CHAPTER 12- CLOSE
RELATIONSHIPS: PASSION, INTIMACY
AND SEXUALITY
Learning objectives:
Describe the different types of love.
Differentiate exchange and communal relationships.
Describe the four styles of attachment.
Identify the factors that are important to maintaining relationships over
time.
Use the theories of sexuality to explain sexual attitudes and behaviour.
Summarise the work on sexual jealousy.
WHAT IS LOVE?
No simple answer can be given.
Part of the problem is that there is more than one kind of love, so more than
one phenomenon needs to be explained.
o The same person might feel different kinds of love toward several different
people, even at the same point in their life.
Caring for the other person regardless of one’s personal gain may thus be a
defining aspect of love in general.
PASSIONATE AND COMPANIONATE LOVE
The 2 main types of love:
o Passionate love (Romantic love): Strong feelings of longing, desire and
excitement toward a special person.
It makes people want to spend as much time as possible together, to
touch each other and engage in other physical intimacies (often
including sex), to think about each other and feel joy upon seeing each
other, and to exhibit other patterns that suggest strong emotions.
o Companionate love (Affectionate love): Mutual understanding and
caring to make the relationship succeed.
1
, Means perceiving the other person as your soul mate or special
partner.
It signifies a high level of mutual understanding and caring and in many
cases a commitment to make the relationship succeed.
Companionate love is what makes people want to remain each other’s
good companions.
There is probably a physiological, even biochemical, difference between the
two kinds of love.
o People who feel passionately in love have high levels of phenylethylamine
(PEA), a neurotransmitter that enables information to travel from one brain
cell to another.
Phenylethylamine (PEA): Produces strong emotional feelings, including
those ‘tingling’ sensations of excitement and euphoria that you get when the
person you love walks into the room or holds your hand.
o It also helps produce high intensity and frequency of sexual desire.
o PEA is a leading candidate for this chemical, although further research is
needed, and passionate love may affect more than one chemical.
o companionate love does not seem to be characterised by these elevated
levels of PEA.
LOVE AND CULTURE
The PEA response suggests that passionate love involves something more
basic than cultural learning, although culture can definitely work with or
against the biochemical responses to love objects.
Some authorities6 have argued that romantic love is a cultural construction,
basing this idea on events and themes that have emerged in Western history.
o Recent cross-cultural work has begun to suggest that passionate love is not
merely a product of Western culture.
William Jankowiak believed that romantic love is found everywhere (that is, in
the vast majority of cultures he surveyed around the world, though not in
every single one).
o This does not mean that culture does not play a role.
It plays a role in the expression of this love.
The forms and expressions of romantic passion vary significantly, as does the
culture’s attitude toward passionate love.
2
, o Modern Western culture has come to regard passionate love as an
important part of life, so that if you never experience it, you will have
missed out on a major form of fulfilment.
o Possibly, people in other cultures feel love in the same way but do not
place the same value on it and do not feel that a life without passionate
love is by definition a lesser life.
Passionate love may seem like a form of temporary insanity.
o Though most cultures have recognised the existence of passionate love,
different cultures and even different eras in Western culture have held very
different attitudes toward it.
Eg. In previous centuries in Europe, people regarded passionate love as
a form of mental imbalance that made people feel and act in strange,
even crazy ways. They did not think that passionate love was a good
reason to marry someone.
Passionate love may therefore be found among humans everywhere, but how
they experience it and how they regard it may depend on their culture.
LOVE ACROSS TIME
Companionate love may be harder to create than passionate love, which
often arises spontaneously and without people trying to fall in love.
o It takes sustained work and effort to build trust, intimacy and other
foundations of companionate love.
o Companionate love is what makes a good marriage or a stable,
trustworthy, lasting relationship.
Passionate love may be the most effective emotion for starting a relationship;
companionate love may be the most effective emotion for making it succeed
and survive in the long run.
o One reason that people are sceptical about passionate love as the basis for
marriage is that it tends to be temporary.
