Summaries of Intimate Relationships - Miller - 7th edition

How is intimacy experienced in relationships? - Chapter 1

This book is about the study and understanding of intimate relationships i.e. friends and lovers. Intimate relationships are different from casual relationships in that they involve the following qualities:

1. Knowledge: Intimate partners share secrets, gaining an extensive personal knowledge of each other.

2. Caring: Intimate partners are affectionate, and relationships are closer when that respect and appreciation is reciprocal.

3. Interdependence: Intimate partners need each other – they influence each other a great deal, in many different ways, often, and enduringly over time. Goals and struggles are shared, as are consequences.

4. Mutuality: Intimate partners see themselves as a coupling, an us, instead of two separate individuals. This change, becoming us, is often an important moment of bonding in their relationships (The Inclusion of the Other in the Self Scale, figure 1.1).

5. Trust: Trust is the expectation that the intimate partner will treat one fairly and honorably, trying not to cause harm and acting out of concern for one’s welfare.

6. Commitment: Intimate partners are usually committed to their relationships, investing time, effort, and resources to allow the relationship to continue indefinitely.

The most meaningful relationships tend to include all six of the above, though intimate relationships can survive with fewer of these qualities.

Need for Belonging

There is a human need to belong in close relationships that we desire to fulfill. Without intimate partners (or friendships), we become lonely, isolated, and unhealthy. In this way, we desire regular contact with close others. We need the attention of those who know us and care for us. Quality is more important than quantity. We simply need stable affection and acceptance. People live longer and healthier lives when they have close connections than when they are isolated. Marriage beats long-term unmarried relationships in terms of quality of life – and even unhappy marriages are more fulfilling than being completely alone. This need may be an evolutionary adaptation: being part of a group increased the probability to survive.

Culture and Relationships

Culture has a huge influence on how relationships are formed, how they function, and how they are perceived. In the 1960’s, people were married in or before their 20’s, had children mostly only after being married, and rarely lived together before “tying the knot”. In today’s western cultures, people don’t get married as often as they used to. Marriages experience more divorce, cohabitation outside of marriage is very common, and children are not tied to wedlock. Some of this actually has to do with the ratios of the sexes – cultures with more men than women (high sex ratios) tend to support more traditional marriages and gender roles and be less sexually permissive. Cultures with low sex ratios tend to encourage a less traditional attitude in which women have more freedom and marriage is less of a requirement. Theorists postulate that this is because cultures morph to suit their most powerful and numerous populations – in a high sex ratio, there are more men, so men’s interests become “primary”. This theory is speculative but realistic.

Experience

Our own personal experiences also influence our relationships. There are global relationship orientations called attachment styles, which developmental researchers believe we create early in our childhood in order to cope with our parents. The idea is that we learn about relationships through our experience of how responsive and attentive our parents are to our infant needs. Secure attachment occurs when we receive security and kindness from our parents (we learn to trust). Anxious-ambivalent attachments may occur if attentive care is inconsistent and unpredictable, leading us to become nervous and clingy in adult relationships. Avoidant attachment styles come from neglectful or hostile treatment from caregivers, leading us to be suspicious or angry at others and have difficulty forming close bonds. Hazan and Shaver (1985) noticed the similarity between orientations towards close relationships among children and adults. Adult participants reported styles of attachment that fit their styles of attachment in their childhood.

Attachment Theory Now

Bartholomew in 1990 proposed four categories of attachment:

1. Secure attachment style: comfortable, trusting

2. Preoccupied attachment style: anxious ambivalence, dependent on approval of others

3. Fearful attachment style: avoiding intimacy because of fear of rejection

4. Dismissing attachment style: avoiding intimacy because the approval of others is not considered vital, independence is considered more important.

The two main themes of all attachment theories are the avoidance of intimacy and anxiety about abandonment. These are continuous dimensions that range from low to high. All four styles listed above can be placed upon these dimensions. Attachment styles may also be unlearned.

Individual Differences

The attachment styles we formed in infancy impact how, and with whom, we chose to form relationships in our adult life. It might be a mismatch when someone preoccupied falls for a dismissing partner – as one might be too distant while the other is clingy. Other individual differences also have a big impact on our relationship formation. These will be further discussed below.

Sex Differences

Forget the sex stereotypes you’ve learned from pop psychology books – the truth in heterosexual relationships is that they are fewer and less extreme than you think. Ranges of attitudes and behavior often deviate only little in terms of sex. In reality, the sexes overlap. Some sex differences are very small – the differences between individuals within a group (women, let’s say), are greater than the differences between those individuals and representatives of the other group (men, for instance). In other words, individual differences have greater influences on interpersonal interaction than sex differences do.

Gender Differences

Gender differences are different from sex differences. Sex is biological; gender is social-psychological and depends on culture and breeding. Gender differences are taught to us from a young age and cause us to rely on gender stereotypes when thinking about men and women. Sex and gender are often difficult to distinguish, and we often mistake our societally accepted gender rules as biological facts. According to traditional Western gender roles, men should be masculine (assertive, self-reliant, competitive), and women should be feminine (delicate, nurturing, warm, expressive). A large minority of people fall somewhere in between those two polar opposites, displaying a blend of competencies both within and without their prescribed gender. Researchers even use terms like instrumental vs. expressive to describe “masculine” and “feminine” traits. The best way to conceptualize this is to just look at everyone (male OR female) as having varying degrees of instrumental and expressive traits. Most people are typed in a way expected of their gender, but a sizable minority are either cross-typed (more similar to the opposite gender), undifferentiated (low in both traits), or androgynous (mixed). The spreading between those groups are similar between men and women.

What This Means

Contrary to what we have been led to believe, the traditional dichotomy of instrumental-expressive does not make for a complimentary pair, but is actually less compatible than if you were to mix more androgynous people together. Furthermore, couples in which both parties adhere to stereotyped gender roles tend to be less satisfied with each other than less stereotyped couples. The happiest and most well-adjusted people tend to have a mix of instrumental and expressive skills. Still, because of cultural norms, we pressure people into adhering to the extreme stereotypes of their roles and punish them when they do not.

Personality

Personality is, by definition, a person’s stable and lasting attributes and traits. Researchers in personality have identified a few central traits that characterize people around the world and seem to affect relationship quality with only small changes during their entire lifetimes.

The Big Five

The Big Five personality traits are:

1. Openness to experience: the degree to which people are artistic, imaginative, non-conformist, etc.

2. Extraversion: the degree to which people are outgoing and assertive vs. shy and reclusive.

3. Conscientiousness: the degree to which people are dependable and orderly vs. careless and unreliable.

4. Agreeableness: the degree to which people are compassionate, cooperative and trusting vs. suspicious, selfish and hostile.

5. Neuroticism: the degree to which people are prone to high levels of worry, anxiety, anger and mood swings.

While all of these contribute to compatibility, it’s neuroticism that can have the largest negative impact on a relationship. Neurotic people hare prone to anger and anxiety, more likely to be argumentative and negative, having more bad days than people low in neuroticism. This means more marital strife. During a long relationship conscientiousness becomes even more important than it was in the beginning.

Self-Esteem

Self-esteem constitutes evaluations of ourselves. If we think we are not good in some way, our self-esteem is low. High self-esteem comes from a positive self-evaluation. We often measure our self-esteem using a sociometre, measuring ourselves by the quality of our relationships with other people. If others seem to like us, we like ourselves. Self-esteem acts this way because it is related to our fundamental need to belong. Events that involve rejection are, for this reason, particularly self-esteem crushing. Chronic self-esteem may stem from a history of insufficient acceptance and appreciation from others. Sometimes this is because we were the victim of abuse or family circumstances, and we are often not the cause. People with chronic low self-regard may benefit from loving relationships, but are more likely to sabotage them through their insecurities about their partner’s “true” feelings. All people need to find a balance in protecting themselves against rejection but people with chronic low self-esteem put their insecurity and self-protection before their intimate relationships. They presuppose judgment and thus feel more rejected and hurt by situations that would barely impact people with high self-esteem. This can lead to a dissatisfying loop in which our fears cause the conflicts we are so afraid of.

