Love and Sexual Relationships

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Love and Sexual Relationships
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Love

• What is love (your personal definition)?
• Passionate Love
• Intense feelings, anxiety, short-lived
• Overlook shortcomings, self-focus
• Companionate Love
• Deep attachment, familiarity
• Overcome shortcomings, other-focus

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Implicit theories of love

• Developed unconsciously, over time
• Powerful
• Unchallenged
• Defaults
• Sources of implicit theories of love
• Parents
• Peers
• Media
• Music, T.V., Movies, etc.

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Analysis of a love song

• Students to analyze one of 9 songs
• Truly, madly, deeply (Savage Garden)
• Drowning (Backstreet Boys)
• My heart will go on (Celine Dion)
• From this moment on (Shania Twain)
• 2 become 1 (Spice Girls)
• Commitment (LeAnn Rimes)
• As long as you love me (Backstreet Boys)
• Unchained Melody (Righteous Brothers)
• Drops of Jupiter (Train)

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Themes in North American Love Songs

• Loss of control
• Love lasts forever
• Complete dependency on other person
• Love solves all problems
• The one there is only one love for each
• Connectedness, even when not together

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Chinese Love Songs (Tothbaum Tsang, 1998)

• Collectivism vs Individualism
• Independent vs Interdependent
• Chinese vs North American Love Songs
• Embeddedness 79 vs 39
• Embedded in natural world 43 vs 16
• Embedded in Relationship 55 vs 26
• Negative expectations for relationship
• 69 vs 37
• Suffering expected 69 to 47
• Intensity and Desire were similar across cultures
• Chinese values of loyalty, devotion, commitment
• Taoist yuan, futility of strivings

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Models of Love

• Sternbergs Triangular Model
• Passion
• Intimacy
• Commitment
• Lees Styles of Loving
• Biochemistry
• PEA, norepinephrine, dopamine ? giddy, brief
• Endorphins ? soothing, pain relief, long-term