Most people experience passionate love for a relatively brief period in a
relationship.
A successful long-term relationship thus depends on making an effective
transition from one kind of love to the other.
A behavioural sign of the decrease in passion can be found in data about
frequency of sexual intercourse.
o As time goes by, the average married couple has sex less and less often.
3
, o Newlyweds generally live up to the stereotype of passionate young lovers
who have relatively frequent sex. But this does not last.
o Studies that follow married couples over many years find that they start off
having sex relatively often, but that this frequent rate decreases sharply at
first and then continues to go down as the couple grows old together.
In 2014, a South African marketing research company conducted the
Women’s Sexual Wellbeing Survey on urban South African women. The
women were asked about their sexual well-being. The findings were similar
to the findings of international studies. After the age of 40 the frequency of
sex decreases although the quality of the sex increases. The study found
that 52% of respondents over the age of 40 almost always experienced an
orgasm, in comparison to 40% of younger women.
The biochemical rush associated with high levels of PEA is thus not destined
to be permanent.
o It is probably a feature linked to new love and the forming of a new
relationship bond.
Unfortunately, many people probably mistake its normal and natural
decline for a sign that they are no longer in love.
They stop feeling swept away, and in particular their feelings of sexual
desire for each other may dwindle to the individuals’ normal, baseline
levels, but the two people may mistake this process to mean that they
have lost interest in each other or, even more ominously, that the other
person has ceased to love them.
When passionate love fails to convert into companionate love, the story line is
likely to be one of a wonderful, romantic beginning followed by a downward
spiral of stress, disappointment, estrangement and ultimate failure.
o Fortunately, many people avoid that fate and do have a happy marriage for
a long time or even a lifetime.
STERNBERG’S TRIANGLE
Sternberg proposed that love is composed of three different ingredients.
1. Passion: An emotional state characterised by high bodily arousal, such as
increased heart rate and blood pressure.
- Physical attraction and romantic attraction to another person.
4
RELATIONSHIPS: PASSION, INTIMACY
AND SEXUALITY
Learning objectives:
Describe the different types of love.
Differentiate exchange and communal relationships.
Describe the four styles of attachment.
Identify the factors that are important to maintaining relationships over
time.
Use the theories of sexuality to explain sexual attitudes and behaviour.
Summarise the work on sexual jealousy.
WHAT IS LOVE?
No simple answer can be given.
Part of the problem is that there is more than one kind of love, so more than
one phenomenon needs to be explained.
o The same person might feel different kinds of love toward several different
people, even at the same point in their life.
Caring for the other person regardless of one’s personal gain may thus be a
defining aspect of love in general.
PASSIONATE AND COMPANIONATE LOVE
The 2 main types of love:
o Passionate love (Romantic love): Strong feelings of longing, desire and
excitement toward a special person.
It makes people want to spend as much time as possible together, to
touch each other and engage in other physical intimacies (often
including sex), to think about each other and feel joy upon seeing each
other, and to exhibit other patterns that suggest strong emotions.
o Companionate love (Affectionate love): Mutual understanding and
caring to make the relationship succeed.
1
, Means perceiving the other person as your soul mate or special
partner.
It signifies a high level of mutual understanding and caring and in many
cases a commitment to make the relationship succeed.
Companionate love is what makes people want to remain each other’s
good companions.
There is probably a physiological, even biochemical, difference between the
two kinds of love.
o People who feel passionately in love have high levels of phenylethylamine
(PEA), a neurotransmitter that enables information to travel from one brain
cell to another.
Phenylethylamine (PEA): Produces strong emotional feelings, including
those ‘tingling’ sensations of excitement and euphoria that you get when the
person you love walks into the room or holds your hand.
o It also helps produce high intensity and frequency of sexual desire.
o PEA is a leading candidate for this chemical, although further research is
needed, and passionate love may affect more than one chemical.
o companionate love does not seem to be characterised by these elevated
levels of PEA.