Human Nature

Aside from personality, we are also human animals – we have inherited traits that result from thousands of years of evolution. Evolutionary psychology assumes that sexual selection was instrumental in our evolution –only those who successfully mated and produced offspring were able to pass their genes down the line. That means that traits which promoted the production of offspring were also likely passed down. The need to belong is therefore likely an adaptive trait. According to evolutionary psychology, men and women should differ to the extent that they have faced different reproductive difficulties early in our evolution. For instance, women are obliged to be invested in their children, more so than men, which must mean that certain evolutionary adaptations have occurred. Women might be more deliberate about partner selection than men, for instance. Men do not always know for sure the paternity of a child, which means that they are more preoccupied with thoughts about their partners’ infidelity than women are. In the same respect, women tend to be more attracted to men who they think could provide for them, simply on an evolutionary level.

Cultural influences determine whether evolved behavioral patterns are adaptive, meaning that cultural change might in turn begin to create new adaptations. With birth control, the ancient paradigms of sexual infidelity, paternal uncertainty, and monogamy are changing.

Interaction

How relationships function is not just an equation of person 1 + person 2 = relationship. Every intimate relationship is a dynamic union - depending on the combination of the two individuals who create them, their histories and talents, their relationship will be a very different thing than other relationships. Everyday it’s a dynamic give-and-take, an exchange which is a fluid process changing in all intimate relationships.

Dark Sides

While we suffer without intimacy, we can also suffer from toxic relationships, experience emotional trauma at the hands of others, and will in any case encounter many difficult pitfalls. The reason of taking those risks is because we need each other, as relations are essential parts of our social life.

Which methods can be used for conducting research? - Chapter 2

A Look to the Past

The scientific study of human relationships is actually relatively recent, as love was always a topic for poets and philosophers before recently. Relationship science really began in the 1930s as studies of friendship, courtship and marriage began. It was really only in the 1960s and 1970s that relationship studies really took off. This was helped by a new emphasis on laboratory research in social science. Today relationship science uses diverse samples of people from different social categories, ages, and cultures. It examines a number of different types of relationships, often looking at how they change over time. It looks at both the negative and positive sides of relationships, and often follows them in their natural setting.

Question: first step in scientific method

The first step in the scientific method is to ask a question. Questions are often a result of personal experience and observation, meaning that relationship researchers have the advantage of having a great deal of relevant experience. Questions may also come from broader social problems (like the rising divorce rate), and from previous research (as every answer creates new questions). Questions either look for a description, which would help us develop a clearer picture of our world, or seek to establish causal connections between events to see if they have meaningful effects. The choice made between descriptive or causal questions will often determine which research design will be used.

Participants

There are many ways to obtain participants for a study. A convenience sample is so named because it involves approaching anybody available and willing to participate. A representative sample is often chosen by researchers who want a more accurate study that can generalize to a larger overall group. A truly representative study would need to include enough different people of one group in order to best capture reality. Most of the studies, described in this text, have come from weird cultures: Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich and Democratic. Sometimes participants from those cultures act in a different way than those from less developed cultures. However, most of the behaviors and patterns, studied by relationship researchers, are basic enough to represent the adult world population.

Regardless of using representative or convenience sampling, there is a problem: participants taking part in a study may differ from individuals who don’t - volunteer bias. This bias can restrict the extent to which study results apply to individuals who did not participate.

Research design

Correlational Designs

Correlational research designs involve looking for a relationship between two variables. Correlations range from -1.00 to +1.00. The larger the correlation value, the more highly related the two events are. A correlation can be positive or negative. While a correlation study tells us that two things are related, it does not tell us why or how they are related. Correlation does not equal causation – this is a misperception shared by many people who ignorantly try to interpret research studies. In brief, when two variables relate, a predictable pattern exists.

Experimental Designs

Experiments apply the principles of correlation in a more controlled manner. They usually involve an uncontrolled variable and a controlled variable. A controlled variable is one that the experimenter can manipulate and measure. They can see what happens to the uncontrolled variable when they manipulate the controlled variable, and in that way, they can extrapolate causation. One of the main reasons experimental designs are not always used, is that researchers can’t always control or manipulate variables they would like to study.

Setting

When choosing a setting for a study, it is important to consider how that setting will impact the results. For instance, one of the disadvantages of a laboratory study is that the environment is fake and often uncomfortable. People will act differently in a new setting than in one they have experience with. Some behaviors are difficult to study because they are rare, intimate, or unpleasant. Psychologists might choose to have subjects role-play the examined behavior, a kind of acting where behavior might naturally occur. However, those scenarios are ‘much less lively’ than the real events would be. Another option is role-play simulation, in which people react in a manner how they think they should do.

Data

How do we measure data? We can observe behavior, or have others reflect on their behavior. How we measure that data is of upmost importance – our measures should have psychometric validity and reliability.

Self-Reports

Self-reports are usually gathered with the help of questionnaires. These allow us not just to measure observable behavior, but also the subjective experience, perspective, and perception of the participant. It is also inexpensive and easy to get. It is important that participants understand the questions posed to them, and share the same definitions as the test-writer. People might also lack insight into their actions, their bias clouding their interpretation of their own behavior. Faulty memories can be a problem – people tend to forget specific details and feelings they have experienced in the past. Self-reports also fall victim to the self-serving bias, which leads people to overestimate their responsibility for positive events in their relationships and underestimate their role in negative events. People also experience a social desirability bias. Because we want to belong and be liked, we tend to seek out the “right” answers to questions and not the true answers. Anonymity helps, as do questions worded in a way they don’t seem to have a right or wrong answer.

Observational Data

We can also collect data through direct observation. This might involve examining a recording of behavior after the fact. Event-sampling uses intermittent, short periods of observation to act as a sample of long-term behavioral patterns. This sort of procedure can be measured through a rating system (using global terms), or using coding procedures, which focus on specific, less-subjective records of behavior (ex. the number of times someone sighs in a discussion). We have technology that measures frequency of word use, and that tracks eye movement, etc. Observational research benefits from allowing us to study realistic samples, and to rely not on subjective self-reports but on objective recordings of real events. Downsides include expense, time, and the reactivity of the people being observed. If you know someone is watching, you will automatically monitor your own behavior and adjust it to expectations.

Physiological Data

We can also gather physiological data, such as bodily stress, muscle tension, brain activity, hormone level, etc. A method, which avoids problems with reactivity, whereby people cannot control their behavior. Some studies look at how interactions change our physical states. Physiological measures are often expensive but are very valuable in understanding the physical foundations of our social behavior, and are often taken more seriously in the science community.

Archives

We can also take data from archival materials like historical documents, personal diaries, media coverage, and governmental records. Archival materials avoid the problematic aspect of reactivity but can be limited in offering sufficient information.

Ethics of Research

Relationship science is a particularly touchy ethical field. Even asking people to fill out questionnaires about their relationships can impact how those relationships function – we might think more about how our relationship is progressing, the questionnaire might cause a conversation or fight, etc. Simulations and observational studies can have a strong impact, asking couples to revisit closed fights, for instance. Ethically, it is a psychologist’s responsibility to inform potential participants (in detail) about the study being performed before they decide whether or not to partake. When the study is complete, results are made available. Researchers are advised to treat participants with respect. Some participants actually leave relationship studies feeling more competent in their relationships. It is important to still pursue this nosy field of research, because to know more about how relationships function is to benefit humanity, to avoid wasteful services, to promote health, etc.

