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Chapter 6
Love and Choosing a Life Partner
Chapter Outline
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Love and Commitment
Facts about Families: Six Love Styles
Mate Selection and Relationship Stability
The Marriage Market
My Family: An Asian Indian American Student’s Essay on
Arranged Marriages
Homogamy: Narrowing the Pool of Eligibles
Developing the Relationship and Moving Toward
Commitment
Issues for Thought: Date or Acquaintance Race
As We Make Choices: Harmonious Needs in Mate Selection
Cohabitation and Marital Quality and Stability
Love and Commitment
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Love is viewed as the primary reason for
getting and staying married.
Loving involves the acceptance of partners
for themselves.
Loving requires empathy and commitment.
Commitment is characterized by a
willingness to work through problems and
conflicts as opposed to calling it quits when
problems arise; it involves consciously
investing in the relationship.
Love
Marriages between
individuals with a
relatively secure
attachment style that
take place about about
age twenty-five and are
between partners who
grew up intact families
are the most likely to be
satisfying and stable.
Commitment
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Committed lovers have fun together; they
also share tedious times.
They express themselves freely.
They do not see problems as indications
that their relationship is over.
They work to maintain their relationship.
Commitment is characterized by a
willingness to work through problems and
conflicts.
Sternberg’s Triangular
Theory of Love
Three components of love:
1. Intimacy – close, connected feelings.
2. Passion – drives that lead to romance,
physical attraction and sexual
consummation.
3. Commitment – the decision to love
someone and maintain that love.
Sternberg’s Triangular
Theory of Love
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Three components develop at different
times:
 Passion is quickest to develop and
quickest to fade.
 Intimacy develops more slowly.
 Commitment develops gradually.
Sternberg’s Triangular
Theory of Love
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Consummate Love
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Composed of all three components, is
“complete love, …a kind of love
toward which many of us strive,
especially in romantic relationships”
Sternberg’s Triangular
Theory of Love
Facts about Families:
Six Love Styles
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Eros
 Characterized by intense emotional
attachment and powerful sexual feelings or
desires.
Storge
 An affectionate, companionate style of loving
focused on deepening mutual commitment,
respect, friendship, and common goals.
Facts about Families:
Six Love Styles
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Pragma
 Involves rational assessment of a
potential partner’s assets and liabilities.
Agape
 Emphasizes unselfish concern for the
beloved’s needs even when that
requires personal sacrifice.
Facts about Families:
Six Love Styles
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Ludus
 Emphasizes enjoying many sexual partners
rather than searching for a serious
relationship.
Mania
 Rests on strong sexual attraction and
emotional intensity. It differs from eros in that
manic partners are extremely jealous and
moody, and their need for attention and
affection is insatiable.
Attachment Theory and
Loving Relationships
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A secure attachment style is associated with
better prospects for a committed relationship.
An insecure/anxious attachment style entails
“fear of abandonment” with possible
consequences such as jealousy or trying to
control one’s partner.
An avoidant attachment style leads one to pass
up or shun closeness or intimacy.
Three Things Love Isn’t
1.
2.
3.
Martyring
Manipulating
Limerance
Love Isn’t Martyring
Martyrs may:
 Be reluctant to suggest what they want.
 Allow others to be constantly late and
never protest.
 Help loved ones develop talents while
neglecting their own.
 Be sensitive to others’ feelings and hide
their own.
Love Isn’t Manipulation
Manipulators may:
 Ask others to do something that they
could do.
 Assume that others will happily do
whatever they choose.
 Be consistently late.
 Want others to help them develop their
talents but seldom think of reciprocating.
Love Isn’t Limerance
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People in limerence fantasize about being
with the limerent object in all kinds of
situations.
Limerence is characterized by little, if any,
concern for the well-being of the limerent
object.
Limerence can turn into genuine love, but
more often than not, it doesn’t.
Model of Relationship
Outcomes
Mate Selection
and Marital Stability
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Positive attitudes about the relationship,
coupled with realistically positive assessments
of a spouse’s personality traits, are important to
marital stability.
Supportive interaction results in greater marital
satisfaction.
Greater marital satisfaction, in turn, results in
the greater likelihood of marital stability (staying
married).
Intergenerational Transmission
of Divorce Risk
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A divorced parental family transmits to its
children a heightened risk of getting
divorced.
However, not all children of divorced
parents will themselves divorce.
Intergenerational Transmission
of Divorce Risk
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Children of divorce are themselves more
likely to get divorced because they have:
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More, and more serious, personality
problems.
Neither been exposed to nor learned
supportive communication or problemsolving skills.
More accepting attitudes towards divorce.
Minimizing Mate Selection Risk
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Letting go of misconceptions we may
have about love and choosing a partner
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Selecting a partner wisely involves balancing
any insistence on perfection against the
need to be mindful of one’s real needs and
desires.
