put the whole day together? Does the woman just show up and look pretty? Those seem to be the stereotypes, is it different for anyone else?

    Gina Zidek

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  2. I agree with you on all of your discussion points. I would like to voice my opinion on your Valentine's Day questions. I think Valentine's Day is important in the U.S. because I feel that it was a harmless holiday that has been blown out of proportion over the years, and retailers have found Valentine's Day a good excuse to make money.
    I do not think people need Valentine's Day just to show their love to their loved one. However, I feel people have become more materialistic in the last 20 or more years. With being materialistic, people want to receive items that are expensive in order to prove their love. Instead of a possible nice event such as a car washing, or cooking a nice dinner, which would be another way of expressing love, people need to feel an expensive item that can be paraded around friends is more valuable. It seems that money talks and the heart goes unheard.

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