Results & Interpretation

We will not discuss the details of statistical analysis and interpretation of results here, but will briefly summarize the particularities of relationship research. For one, many statistical tools assume that participants are not connected to one another in any way – in relationship studies, data is paired and interdependent. Special procedures must be used. Researchers must also choose between two levels of analysis – focusing on the individuals or on the couple as a whole. Relationships are complex, and there are multiple sources of influence that determine their success – individual traits, external pressures, etc. Scientists often do meta-analyses, statistically combining new results of a specific phenomenon with those from previous studies, and are able then to find out why discrepancies lie where they do. For this reason, we can be more confident about research outcomes when results are replicated with different methods.

Is it all about Attraction? - Chapter 3

The Fundamentals

We are attracted to others whose presence is rewarding to us. These may be noticeable direct rewards or subtle, indirect benefits. Therefore, attraction depends on a variety of variables, for instance the perceived characteristics of a person, affection, beauty and approval (direct awards) and our individual needs and desires, a sense of connection or a sense that they will be good parents (indirect benefits). We are frequently not aware of the influences that shape our opinions about others.

Proximity and Liking

We tend to like the people with whom we share physical proximity more than people who are far away. Being placed next to someone in your high school class will make you significantly more likely to befriend that person than someone who sits at the far side of the room.

Convenience

Part of this phenomenon is that convenience is rewarding. It’s less costly to love someone nearby and it lets you receive the physical affections, or other rewards, you seek. Intimate partners, who are profoundly committed to each other, are often tough enough to survive a separation but others will be doomed by distance (particular if lovers start dating others). Therefore, long-distance relationships are less rewarding.

Familiarity

Proximity also means that we become more familiar with a person. Research suggests that mere exposure to a stimulus increases our liking of that stimulus – whether it’s a song you’ve listened to 1000 times, or a person you see every day.

Online dating

Online meetings are the second-most-common way that relationships between men and women begin, and the most frequent way to start a lesbian or gay romance. But outcomes in this online dating market can be disappointing, for different reasons. Sites often do not remove inactive pages in time. Second, people often date more than one person. The first meeting can be disadvantageous because men and women are often selective in describing their looks and attitudes; they are often different from the ones we imagined. Their perceived similarity to each other will be less than expected. And finally, it’s unlikely to predict unique compatibility between two people.

Limits of Proximity

Proximity has its limits – if we are constantly exposed to something, monotony can become boring. Overexposure is not attractive, and proximity to people with obnoxious traits does not mean that we’ll suddenly find them irresistible. Proximity can make unpleasant relationships worse. Our friends live nearby but most of our enemies, too. Therefore we could conclude that proximity reinforces emotions, and not always in a positive way. Nevertheless, proximity raises the chance of having interaction. When we become familiar to each other most of the time our attraction to them will increase. But this does not occur every time we meet someone new, especially not when we are judging them.

The Beauty Question

Beauty Bias

We tend to believe, however much we’d rather avoid this way of thinking, that what is beautiful is also good. We think attractive people are for instance better, more successful, more honest and have pleasant traits that complement their pleasant appearances. We may assume that they are more promiscuous as well, however. Beauty can get confused with talent, and beautiful people end up getting more special treatment because of this. The more the appearance of a person is received as desirable, the better the impression they make.

Determining Beauty

What is beauty? Studies have found that while some aspects of beauty judgment are “in the eye of the beholder,” the majority of the process fits a consensus. We agree with what is more beautiful, and this agreement exists across groups with different ethnic backgrounds. Even babies share our preferences, allowing us to conclude that there is something biological behind our notion of beauty. Women are seen as more attractive when they have baby-faced features (large eyes, a small nose, a small chin, and full lips), and when they have prominent cheekbones, narrow cheeks and a broad smile. A combination that makes women look feminine and youthful at the same time. Male attractiveness is more complicated as it can be seen in strong jaws and broad foreheads but also in feminized features. Women find different face styles more attractive depending on their menstrual cycle – manly features are more attractive just before ovulation. Both sexes are attracted to average faces, the most symmetrical features, etc.

Body Shape

Men tend to be most attracted to women of a normal weight, with waists noticeably narrower than their hips (the hourglass shape). Breast size is mostly important in ratio with the rest of the body, again reinforcing the hourglass preference. Women are most attractive to men with waists slightly narrower than their hips, broad shoulders and muscles, but this only applies when a man has a healthy salary as well. Men and women in heterosexual partnerships prefer the man to be slightly taller than the woman. Women find smell more important than men do. Symmetrical, good-looking people smell better than those who are less attractive. However men prefer the smells of ovulating women, and heterosexual men don’t like the smells of gay men, but gay men are more attracted to the smells of other gay men than of other heterosexual men.

Women are more attractive to men when they have longer hair, and are more attracted to men with smoother, less hairy chests. Women are also more attracted to smart men.

Finally, wearing red clothes increases attractiveness towards others. Red creates this (universal) effect because a woman seems more sexually approachable when she is wearing the color red.

Evolutionary Processes

While cultures differ in many respects, what we find attractive is largely shared, implying the strong influence of evolutionary factors. Men with attractive faces tend to have healthier sperm, and people with symmetrical faces also tend to have better mental and physical health. Symmetric women are more fertile and attractive people have more children. Hormones related to fertility in women also determine where fat is distributed in the body – forming the hourglass figure. Hair quality and length is related to health and youth, indicating a good mate. Physical attractiveness tends to matter more to people who live in tropical areas where parasites and pathogens are more frequent, suggesting that beauty is a stronger sign of health. Finally, women’s preferences for men can be related to their menstrual cycle, and indicate differing needs – assertive, cocky men when they are fertile and fatherly kind men during the rest of the month. Women also dress, dance and act more flirtatiously when ovulating. Men find, besides smell, voices and faces of fertile women more attractive too.

Culture

Okay, it’s not just biology. When a culture has an unreliable food supply, being slender is not as attractive. When a culture is in a time of plenty, slimmer women are considered more attractive. Black and Latino populations in America tend to be more accepting of extra weight.

Impressions

With a glance we can judge whether someone is physically attractive. Speed-dating, for this reason, often comes down to looks. When we have more time to choose a mate, men tend to look more at physical attractiveness than women do, while women are more attentive to financial success. There’s no difference between men and women in how much an attractive appearance influences their opinion about someone they have just met, despite of what they say.

Beauty – the Upsides and Downsides

Beautiful people tend to date more and receive more benefits than unattractive people do. How attractive a man is determines how many interactions he tends to have with women, meaning that a man’s physical attractiveness influences his social life more. Attractive people are more popular, and thus receive more social support than other people. They also got more social skills, experience more happiness and tend to feel less isolated. The disadvantages are that being attractive means people will lie to you more readily and to stereotype you. Being attractive means having to put on a cautious mistrust of compliments.

Matching

One important phenomenon is that people tend to be at the same attractiveness level as their significant other – this is called matching. Matching is most obvious in long-term relationships. None of us wants somebody ‘beneath us’.

Reciprocity

So we have physical attraction and matching – in order to maximize our chances of finding a mate, we are most likely to approach someone for a relationship if they have a combination of attractiveness and a high probability of accepting us back. We look for people who we consider to be “in our league”, someone with the same mate value (overall desirability as a reproductive partner). If we continuously overestimate our own mate value, we end up learning (through a series of rejections) to lower our standards. People who are shy or have low self-esteem tend to pursue less desirable partners than confident people. We are most satisfied when we feel accepted by someone who is pickier, who has more exclusive taste. Balance theory suggests that we desire consistency, for instance in our social relationships – so the feeling that someone likes us who we like back is a good one. Similarly, we expect our enemy’s enemies to be our friends.

Similarity

As opposed to the old cliché “opposites attract”, we are way more attracted to people who are similar to ourselves.

What Kinds?

What kind of similarity draws us to one another? It can be as simple as liking someone more because they have the same birthday. Of course, there’s demographic similarity- age, sex, religion, education, social class, etc. There’s similarity in attitudes and values – the more agreement, the more liking.