Working things out requires both partners’
willingness and ability to do so.
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The Marriage Market
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Individuals enter the market armed with
resources—personal and social
characteristics—and then bargain for the
best “buy” that they can get.
Arranged Marriages
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Not uncommon in the less Westernized parts of
Europe, Asia, and Africa.
Couples in arranged marriages are expected to
develop a loving relationship after the marriage.
A study that compared marital satisfaction
among arranged marriages in India to those
more freely chosen in the United States found
no differences in marital satisfaction between
the two groups.
My Family: An Asian Indian American
Student’s Essay on Arranged Marriages
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What are some advantages of arranged
marriage?
Some disadvantages?
In what ways might personal choice be
involved in arranged marriages today?
Free-choice Culture
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The United States is an example of a
free-choice culture:
 People choose their own mates,
although typically they seek parents’
and other family members’ support for
their decision.
Arranged Marriage
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In arranged
marriages, families
and community do
the bargaining, based
on assets such as
status, possessions,
and dowry.
Free-Choice Marriage
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In freely chosen marriages, the individuals perform a
more subtle form of bargaining, weighing the costs and
benefits of personal characteristics, economic status,
and education.
Social Exchange
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Individuals pick the relationship that is
most rewarding or least costly.
In romantic relationships individuals have
resources: beauty, personality, status,
skills, maturity, intellect, originality, etc.
Individuals also have costly attributes:
being demanding, low status, geographic
inaccessibility, etc.
The Traditional Exchange
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Women trade their ability to bear children
and perform domestic duties, along with
sexual accessibility and attractiveness, for
a man’s protection, status, and support.
Both women and men can experience
gender related disadvantages in the
traditional exchange.
Bargaining in a Changing
Society
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Research that looked at mate preferences in the
United States over the past sixty years showed that
men and women have increased the importance
that they put on potential financial success in a
mate, while domestic skills in a future wife have
declined in importance.
One study indicates that, for today’s young man, a
woman’s high socioeconomic status increases her
sexiness.
Today both men and women are likely to want a
spouse with more education or who earns more
than they do
Assortative Mating—A Filtering
Process
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Individuals gradually filter those whom
they think would not make the best
spouse.
Research has shown that people are
willing to date a wider range of individuals
than they would live with or become
engaged to, and they are willing to live
with a wider range of people than they
would marry.
Homogamy: Narrowing the
Pool of Eligibles
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People tend to marry people of similar race,
age, education, religious background, and
social class.
 Endogamy: marrying within one’s social
group.
 Exogamy: marrying outside one’s group.
 Heterogamy, marrying someone dissimilar in
race, age, education, religion, or social class.
Pool of Eligibles
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A group of individuals who, by
background or birth, are considered most
likely to make compatible marriage
partners.
Homogamy
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These Hmong
immigrants in St. Paul,
Minnesota, are
celebrating the Hmong
New Year, which also
serves as a courting
ritual.
Because virtually all
participants are Hmong,
the ritual helps to ensure
racial/ethnic homogamy.
Reasons for Homogamy
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Geographic availability: (propinquity or
proximity) geographic segregation, which
can result from either discrimination or
strong community ties, contributes to
homogamous marriages
Social pressure: cultural values
encourage marrying someone who is
socially similar to ourselves
Heterogamy: Interfaith
Marriages in the U.S.
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Between 30-40% of Jewish, Catholic, Mormon,
Muslim, and a higher percentage of Protestant
adults and children live in interfaith or
interdenominational households
One study found strong religious beliefs are
associated with less couple conflict.
Shared religiosity gave them a commitment to
permanence, coupled with a willingness to
forgive the spouse when conflicts emerged.
Heterogamy: Interracial/Interethnic
Marriages in the U.S.
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Interracial marriages include unions between
partners of the white, black, Asian, or Native
American races with a spouse outside their own
race.
Unions between Hispanics and others, as well
as between Asian/Pacific Islander or Hispanic
ethnic groups are interethnic marriages.
In June 1967, the U.S. Supreme Court declared
that interracial marriages are legally valid in all
states.
Interracial and Hispanic/nonHispanic Married Couples, 2008
Interracial/Interethnic
Heterogamy and Marital Stability
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Two factors to measure marital success:
1. Stability — whether or how long the union
lasts
2. The happiness of the partners
Some unhappy spouses remain married and
some separate.
Social scientists find that marriages that are
homogamous in age, education, religion, and
race are the most stable.
Interracial/Interethnic
Heterogamy and Human Values
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One study found higher relationship
satisfaction compared to same-race
couples.
Regardless of differences in race or
ethnicity, common values and lifestyles
contribute to relationship stability.
Polls show Americans becoming less
disapproving of interracial dating and
marriage.
Developing the Relationship and
Moving Toward Commitment
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What first brings people together?
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What keeps them together?
