Summary:
The main focus of Chapter 6 centers around the concepts of romance, love, and loving relationships. It begins by explaining the differences between self-love, friendship, and love and friendship and how their roles play affect in our society. Self-love is important because it is the basis for self-esteem and people who like themselves are generally more open to criticism and less demanding of others. Friendship on the other hand, is a relationship with someone for whom you feel affection and respect, can count on for assistance, and with whom you discuss important personal topics. When this part of the chapter mentions love and friendship it identifies eight important qualities of friendship: enjoyment, acceptance, trust, respect, mutual support, confiding, understanding, and honesty. Love consists of the previously listed qualities and has the addition of sexual desire, priority over other relationships, and caring to the point of great self-sacrifice. Both love and friendship are relationships that develop over time. After the description of these, the chapter continues to discuss what love truly is, including some characteristics of it, what attracts people to each other, and the difference between lust and love. On a similar topic, the chapter continues to discuss what it means when referring to someone caring, the idea of intimacy, and commitment. It is said that these three characteristics of love are essential. Like almost every topic in sociology, the concept of love has different theories to explain it. This next section discusses the biochemistry of love, attachment theory, Reiss’s Wheel Theory of Love, Sternberg’s Triangular Theory of Love, Lee’s Styles of Loving, and the Exchange Theory. Each of these theories was thoroughly described and displayed some positives and negatives. Benokraitis continues Chapter 6 by stating the functions of love and loving. In this section details of what love fulfills in our lives are covered, such as love ensuring human survival, love enhancing our physical and emotional health, love improving the quality of our lives, and love simply being fun. Chapter 6 then continues to look into how we experience love in this day and age. There are differences in the way that men and women conceive of love and how they express it. This section of the chapter discusses the debate of whether women or men are more romantic, whether women or men are more intimate, the difference between same-sex love versus heterosexual love, and the different barriers that we must cross to experience love such as mass society and demographic factors, double standards, “me-first” individualism, and personality and family characteristics. Although we all like to think that love is perfect, this chapter then continues to talk about what happens when love goes wrong and how it goes wrong such as narcissists who have exaggerated feelings of power and self-importance, jealousy and when people try to control the love, and other controlling behaviors such as the infamous “if you loved me…” line, guilt trips, emotional and physical abuse, etc. This chapter also realizes that relationships and couples change over time; thus it discusses how they change including some of the characteristics of romantic love and love in long-term relationships. The final section of this chapter discusses the global view of love which includes the notion of romantic love versus arranged love.
What was interesting/what did I learn:
After reading this chapter I found the attachment theory to be the most interesting. Although I know that a lot of people enjoy their alone time occasionally, it seems to hold true that our primary motivation is to be connected with other people. It seemed interesting that the anxious/ambivalent adults tended to fall in love easily and wanted a commitment almost immediately because they seem to be the most insecure about themselves and the relationship.
Question:
Because love and friendship are so similar based on the eight important qualities of friendship that Keith Davis stated, what happens if the remaining three that it takes to be classified as love are not all there? If someone in a relationship feels like they love someone but does not want to always prioritize that relationship over another relationship (a friendship for example), does that mean that they are not in love?
According to the book, I think that does mean they are not in love. By prioritizing the loving relationship over other relationships, I hope they mean it in a healthy way. If you are constantly ditching your friends for your lover, I think the loving relationship has to be reevaluated. You have to have a healthy balance between your lover and friends. If the lover is getting too "clingy" and doesn't want to be with anyone else but you or doesn't allow you to be with anyone else, they have reached a point where they are too attached. You may ask, why is that a bad thing? Aren't you supposed to enjoy each others' company? Well, yes. But what happens if you lose that person? What if they leave you or die? You have to remember that people will always fail you. You cannot trust in one person alone or people alone because they may let you down. I don't mean this in a cynical way.
ReplyDeleteI don't necessarily think it doesn't mean people aren't in love, just maybe not in a way that will foster a long-term "good" relationship. I think that people can love people without fulfilling every single category listed. I don't think you can really make a check list to see if you meet all the criteria to be in love with someone, usually it's up to the two people to decide for themselves if what they're feeling is love or not.
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