Partners also have similar personalities – similar enduring traits. People with similar personality styles will have a more enjoyable time interacting with one another than people with mixed personality styles. However, it’s not important if couples have exactly the same personality style. What matters is what kind of traits they possess. If you possess desirable qualities like being agreeable, emotional stable and conscientious, you are a pleasant person to live with. In any case, personality does matter but to a lesser extent than attitude styles do.

The Old Myth: Opposites Attract

On the whole, no, they do not. However, the next sections will explain how that myth probably came to be.

The Matching Process

While people tend to seek out others who are similar in physical attractiveness, some mismatches occur. However, when we look at them more closely, we can see that people will match with others of similar mate value, even if one has more value in the looks department, and another more value in the financial department. Fame, wealth, health, talent and looks are all aspects on which we judge mate value. Matching based on the exchange of feminine youth and beauty for masculine status and resources is commonplace.

Discovering Differences

Sometimes it takes a while for two people to realize exactly where they are alike and where they differ. We automatically expect that better-looking people have attitudes that are similar to our own. We’re usually wrong, and it takes time to learn this. Initial friendships are usually based on perceived similarity, while actual similarity is more responsible for long-lasting friendships. According to the stimulus-value-role theory, we gather three different types of information about a partner:

1. Stimulus: During this initial phase, we notice obvious attributes like age, sex, looks, etc.

2. Value: During this stage, we figure out attitudes and beliefs.

3. Role: Role compatibility becomes more important when partners navigate life tasks.

Fatal attractions occur when what initially attracts us to someone gradually becomes one of the most obnoxious things about them. Usually that trait is something opposite of ourselves.

Misperception

We rarely get to know everything about a person, even a spouse, and often think we have more in common than we do. There is a higher correlation between perceived similarity and relationship satisfaction, than to REAL similarity. When our illusions break down, sometimes we realize that we loved the person we thought our partner was, not our actual partner. Sometimes dissimilarity will decrease as time goes by; intimate partners frequently come to share attitudes, automatically or consciously. Really, though, we simply like partners who entertain and support us but don’t frustrate and impede us. When we know we will get along with someone, that they have different interests to our own is also interesting and helps us broaden our experience.

Barriers

We actively struggle to overcome barriers that get between us and what we want. Psychological reactance is the phenomenon in which a loss of freedom or choice makes someone strive to regain that freedom. This creates the Romeo and Juliet effect: the more parents interfere with their romances, the more intense love teens feel for their partners. If it’s near closing time at a bar, your standards are likely to lower because you don’t want to miss out on an interaction (the closing-time effect).

Common Desires

Both men and women seek warmth and loyalty (first place), attractiveness and vitality, status and resources. While all of these qualities are desirable, we all put them on different levels of value. Women attach more importance to status and resources, men find attractiveness and vitality more important. For a short fling, both men and women are less picky than for long-term unions (lower in intelligence, warmth and earning potential).

How to take a closer look at social cognition? - Chapter 4

Making a First Impression

First impressions really do matter. In the first meeting we have with someone, we make judgments that will last and continue to influence our interactions for months. Sometimes impressions last because they are correct. Others are wrong, which we often learn over time. Snap judgments lay in stereotypes – we place people into superficial categories about which we already have formed opinions, rather than necessarily getting to know their particular idiosyncrasies (characteristics). Those snap judgments are often wrong but difficult to avoid. Our judgments of others are often shaped by a primacy effect, people tend to recall the first information received about others more often than information that follows. Another reason we hang on to our first impressions is caused by confirmation bias – we seek out information that proves us right more often than we look for information that might disprove our beliefs. We tend to be overconfident that our beliefs about others are correct, making more mistakes than we are aware of. With first impressions we learn to direct our attention to certain information and draw conclusions based on that information. Once we come to know our partners and friends, with time and experience, we can change how we understand a person.

• Perceptions

• Idealizing

People very often judge their lovers with positive illusions that put them in the best possible light. This can be seen in the so-called “honeymoon phase” of the relationship. Even if we have all the facts, we interpret behaviors we might otherwise find repugnant as charming and idiosyncratic. Illusions may be lasting because they are somewhat realistic, or they may be prone to disillusionment. There are benefits to positive illusions – not only do they foster love and commitment early on in a relationship, but our belief in the goodness of our partner can actually inspire them to be better people and have higher self-esteem. As we slowly get disillusioned over time, we tend to revise our opinions to suit remaining with our partner. Thus, by idealizing the image of our lovers we can increase satisfaction with our relationships.

Attribution

Our explanations for why things happen (or why people behave a certain way) are called attributions. We may attribute someone’s behavior to an internal cause (they yelled at me because they are a hostile person!) or to an external cause (they yelled at me because I hurt them and their father is sick). Causes for events can also be stable (lasting) or unstable (transient). They can also be controllable or uncontrollable. In relationships, judgments of cause and effect can be very complicated. While we tend to know our partners intimately, we are affected by actor-observer effects – this means that we have different explanations for our own behavior than for the behavior of our partner. We are highly aware of the circumstances that cause our behaviors and less aware of external pressures on our partner, one of the reasons we are more likely to attribute our partner’s behavior to internal causes.

We experience a self-serving bias – we feel that we are responsible for the state of our relationship in good times, and blame our partner and the circumstances when the relationship is going through a rough patch. Loving partners are less self-serving towards each other than towards others, but self-serving bias still exists in relationships.

Impacts of Attributions on the Relationship

Happy people make attributions that are relationship enhancing – positive actions by the partner are judged as intentional and internal. Essentially, if you’re in a happy couple, you make attributions about your partner in the same way you do about yourself. Unhappy people, on the other hand, make distress-maintaining attributions, believing that a partner is intentionally and deliberately cruel when they do something bad, and seeing good actions as accidental. This is a very unforgiving form of attribution. Sometimes attritional styles come from attachment style – a securely attached individual will be more likely to make relationship-enhancing attributions.

Memories

We base much of our judgments on memory, and yet our memories are far from reliable representations of past events. Reconstructive memory is a phenomenon in which we create new memories and revise old ones based on new information. Our current feelings about our significant other change what we remember about our time together. This can cause either damaging overconfidence or the urge to “flee a sinking ship”. Still, however, hope about the future is not related – even in a terrible relationship, people can believe in improvement by misremembering their past.

Beliefs

One relationship schema is romanticism, the idea that love should be the reason for choosing a mate, that there is only one true love, and that true love can overcome anything. Of course, since real relationships have trouble living up to these standards, romantic beliefs tend to unfurl as time goes on. Other people have dysfunctional beliefs about relationships:.

1. The belief that disagreements are bad and destructive.

2. The belief that we should be able to intuit each other’s thoughts and preferences.

3. The belief that partners cannot change.

4. The belief that sex should always be fulfilling.

5. The belief in a deep difference between men and women that inhibits understanding.

6. The belief that great relationships happen naturally and don’t need work.

These beliefs are also unrealistic, and can also be very destructive. Perspectives like these are also called destiny beliefs because they imply an inflexible, unchangeable view of relationships. For instance, you are meant to be together, or you are not. Fortunate, rigid thinking can change with education. More positive are growth beliefs, which maintain that good relationships can develop gradually as partners work together to overcome challenges.

Expectations

Relationship beliefs tend to stick. Yet there are some specific types of relationship expectations that can begin false and become true – the self-fulfilling prophecies. If we falsely believe our partner to be a certain way, we will behave with certain expectations about them. People tend to unconsciously alter their behavior to fit the expectations of others. Eventually, they will come to believe our false belief and change accordingly. This is tough, because we will assume, seeing proof of what we thought to be true, that we had no influence and simply judged the other person correctly. The same occurs the other way around: expecting to be liked makes you likeable. If you’re sensitive to rejection, you will tend to perceive judgment and snubbing from others where it doesn’t exist, and act more hostile in defense… causing you to be judged and snubbed. Optimism, similarly, leads to countless benefits.

