Love and the Development of Sexual Relationships

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Love and the Development of Sexual Relationships
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What is Love ?

• Lees Styles of Loving (1974)
• Eros (romantic love). Place their emphasis on
  physical beauty as they search for ideal mates.
  Erotic lovers delight in the visual beauty and
  tactile/sensual pleasures provided by their
  lovers bodies.

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What is Love ?

• Lees Styles of Loving (1974)
• Ludis (game playing). Play the field and acquire
  many sexual conquests with little or no
  commitment. Love is for fun, the act of
  seduction is to be enjoyed and relationships are
  to remain casual and transitory.

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What is Love ?

• Lees Styles of Loving (1974)
• Mania (possessive love). Inclined to seek
  obsessive love relationships that are often
  characterized by turmoil and jealousy. These
  people live a roller-coaster style of love where
  each display of affection from the lover brings
  ecstasy, whereas the mildest slight produces
  painful agitation.

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What is Love ?

• Lees Styles of Loving (1974)
• Storge (companionate love). Slow to develop
  affection and commitment but tend to experience
  relationships that endure. This style is love
  without fever or turmoil a peaceful and quiet
  kind of relating that usually begins as
  friendship and develops over time into affection
  and love.

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What is Love ?

• Lees Styles of Loving (1974)
• Agape (altruistic love). Characterized by
  selflessness and a caring, compassionate desire
  to give to another without expectation of
  reciprocity. Such love is patient and never
  demanding or jealous.

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What is Love ?

• Lees Styles of Loving (1974)
• Pragma (pragmatic love) Inclined to select lovers
  based on rational, practical criteria (e.g.,
  shared interests) that are likely to lead to
  mutual satisfaction. These individuals approach
  love in a business like fashion by trying to get
  the best romantic deal by seeking partners with
  social, educational, religious, and interest
  patterns that are compatible with their own.

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What is Love ?

• Romantic love
• The dramatic, passionate form of love that has
  been celebrated in story and verse throughout
  history.
• Tennov coined the word limerence to describe the
  most intense forms of romantic love

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What is Love ?

• Romantic love
• The romantic love cycle
• Often begins with, but not always, a stage of
  receptivity toward love or love readiness.
• The falling in love stage usually flows into a
  stage of being in love, marked by optimism,
  elation, and a sense of permanency.

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What is Love ?

• Romantic love
• The romantic love cycle
• This stage is usually short-lived, giving way to
  a transitional period in which lovers first
  notice imperfections and faults, encounter
  boredom, impatience, or frustration, and begin
  testing each other.
• This phase generates conflict, which may be
  resolved (maintaining the relationship),m
  temporarily shelved (in an uneasy truce), or
  cause a falling out of love.

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What is Love ?

• Romantic Love Cycle

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What is Love ?

• Companionate Love
• The reality-based love without the passions of
  romantic love but with a better durability.

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What is Love ? Sternbergs Triangle
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What is Love ? Sternbergs Triangle

• Passion The motivational component that fuels
  romantic feelings, physical attraction, and
  desire for sexual interaction. Passion instills
  a deep desire to be united with the loved one.
  In a sense passion is like an addiction, because
  its capacity to provide intense stimulation and
  pleasure can exert a powerful craving in a
  person.

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What is Love ? Sternbergs Triangle

• Intimacy The emotional component of love that
  encompasses the sense of being bonded with
  another person. It includes feelings of warmth,
  sharing, and emotional closeness. Intimacy also
  embraces a willingness to help the other and an
  openness to sharing private thoughts and feelings
  with the beloved.

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What is Love ? Sternbergs Triangle

• Commitment The thinking or cognitive aspect of
  love. It refers to the conscious decision to
  love another and to maintain a relationships over
  time in spite of difficulties that may arise.

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What is Love ? Sternbergs Triangle

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What is Love ? Sternbergs Triangle

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What is Love ? Sternbergs Triangle

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Love as Attachment

• Shaver, Hazan Bradshaw (1988) have proposed
  adult love relationships are remarkably similar
  to attachment behavior between an infant and its
  parents.
• The use exactly the same terms to describe adult
  relationships as does Ainsworth, 1978)
• Secure. Dont worry about being abandoned or
  about having some get too close to them.

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Love as Attachment

• Avoidant. Uncomfortable about being too close to
  someone else and have trouble trusting a lover
  completely.
• Anxious/ambivalent. Insecure about
  relationships. They tend to worry that their
  partners dont really love them or wont want to
  stay with them they are often so intense and
  overbearing in their love that they scare
  partners away.

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Love as Attachment
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The Biological Side of Love

• Evolutionary biologists point out that
  reproductive success may at least partly be
  linked to love.
• Hundreds of centuries ago, successful
  reproduction hinged on two factors
• genetic diversity to ensure the health of
  offspring, and
• the mans closeness to his sexual partner during
  pregnancy and the infancy of their newborn child
  to provide protection and food and to help in
  child rearing

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The Biological Side of Love

• A second type of evidence suggests that how we
  distinguish between love, anger, jealousy,
  nervousness, and other emotions is not based on
  our bodily reaction only (since the responses may
  be identical) but rather on the way we interpret
  or label what we are experiencing (Schacter,
  1964).
• Love may have a biological basis, but love is
  most importantly a psychosocial phenomenon.

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Love and Sex

• Men and Women Two Opposing Views
• Traditionally women were taught that love is a
  requirement for sex, while males were urged to
  obtain sexual experience whether or not love was
  present.
• Today, although restrictions have loosened even
  more for some, many heterosexual couples still
  need a statement of love before they feel morally
  comfortable with the idea of going all the way.

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Love and Sex

• Sex without Love/Love without Sex
• In our culture, love is closely linked to sex and
  marriage, but either can exist without love.
• Personal decisions about sex are best made on the
  basis of individual values and beliefs, including
  examining and establishing a priority between two
  values that may conflict.

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Feelings About Sex Without Love
52
Husbands
21
27
(3,608)
37
22
41
Wives
(3,601)
Male Cohabitors
72
16
12
(650)
Female Cohabitors
67
13
20
(648)
79
7
14
Gay Men
(1,915)
57
24
19
Lesbians
(1,554)
Do not approve of Sex without Love
Approve of Sex Without Love
Neutral
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The End