Chapter Seven

• 1. Love of Beauty
• 2. Playful Love
• 3. Companionate Love
• 4. Obsessive Love
• 5. Realistic Love
• 6. Altruistic Love

These lovers are passionate and intense. They seem to have an immediate and powerful attraction to physical beauty.

These lovers seem to derive the most pleasure from playing the game (interested in variety and good times and may have more than one lover at a time). They often consider love to be less important then work and believe in themselves so strongly that they feel they don't need much from others.

These lovers are patient; they let love grow naturally into a peaceful, enchanting affection. Based on friendship and companionship. Can become a dull routine because these relationships are stable and predictable.

These lovers are consumed by and possessive of their relationship. This style combines the passion of the love of beauty with the desire to hold back feelings and manipulate the relationship found in playful love.

Like a drug addiction, except the lover is the object of dependence. The slightest lack of enthusiasm by one partner will cause anxiety, pain, and/or jealousy in the other.

A state that is commonly experienced by people who say they are in love, but is not love even though it has many characteristics of Lee's obsessive love. People will rearrange their lives in order to gain greater social and psychological proximity to the person they desire.

These lovers combine the control and manipulation of playful love with companionate love. Compatability is examined and sought on the basis of practicality.

These lovers view love as most major religions espouse--unselfish, patient, kind, generous, never jealous, never demanding reciprocity.

It involves reaching out to strangers in despair, thinking deeply about the well-being of others.

Altruistic and Companionate Love

• 1. Intimacy-feelings of closeness, sharing, communication, and support
• 2. Passion-physiological arousal and an intense desire to be united with the loved one
• 3. Commitment-involves both the short-term decision to love another and the longer-term commitment to maintain it.

Lacks intimacy, passion, & commitment; majority of relationships

Intimacy only

Passion only

Commitment only

Intimacy and Passion

Commitment and Passion

Commitment and Intimacy

Commitment, Intimacy and Passion

An attraction resulting from positive reinforcement received from other; tends to increase over time

More complex than liking; process of experiencing emotional arousal (positive or negative) & rationalizing it as love. It can erode over time.

• Affection: warmth, closeness, fondness
• Respect: others admirable characteristics

• Attachment: desire to be with, approved by, & cared for by another person
• Caring: opposite attachment, giving rather than needing
• Intimacy: bond or link between 2; combines self-fulfillment (attachment) & self-surrender (caring)

• 1. Partners like to spend time together
• 2. They feel like they mutually influence each other
• 3. They say they get positive feelings from the relationship
• 4. They feel like they know and understand each other
• 5. They want their relationship to continue

• 1. Personality and Early experience
• 2. Situational and Developmental factors
• 3. Cultural Guidelines
• 4. Emotional arousal and labeling
• 5. Self-Fulfillment
• 6. Self-Surrender
• 7. Commitment to a joint identity

Genetic predispositions: (Buss) Females interested in males who can protect their young; looking for resources males can invest. Males interested in female reproductive ability; looking for signs of viability

• Our early experiences w/affection shape our later attempts to build intimate relationships.
• Examples-deprived early can lead to fearing commitment to intimacy optimism about ones own future marital relationship depended on whether one perceives parents as having a good marriage.

• 1. Secure
• 2. Avoidance
• 3. Anxious/Ambivalent

• happy, trusting, accepts partner despite faults
• love rises & falls
• some love never fades

• fears intimacy, experiences emotional extremes & jealousy
• love is an illusion, if it exists, it doesn't last long
• worries that partners will want more from them than they can give

• Combination of obsessive love & love of beauty
• emotional extremes
• easy to fall in love
• worries excessively that partner doesn't want him or her/won't stay

• Circumstances can affect whether or not we develop relationships with others.
• Examples:
• People who work together can develop relationships influenced by work factors.
• Spring fever: environmental changes can affect ones feelings of intimacy
• Stage in life: love for a suburban child of 6, a 21 year old first bride, a middle-age divorcee, & an older widow in a nursing home.
• Intimacy readiness: unhappy bachelor/ette, college senior, unhappily married person

• We learn the normative boundaries for types of intimate relationships from our culture.
• Our culture provides guidelines around which we are expected to structure our perceptions & behavior in intimate relationships.

• Must acknowledge the role of body chemistry in experiencing intimate relationships.
• Oxytocin: the love drug; a hormone that promotes close, intimate bonds, nurturing behavior
• Phenylethylamine (PEA): amphetamine-related; triggers euphoria & energizes romantic relationships

• Another one of the foundations of intimacy is emotional labeling.
• One way we try to understand our emotions = by labeling them.
• Doing so influences 1. Our expectations for type of relationship2. Perceptions of/behavior toward other3. Motivation to expend energy for relationship

• Assumption -
• Affection
• Self-esteem needs
• Security needs
• Freedom needs
• Equality needs

related to sense of belonging; sex is a minimal and basic requirement for affection

Must recognize/deal with ways to communicate self-respect, recognition, appreciation, & status. Need to think about own identity before you can contribute much to a joint identity.

physical & psychological security; absence of threat, ego-supported, & some amount of predictiveness (control)

self-reliance, independence; can only feel fulfilled when partners do not feel too limited/restrained by relationship

superiority vs. subordinate (power), a balance of involvement in relationship

• Telling yourself satisfactions will be forthcoming
• Seeking satisfactions from other relationships
• Waiting for external forces to dissolve so exit from relationship = easier
• Taking dissatisfaction out on partner & feeding neurotically on mutual misery.

• Process of evaluation in which you ask Whereas self-fulfillment dealt w/needing, self-surrender deals w/giving.
• Assumption: extent to which one is willing to give to other reflects degree of intimacy he/she feels.Those who love us best won’t hesitate to help us out, no matter what