Self-Perceptions

Self-esteem shapes many of our judgments, but is just a part of a larger self-concept. Our self-concept includes self-knowledge, self-esteem, beliefs about the self, and is largely influenced by how we believe others perceive us. We seek enhancing feedback from others that allows us a better self-concept (we want to be seen as desirable, awesome people), and yet we also seek self-verification. We want information about ourselves that is consistent with our existing self-concept, good or bad. People who believe that they are unskilled or unlovable will seek verification of these beliefs among others. Where self-enhancement is an automatic and often globalized response, self-verification is deliberate – so people with a bad self-concept will mistrust but enjoy praise and firmly believe criticism. When choosing romantic partners, we seek out those who support our existing self-concepts, whether these are good or bad. If we think we’re unlovable, we’ll want to be around people who make us feel that way because it’s more consistent and feels more predictable. When people start romantic relationships, self-enhancement is leading. However, in long-term relationships, self-verification becomes more salient to support our self-concept – the marriage shift.

Narcissism

Narcissistic people have an inflated, unrealistically grandiose self-concept. They are prone to strong self-serving biases, taking all the credit when things go right and none of the blame when they go wrong. They have difficulty tolerating rejection and are oversensitive to imagined slights and tend to be more easily angered by what they see as disrespect. They often feel entitled and tend to continue looking for better options. In short, narcissists are not the best choice for a long-term mate, even if their self-assurance is attractive at first.

Impression Management

Since we put so much stock in how others see us, we often spend a lot of time on impression management. This means that when we are around others, we behave differently than we might when we’re alone. We tailor our behavior (and our Facebook profiles!) to put forth our best possible image. In social situations, we try to influence others’ judgments. This doesn’t just involve lying, but also involves choosing which parts of ourselves to reveal to others. We want to be honest, partially because nobody likes a cheat.

Strategies

One form of impression management is self-promotion, recounting one’s accomplishments or demonstrating skills. This is often done in professional settings, but in life in general can be seen as bragging. And unfortunately for women, it us seen as “unladylike”. We use ingratiation when seeking acceptance, by doing favors, paying compliments, and looking for ways that we agree or are similar to another person. This often occurs in romantic relationships. When we want to create an undesirable image of ourselves, we can intimidate others (acting ruthless and menacing), to drive them away. Or, we can use the strategy of supplication, presenting ourselves as inept to avoid obligations and elicit help. Most people avoid using supplication and intimidation strategies but almost everyone uses these two manners now and then.

How Impression Management Occurs in Close Relationships

People high in self-monitoring easily adjust their behavior to fit the varying norms of different situations, staying alert to social cues. Low self-monitors are less flexible and more consistent between situations because of their smaller repertoires of social skills. These different styles mean that high self-monitors tend to have more friends but have less in common with each of them. High self-monitors are great at meeting people and getting to know them, but tend to invest less of their time in each of their friends, meaning that they may have a harder time in the long term. Most people low in self-monitoring tend to have a few friends, have more committed relationships and they all have a lot in common.

In relationships, we work less hard on maintaining a certain impression – we are not trying to charm them anymore. We relax our armor and get lazy.

Knowing Your Partner

Knowledge

We misunderstand our partners more than we expect, often believing that they agree with us more often than they do. That being said, years together do lend a deep knowledge of the person we’re with that allow us to perceive them more accurately than when we are first dating.

Motivation

Interestingly, spouses married for shorter lengths of time are better at inferring what their partners are thinking than people who have been married for years. Women tend to think more often about their relationships than men do, especially during certain phases of their menstrual cycle. We know people better when we are motivated to pay attention.

Legibility

Some people are easier to read than others. Sociability and extraversion are easy traits to perceive, but neuroticism is harder to detect.

Perceptiveness

Some people are hard to read, but people also vary in their ability to read others. People high in emotional intelligence (EI), with talents in perceiving, using, understanding, and managing emotions, are able to both hide their feelings more easily and read others’ feelings better. As a result, people high in EI enjoy more intimate interactions. Women tend to have higher EI than men, which explains why they are slightly better at judging others. Happily, practice can enhance people’s competences to understand the other.

Threats to Perception

While intimate partners understand each other better than they do acquaintances, they might not want to when their partner’s feelings and behavior are distressing. We don’t want to believe that our partner is more attracted to other people, for instance, and that’s a good thing because sometimes being inattentive to information you do not want to know protects your relationship. People with a preoccupied attachment style are more accurate in judging partners’ reactions to attractive others, however, what could explain why such people are often chronically anxious.

Influence

We have to remember that we are not passive judges of others, and that our perceptions of our partner influence how they behave. Sometimes we actively try to construct our partner to our desires.

How is communication with your partner build up? - Chapter 5

In a procedure called talk table, two partners sit across a table from one another and discuss the topic of their last disagreement. Before one person says something, they push a button indicating whether they intend their comment to be negative, neutral, or positive. The other person rates how they read the message, in the same way, before replying. Unhappy couples tend to not intend to annoy and belittle one another but do so anyway. Frustrating communication styles lead to unhappier marriages later on. Communication in relationships can make or break their success.

• Model of Communication

• Sender’s intentions (which are private, known only to the sender)

• Noise/interference and the sender’s style of encoding, act as influences

• Sender’s actions (public and visible)

• Noise/interference and the listener’s style of decoding act as influences

• Listener’s understanding (private and known only to the listener)

Interpersonal gaps happen when the sender’s intended message is different from the listener’s interpretation. These gaps are frustrating, and unfortunately more likely to occur in close relationships because we don’t expect our partners to misunderstand us, and thus tend not to take extra steps to make ourselves clear.

Nonverbal Communication

Nonverbal communication is a large part of communication. Nonverbal behavior consists of the attitude we hear in someone’s voice, their body language, the distance they keep, pretty much anything that sends a message besides speaking. It provides information about people’s moods and their meaning, allows us to nuance our verbal messages (telling a joking insult with a straight face sends a very different message than doing so with a smirk and a wink). Nonverbal behavior lets us regulate our interactions, as we can display interest or disinterest subtly, and can take cues from our partners. Nonverbal behavior expresses intimacy and power relations, helping us define our relationships with others. Also interpersonal influence (goal-oriented behavior) and impression management (creating a particular image) are examples of functions of nonverbal behavior in relationships.

Expression

Facial expressions signal moods and emotions, and are universal. Our emotions and dispositions are shown on our faces and play a big role in how others see us. The more happy expressions, genuine smiles we display, the more socially successful we will end up, in love and friendship. In some cultures and situations, people deliberately manage to disguise their emotions. Display rules differ, for instance, between China (low display), England (medium display), and Spain (high display). Sometimes we may intensify expressions, for instance when we are not impressed by a gift but feel we should be. Or we might minimize our expressions (trying not to laugh at a funeral). An alternative is that we may neutralize our facial expressions, to hold back our feelings. Or we may mask our feelings (laughing when we’re crying on the inside). Fake expressions differ from genuine ones, and a very observant person can often detect microexpressions that reveal the real emotion.

Gazing

We are also biologically primed to pay attention to the direction of a person’s gaze. If someone catches our eye, we pay attention to them and often find them more attractive than people who don’t hold our gaze. If someone looks in a certain direction, we will look that way, too, to see what they noticed. Lovers look at each other more than friends do. We look more when listening than when speaking, but people with high-status tend to actually avoid the eye when listening and look directly at people when speaking. A visual dominance ratio (VDR) compares ‘look-speak’ to ‘look-listen’ patterns measured by the percentage of time.