Meandering Toward Marriage and
First Meetings
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Young people today “meander toward
marriage,” feeling that they’ll be ready
to marry when they reach their late
twenties or so.
Young adults express need to explore
as many options as possible before
settling down.
First Meetings
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Physical attractiveness increased as a
value over the past century and is
especially important upon first meeting
and in the early stages of a
relationship.
Majority of couples meet for the first
time in face-to-face encounters.
Internet relationships progress through
“an inverted developmental
sequence.”
Issues for Thought: Date or
Acquaintance Rape
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What can you do to help prevent date
rape?
What should you do if you or a friend
is raped by an acquaintance?
What would or should you do if a
friend or acquaintance of yours was
known to be the perpetrator of a date
or acquaintance rape?
The Wheel of Love
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Four stages of love
 Rapport – rests on mutual trust and respect
 Self-revelation – sharing intimate information
 Mutual dependency – developing
interdependence
 Needs fulfillment – developing emotional
exchange and support
Reiss’s Wheel Theory of the
Development of Love
Harmonious Needs in Mate
Selection
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Prominent sociologist Pepper Schwartz
suggests the following three areas in
which couples’ needs should be similar
for a happy, long-term match:
1. Personal Energy
2. Outlook
3. Predictability
Dating Violence — A Serious
Sign of Trouble
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Dating violence typically begins with verbal or
psychological abuse and tends to occur over
jealousy, with a refusal of sex, after illegal drug
use or excessive drinking, or upon
disagreement about drinking behavior.
A recent study of 28 female undergraduates in
abusive dating relationships found that some of
these women felt “stuck” with their partner.
A majority had assumed a “caretaker identity,”
similar to martyring.
Indicators of Dating Violence
1. Handles ordinary disagreements with
inappropriate anger or rage
2. Struggles to regain self-control when a
minor issue triggers anger
3. Goes into tirades
Indicators of Dating Violence
4. Quick to criticize or verbally mean
5. Unduly jealous, restricting and
controlling
6. History of violence in previous
relationships
Breaking Up
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According to the exchange perspective, couples
choose to stay committed or to break up by
weighing the rewards of their relationship
against its costs.
When costs outweigh rewards, when there are
desirable alternatives, when one’s relationship
does not match one’s ideal, when little has
been invested and when there are fewer
barriers to breaking up, couples are more likely
to do so.
Cohabitation and Marital Quality
and Stability
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At least half of today’s married couples ages
18-49 lived together before their wedding.
Research shows that marriages preceded by
more than one instance of cohabitation are
more likely to end in separation or divorce.
One study shows that these findings apply to
non-Hispanic whites but not to African
Americans or Mexican Americans, for whom
cohabiting may be a more normative lifecourse event.
Experience Hypothesis
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Posits that cohabiting experiences
themselves affect individuals so that,
once married, they are more likely to
divorce.
Serial cohabitation may adversely affect
subsequent marital quality and stability
because “‘successful’ cohabitation
demonstrates that reasonable alternatives
to marriage exist.”
Selection Hypothesis
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Assumes that individuals who choose serial
cohabitation are different from those who do
not; these differences translate into higher
divorce rates.
One study found that people who cohabit have
less-effective problem solving and
communication skills.
Those who choose serial cohabitation may
have negative attitudes about marriage and
accepting attitudes toward divorce.
Quick Quiz
1. The text characterizes commitment by
a) a willingness to work through
problems and conflicts.
b) feeling as though one cannot live
without another.
c) putting other ahead of oneself.
d) all of the above.
Answer: a
The text characterizes commitment by a
willingness to work through problems
and conflicts.
2. __________ may ask others to do things
for them that they could do for
themselves, and generally expect to be
waited on.
a) Martyrs
b) Narcissists
c) Manipulators
d) Ludic lovers
Answer: c
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Manipulators may ask others to do
things for them that they could do for
themselves, and generally expect to be
waited on.
3. A(n) __________ attachment style
would likely be evidenced in partners
engaged in an A-frame or dependent
relationship.
a) secure
b) insecure/anxious
c) avoidant
d) intimate
Answer: b
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An insecure/anxious attachment style
would likely be evidenced in partners
engaged in an A-frame or dependent
relationship.
4. “Rapport,” “self-revelation,” “mutual
dependency,” and “personality need
fulfillment” are the four stages in Ira
Reiss’s __________ theory of love.
a) triangular
b) love-style
c) framework
d) wheel
Answer: d
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Rapport,” “self-revelation,” “mutual
dependency,” and “personality need
fulfillment” are the four stages in Ira
Reiss’s wheel theory of love.
5. The wheel theory of love suggests that
once people fall in love, they
a) will stay in love.
b) may not necessarily stay in love.
c) will inevitably “fall out of love.”
d) will eventually experience a
reduction in love.
Answer: b
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The wheel theory of love suggests that
once people fall in love, they may not
necessarily stay in love.