LOVE AND CULTURE
The PEA response suggests that passionate love involves something more
basic than cultural learning, although culture can definitely work with or
against the biochemical responses to love objects.
Some authorities6 have argued that romantic love is a cultural construction,
basing this idea on events and themes that have emerged in Western history.
o Recent cross-cultural work has begun to suggest that passionate love is not
merely a product of Western culture.
William Jankowiak believed that romantic love is found everywhere (that is, in
the vast majority of cultures he surveyed around the world, though not in
every single one).
o This does not mean that culture does not play a role.
It plays a role in the expression of this love.
The forms and expressions of romantic passion vary significantly, as does the
culture’s attitude toward passionate love.
2
, o Modern Western culture has come to regard passionate love as an
important part of life, so that if you never experience it, you will have
missed out on a major form of fulfilment.
o Possibly, people in other cultures feel love in the same way but do not
place the same value on it and do not feel that a life without passionate
love is by definition a lesser life.
Passionate love may seem like a form of temporary insanity.
o Though most cultures have recognised the existence of passionate love,
different cultures and even different eras in Western culture have held very
different attitudes toward it.
Eg. In previous centuries in Europe, people regarded passionate love as
a form of mental imbalance that made people feel and act in strange,
even crazy ways. They did not think that passionate love was a good
reason to marry someone.
Passionate love may therefore be found among humans everywhere, but how
they experience it and how they regard it may depend on their culture.
LOVE ACROSS TIME
Companionate love may be harder to create than passionate love, which
often arises spontaneously and without people trying to fall in love.
o It takes sustained work and effort to build trust, intimacy and other
foundations of companionate love.
o Companionate love is what makes a good marriage or a stable,
trustworthy, lasting relationship.
Passionate love may be the most effective emotion for starting a relationship;
companionate love may be the most effective emotion for making it succeed
and survive in the long run.
o One reason that people are sceptical about passionate love as the basis for
marriage is that it tends to be temporary.
Most people experience passionate love for a relatively brief period in a
relationship.
A successful long-term relationship thus depends on making an effective
transition from one kind of love to the other.
A behavioural sign of the decrease in passion can be found in data about
frequency of sexual intercourse.
o As time goes by, the average married couple has sex less and less often.
3
, o Newlyweds generally live up to the stereotype of passionate young lovers
who have relatively frequent sex. But this does not last.
o Studies that follow married couples over many years find that they start off
having sex relatively often, but that this frequent rate decreases sharply at
first and then continues to go down as the couple grows old together.
In 2014, a South African marketing research company conducted the
Women’s Sexual Wellbeing Survey on urban South African women. The
women were asked about their sexual well-being. The findings were similar
to the findings of international studies. After the age of 40 the frequency of
sex decreases although the quality of the sex increases. The study found
that 52% of respondents over the age of 40 almost always experienced an
orgasm, in comparison to 40% of younger women.
The biochemical rush associated with high levels of PEA is thus not destined
to be permanent.
o It is probably a feature linked to new love and the forming of a new
relationship bond.
Unfortunately, many people probably mistake its normal and natural
decline for a sign that they are no longer in love.
They stop feeling swept away, and in particular their feelings of sexual
desire for each other may dwindle to the individuals’ normal, baseline
levels, but the two people may mistake this process to mean that they
have lost interest in each other or, even more ominously, that the other
person has ceased to love them.
When passionate love fails to convert into companionate love, the story line is
likely to be one of a wonderful, romantic beginning followed by a downward
spiral of stress, disappointment, estrangement and ultimate failure.
o Fortunately, many people avoid that fate and do have a happy marriage for
a long time or even a lifetime.
STERNBERG’S TRIANGLE
Sternberg proposed that love is composed of three different ingredients.
1. Passion: An emotional state characterised by high bodily arousal, such as
increased heart rate and blood pressure.
- Physical attraction and romantic attraction to another person.
4