Gesture

Body movements are big communicators. Some gestures are encoded elements of language that differ from culture to culture (a thumbs-up, for instance). Posture and body motion, on the other hand, are more universal and may convey information about you. Good male dancers, judged by women, tend to be more extraverted and agreeable than those who are kind of stiff. High-status people tend to take up large spaces, tend to lean more and create more angles, while low-status people tend to hold closed, symmetrical postures – making more room for the high-status person.

Touch

Physical contact is also full of meaning. Handshakes in many cultures are a way to read someone’s extraversion, level of neuroticism, and openness to experience. There are positive, supporting touches, sympathetic touches, and touches that communicate disgust (pushing) or anger (hitting). Frequency of touching increases with relationship intimacy.

Personal Space

Interpersonal distance is a good way to determine how intimate a relationship is. We tend to stand around at least 350 cm away from strangers when possible (public distance), between 120 to 350 cm from people we are socially interacting with (social distance), at less than 120 cm with friends (personal distance), and at no distance to 50 cm with people we are intimately interacting with (intimate distance). In some cultures, these distances can be larger or smaller. Men tend to be more distant than women, but there is also an element of personal preference at play. Unhappy spouses will take more distance than happy ones.

Smell

Also smell is a source of information. Different feelings cause bodies to emit different chemosignals, with a diversity of aromas. Furthermore, we are better able to recognize emotion in our lovers sweat than in sweat of others and we distinguish sexual sweat from normal sweat, too.

Paralanguage

Paralanguage is a term for all the elements of speech that are not actually words – a person’s tone of voice, for instance, or the frequency with which they sigh. You can tell if someone’s nervous because they may speak more rapidly, or louder, for instance. Lovers have different rhythms of communication, with longer delays and more silence. We use different pitches of voice when talking to members of our preferred sex who we find attractive. Men and women with alluring voices tend to have attractive faces and bodies too, therefore a voice influences a partner’s mate value.

People will consciously or unconsciously mimic the mannerisms, postures, and conversational styles of the people they interact with, especially when they are enjoying their interaction (mimicry). Imitation can lead to us liking one another more. When a conversation takes a turn for the worse, you can back off in a more polite, non-verbal way.

Sensitivity to Nonverbal Cues

Couples communicate better when both partners are more sensitive to non-verbal communication. On average, even in non-verbal communication, women tend to be more adept at both interpreting messages and getting messages across. Men in troubled marriages become worse at communicating (both sending and receiving non-verbal messages), while women in both happy and unhappy marriages are good at both. Still, when couples are dissatisfied, they are better at decoding messages from strangers than from one another. Nonverbal insensitivity and dissatisfaction can exacerbate each other, making a relationship spiral downwards.

Talking and Verbal Communication

Disclosure

The most basic element of verbal communication is what we choose to reveal to other people. When we disclose something intimate or persona, especially something embarrassing, about ourselves, we tend to generate closeness. Two people increase in intimacy according to the amount they disclose about themselves. In fact, it’s not even possible to be intimate with each other if self-disclosure is absent.

Being More Open

Early in a relationship, we begin with superficial exchanges of information, then move on to more meaningful discussions. This gradual move, developing through systematic changes in interaction, is called social penetration. When an initial conversation is rewarding, we feel more able to move on to deeper things. A new relationship touches at a very broad variety of topics, and as a relationship develops, conversation digs deeper and spreads wider. Reciprocity is also very important – new partners tend to match one another’s levels of disclosure. Saying too much can make a poor impression, so we tend to hold back the most shameful aspects of ourselves until we feel deep trust and respect for the other person. According to the interpersonal process model of intimacy, genuine intimacy develops only when certain conditions are met. We need a certain amount of responsiveness from others (a sense that they care), and we need to sense their empathy. Perceived partner responsiveness, then, is vital to disclosure.

Secrets

There are some things we keep even from our most intimate friends and lovers. Often, selective secrecy occurs because we don’t want to hurt the person we are with. However, it’s not easy to keep a secret and it can be a huge risk – once our partner discovers we are intentionally withholding information, they can feel betrayed. If we believe that keeping a secret is more trouble than it’s worth, we will tell. If we worry that others will be harmed, we’ll try to hide it., Lovers may agree, explicitly or implicitly, to avoid taboo topics that threaten their relationship. One of these taboos can be the state of the relationship itself. The more taboo topics there are in a relationship, the less satisfied the partners will be unless they believe that they’re avoiding topics to protect their relationship.

Self-Disclosure

High self-disclosure in a relationship tends to be a very good thing. The degree of self-disclosure correlates with how much we like someone. Happy couples often use special linguistic codes that help them communicate more privately, even in public – shared jokes, specialized idioms, etc. Intimate partners clearly know one another better and are more relaxed with one another than non-intimate partners. We like people who open up to us, but we also like people to whom we ourselves have opened up. It’s rewarding to trust and be trusted.

Gender Differences

While men and women are not very different from one another, there are some gender differences in communication.

Topics and Styles

Women tend to more often discuss their feelings about relationships with one another, while men often stick to more impersonal matters when talking to each other. When men and women talk to each other, however, these differences are not noticeable. In terms of style, women sometimes speak more indirectly and less forcefully than men… but usually only when talking to men about “masculine” topics. The same happens in the reverse, with men being more tentative about feminine topics. Both sexes are more forceful on their own turf, and no different from one another on neutral topics. Men and women are equally talkative. Men speak up less often, but speak for longer and in more of a monologue form. Furthermore, our vocabulary hints at our personalities (frequent use of the word “awful”, for example, can indicate neuroticism).

Opening Up

In established relationships, women tend to be slightly more self-disclosing than men, and elicit more self-disclosure from others. Men disclose less to other men than they do to women. This leads men to rely slightly more on women for their emotional warmth and intimacy, while women are warm and intimate with both genders equally.

Instrumentality vs. Expressivity

This difference is closely tied to gender roles, rather than biological sex. The differences explained above are representative of macho men vs. girly girls. Androgynous people often fall somewhere in between the extremes of expressivity and instrumentality. People also vary in how effusive they are. Some people tend to be more animated and rapid-fire, while others are slower and more hesitant. This is called blirtatiousness. A blirtatious person and a closed-mouth person may get along fine at first because one fills up all the silences – but they are not likely to stay happy about that for long because stereotypes regarding gender affect what we take for granted in heterosexual interaction. For instance, because of our gender role stereotypes, we tend to look poorly on a couple where the woman is talkative and dominates disputes while the man stays quiet. Men value instrumental communication skills (clarity in giving instructions, for instance) more than women do. Women value expressive communication skills more than men. Yet they both recognize that expressive communication is most important in relationships.

Breaks in Communication

Miscommunication

Unhappy people are not great at saying what they mean. When they complain, it’s not usually precise – they tend to kitchen-sink (addressing everything at once). While they might be upset about one thing, airing all their frustrations at once will cause them to drift off-topic (off-beam) and lose its purpose. Hearing a wash of complaints, your partner will not know where to start. Unhappy partners are not great at hearing each other, they rarely try to understand the other person. Instead, they rush to conclusions and make presumptions, trying to mindread. They also interrupt one another in obnoxious ways – to express disagreement or change topics. Another tendency is yes-butting, where one partner looks for something disputable or wrong in everything the other partner says. Damaging criticism attacks a partner’s personality instead of identifying unpleasant behavior…and contempt can seal the deal. This may be in the form of insults, mockery, or hostile humor. The partner will get defensive and protect themselves by making excuses, cross-complaining (responding to a complaint with a counter complaint), or counter attacking. People might begin stonewalling (getting quiet, withdrawing into silence). While this may be an attempt to defuse the situation, it can make it worse by communicating disapproval, icy distance, and smugness. This can degenerate into belligerence, with one partner aggressively rejecting the other.

What Miscommunication May Bring

When the above pattern is frequent, the outlook for the relationship is grim. Couples whose marriages are doomed display more contempt, defensiveness, and belligerence. But when we’re angry and resentful, we can find ourselves miscommunicating. How do we avoid this?

How to Say What You Mean

When we criticize a partner’s personality, we tend to make mountains out of molehills. It’s more accurate (and better-received!) to identify concrete behaviors that bother us, and to describe how those behaviors make us feel (without using never or always or other hyperboles). I-statements (like “I feel angry” rather than “You piss me off”), are also more accurate and better received. One technique is the XYZ statement: “When you do X in situation Y, I feel Z.”

How to Listen

Active listening is the also an important part of effective communication. We need to understand what our partner is trying to say and communicate that we’re paying attention. We can do this by paraphrasing (repeating a message in our own words) what we hear in order to confirm that we understood properly and giving the other a chance to agree or disagree with your interpretation. Perception checking is a way to avoid mindreading – simply ask whether or not you understood the other person’s emotions correctly. Active listening helps smooth rough spots in relationship encounters.

Being Polite

You can easily get into a negative affect reciprocity pattern, in which your own grumpiness causes you to be antagonistic and irate, bringing down the mood of your partner, creating a vicious cycle. Staying cool or being able to get yourself out of an anger mode is important – if you think about anger as a perspective, this may help. What also might help is a time out, take a break for a few minutes and then return to the issue when you have calmed down. Anger comes from the perception that others are causing us unfair and avoidable grief. Try to step back and question why you might be getting that “grief”.

Respect and Validation

People look for respect and validation in relationships, and this goes a long way. Validation is the acknowledgment of the legitimacy of our opinions and feelings, even if there is disagreement. A simple moment of validation maintains respect.

How are interdependency and social change related? - Chapter 6

The process of social exchange involves the mutual exchange of desirable rewards with others, and is the basis of social interaction.

A Cost and Reward Analysis

Part of so-called interdependence theory is the idea of an exchange of rewards and costs. Rewards are anything desirable that brings enjoyment and fulfillment to the recipient. Costs, on the other hand, are punishing, undesirable experiences (from financial costs to emotional turmoil). The outcome of a social interaction is the net profit or loss a person encounters. The social exchange perspective asserts that people want the best possible outcomes.

Expectations

Interdependence theory puts forward that we have an idiosyncratic comparison level (CL) that describes the outcomes we think we deserve when dealing with others. If we have had many positive relationships, we might have a higher CL than people who have had more troublesome relationships. Our CLs become the standards by which we measure our relationship satisfaction.

Is There Something Else Out There?

There is another criterion by which we measure our satisfaction – a comparison level for alternatives. If we think that our relationship sucks, but other options (being alone, being with other undesirable partners) would be worse, we evaluate our own relationship somewhat more positively. Even if we are in an unhappy partnership, we might be dependent on that relationship. The greater the gap between our current outcomes and our poorer alternatives, the more dependent we are. If, for instance, the alternatives promise better outcomes than our current situation, we are more motivated to move on. Another important factor determining whether we stay in a relationship, or move on, is our investments in our present relationship. How much would we lose if the relationship were to end? Furthermore, people who have little knowledge of positive or negative alternatives may not be able to judge their relationship based on those alternatives. If you are content in your relationship, you might not notice or seek alternatives.

The three elements of social exchange are: outcomes, comparison levels, and comparison levels for alternatives.

Types of Relationships

These calculations combine to define different types of relationships. There are four main types of relationships:

1. Happy-Stable relationships: current outcomes are higher than comparison levels and comparison levels for alternatives. (We’re happy where we are.)

2. Happy-Unstable relationships: Current outcome levels fall below the comparison levels for alternatives. (While we like the grass on our side of the fence, the grass on the other side looks wonderfully attractive!)

3. Unhappy-Stable relationships: Current outcome levels fall below our comparison level, but there are no attractive alternatives. (We don’t like our situation, but we don’t see a good way out and all other options seem worse).

4. Unhappy-Unstable relationships: Current outcomes fall below both comparison level and comparison level for alternatives. (We don’t like our situation, and there are better options out there).

The Passage of Time

Comparison level means that people can get spoiled – if we have a “perfect” spouse who makes us dinner and gives us a backrub whenever we get home, the one time they are late, we will be disappointed and dissatisfied. Your expectations rise, meaning you derive less pleasure from your partner’s pampering than you used to. Rewarding relationships can become unsatisfying simply by virtue of us getting used to them. Culture influences our comparison levels – the more depictions of “perfect” relationships that we see in the media, the better we expect relationships should be. Cultural changes also influence our awareness and the availability of alternatives.

Relationship Economies

Interdependence theory is rather grim and fails to take the nuances of relationships into account. The benefit of this economic view of relationships is that it allows us some insight into how relationships actually work. It turns out that the frequency of unpleasant interactions in the average relationship is surprisingly high. On top of that, people who are married can be incredibly cruel to each other when they are at their worst (which is hopefully not often). Interdependency and intimacy seem to let people be more impolite and critical than they would be with strangers. Over time, moody behavior can put a marriage at risk, and outright hostility can be actively damaging. Unfortunately, negative interactions in a close relationship tend to have more weight than positive ones. In fact, to stay satisfied in a close relationship, the best rewards-to-costs ratio is more like 5-to-1. Another problem is that people in close relationships often don’t notice all the loving and affectionate things their partners do, about a quarter, especially people with dismissing or fearful attachment styles.

Rewards and Costs

Rewards and costs have different, separate effects on our well being. We seek rewards and avoid costs. Seeking rewards is an approach motivation – we approach desired experiences and emotions. The opposite is avoidance motivation, in which we seek to escape pain and punishment, avoiding undesirable experiences. Pleasure results from fulfilling approach goals while pain results from failing to fulfill avoidance goals. But these are different processes, operating independently and sometimes in tandem. Pain and pleasure coexist in any relationship. This means that a relationship which is safe and secure (pain avoidant) is not necessarily happy (pleasure seeking). Sometimes a relationship is not unpleasant, but neither is it fun – it’s boring. If a relationship has few rewards and many costs, it’s distressed. If a relationship has many delights AND many dangers, it’s precarious. If it has many delights and few costs, it’s flourishing. Boredom in a relationship may not be immediately bad, but it can lead to strife later on.

Much of this occurs in our perception of things – some people are more sensitive to negative events that don’t bother others. A high motive for avoiding pain can cause a greater sensation of threat than a high motive to seek pleasure. People with high avoidance motivations tend to avoid conflict situations which is harmful for their relationship. People with high approach motivations tend to be more content. They also pursue more intimacy, are less lonely and enter social situations with the intent to make new friends. This is at the core of the self-expansion model of human motivation, which holds that we want partnerships that expand our interests and experiences, full of rewarding new perspectives. This theory suggests that when the novelty wears off, the key is to actively and creatively find new ways to challenge oneself and have fun.

Courtship

A model of relationship turbulence developed by Leanne Knobloch and Denise Solomon suggests that we should expect a period of adjustment and turmoil as new partners become accustomed to their increasing interdependence. The initial glee that occurs at the very beginning of relationship experiences a dip during this adjustment period. When casual dating becomes serious involvement, eventually things settle down and one’s new status as a partner in a couple is no longer an impediment. A period of adjustment and turmoil may also happen if a romantic relationship undergoes a substantial change, as when, for instance, family expansion occurs or a mariner returns home. Negotiations of roles are common. Turbulence is something to worry about when men or women are uncertain about marrying in the first place.

Marriage

What about long stretches of time? There tends to be a gradual decrease in satisfaction over years of marriage… yet some people (1 in 5) do not experience this decline. Most marriages don’t last to 25 years, but some do! Spouses who remain content tend to be low in neuroticism and high in self-esteem. They are more communicative and less angry, and experience fewer stressors. Happy couples also keep their expectations in check – if you expect things to be perfect, you will inevitably be disappointed down the line. People with reasonable expectations will also work more actively to keep a relationship considerate and active. Interdependency magnifies conflict – the ones we depend on have the power to cause us the deepest grief. Intimacy gives someone the ammunition with which to really wound you when conflict occurs. A marriage brings out hard truths about our lovers and ourselves. A lack of effort, increased interdependency (which magnifies tension), access to vulnerable information, unwelcome surprises and unrealistic expectations are all what generally lead to marriage dissatisfaction. Also parenthood is often a big adventure but hard for parents their relationship. When children arrive the amount of fights increases and marital satisfaction will decrease. This can be avoided if properly understood.

How Interdependency Works

The nature of interdependency is that both partners have an important stake in keeping their partner happy. Being dependent on your partner, you want them to stay with you. This encourages you to give them high outcomes – which make them equally dependent on you. Giving to one’s partner can be self-serving because it can keep a desirable relationship going.

Exchange Relationships

A distinction can be made between partnerships governed by norms of even exchange and generous relationships characterized by obvious concern for the partner’s outcomes. Exchange relationships are all about doing favors and expecting comparable repayment. People feel obligated to reciprocate evenly – “neither a borrower nor a lender be”. Exchange relationships are all about evening the scales – moods don’t come into it. However, an exchange relationship is no way to a satisfying relationship.

Communal Relationships

Communal relationships are characterized by a mutual concern between partners, with each providing favors and support without expecting repayment. People in these types of relationships don’t follow strict accounts, but make sacrifices for their partner even when there are no personal gains. This sort of relationship tends to be very meaningful and often romantic. The communal strength of relationships varies, but when it increases, people actually enjoy making sacrifices for their partners. Of course, there are still exchanges in communal relationships; it’s just that a kind act is not expected to be prepaid immediately, nor equivalently. One of the reason that healthy relationships tend to have a communal form is that they are often in an economy of surplus, where there seems no need to be worried about the little things. When a relationship becomes less satisfying, people begin to pay close attention to injustices in outcomes.

Equitable Relationships

Equity theory suggests that people are most satisfied in relationships when they feel that there is proportional justice, that each partner gets benefits from the relationship proportional to their contributions to it. So if one partner contributes more, they should get more outcomes than a partner contributing less. If there is unbalance in that, then one partner is over-benefited while the other is under-benefited. Inequity is stressful and makes people feel like they are being exploited. Over-benefiting partners may feel guilty. Over-benefited partners tend to be tense and under-benefited partners feel even less happy. If you’re under-benefited, you can try to change your partner’s contributions or outcomes. You might request better treatment or reduce your contributions, or maybe even sabotage your partner. You might work on changing psychological equity, changing your perceptions of the relationship. Or you might seek fairness elsewhere.

Fairness

However, some over-benefited partners have few issues with it, and when the overall level of outcomes is higher, satisfaction is also higher and inequity becomes less of an issue. Equity is especially important in the allocation of household tasks and child care. When one partner does most of the housework, they tend to feel unhappy – and this tends to fall on women.

Commitment

Happy dependence on a partner leads to commitment (the intention to continue the relationship). Of course, unhappy dependence also makes people committed, because they feel like they must stick to a relationship. According to the investment model, commitment comes is also related to rewards and costs. Satisfaction increases commitment, but high quality alternatives decrease commitment. If the costs of leaving their existing relationship is too high, they will likely stay. However, the amount someone has invested in a relationship is the strongest predictor of commitment. This economic investment model is good at predicting the likelihood of unfaithfulness, of relationship strength, and of whether abused spouses will leave their partners. Yet there are many types of commitment. People who are personally committed want to continue a relationship because it is satisfying. Constraint commitment occurs when people feel they must continue a relationship because it would cost too much to leave, even if they desire to leave. Moral commitment comes from a sense that you have a moral obligation to your partner or relationship – that it would be wrong to break your vows and end the marriage. They tend to believe in the holiness of wedlock and may feel responsible in a social or religious way.

Consequences

Commitment reduces the pain that comes along with rough spots in a relationship, because people feel that there must be a way out and that they will recover. Committed people actively enact relationship maintenance mechanisms to preserve and enhance their relationship. Accommodative behavior is higher – people will tolerate destructive behavior from their partners in order to dispel bad moods and not make them worse. Committed people are more willing to sacrifice their self-interests for the good of the relationship. They also think that their relationships are better than those of other people.

How are friendships different from relationships? - Chapter 7

Friendships are similar to romantic partnerships in that they are based on the same fundamental components. Over 1/3 of unmarried young adults consider one or more of their friendships to be their deepest relationship. Studies have found that people have the most fun with friends, even more so than with spouses.

Attributes of friendships

Friendships can be defined as voluntary, personal relationships providing intimacy and assistance, in which two parties like one another and seek each other’s company. Friendship involves both affection (including trust) and communion (self-disclosure, emotional support, practical assistance, etc.) and companionship (relaxation and entertainment).

How is That Not Love?

Love is more complex than liking, for one. Romantic love involves fascination, sexual desire, and a desire for exclusiveness. Love has more rules and more expectations. We’re supposed to be more loyal to our lovers than to our friends. Friendships are less confining and also easier to dissolve. Friendships with both members of the same sex and members of the opposite sex have fewer strings and are less emotionally intense than romantic relationships.

Respect and Trust

When we respect others and hold them in high esteem, we seek to become their friends. Respectable traits include moral qualities, consideration and acceptance of others, honesty, and willingness to listen. We trust partners when we are confident that they will behave benevolently towards us. It tends to develop over time, when someone is alert to our wishes and behaves unselfishly toward us. The loss of trust can dissolve friendships.

Capitalization

Good friends tend to magnify our delight when we share good news with them – they show enthusiasm when we do well. This is known as capitalization. When this occurs routinely, we tend to be more satisfied.

Social Support

Friendships are a major provider of social support. Just as capitalization enhances our enjoyment of positive events, social support helps encourage us through negative ones. This may come in the form of emotional support (affection, acceptance, reassurance), physical comfort (hugs and cuddles), advice support (information and guidance), and material support (money and goods). All types of social support have significant helping effects across all elements of life – from the physical (lower blood pressure, cholesterol levels, and stress hormone levels) to the practical, to the emotional. When social support is effective, we tend to feel close to those who provide it. Some people are better providers of support than others. For instance, people are more often satisfied when the supporter has a secure attachment style.

Not all support is welcome, even when its well-intentioned and altruistic. Sometimes we may get the wrong type of support, or too much support that can threaten our self-esteem and feel intrusive. Sometimes invisible support, support unnoticed by the recipient, is actually the best type. Most important, however, is our perception of the support we get from others. We sometimes have unrealistic ideas of how much support we are getting. When we are not satisfied with our friends, we find them not to be very helpful and the other way around. People who doubt that others care for them tend to be more critical of others’ efforts to aid them.

Responsiveness

One of the most important aspects of intimacy is responsiveness. This is defined as the attentive and supportive recognition of our needs and interests. Our friends are interested in us, seem to understand us, and seem to respect us. Perceived partner responsiveness is rewarding and draws us to people. It promotes intimacy. We feel more generous with people who we see as responsive.

Friendship Rules

Most of us have unwritten and unspoken rules of friendship. Some of these include: confidentiality, emotional support, volunteering help in times of need, trusting and confiding, sharing news of success and failure, not criticizing, not being jealous, standing up for each other, and seeking to repay debts/compliments. We also want to make one another happy. When friendships fail, it is often because one or both parties hasn’t been following these rules.

Friendship According to Age

Childhood

According to Duane Buhrmester and Wyndol Furman, our key friendship needs begin as a need for acceptance in our early years, upon which is added need for intimacy in our preadolescence, and a need for sexuality is stacked on top of those in our teen years. A significant change in our childhood is our cognitive development, we develop empathy - accompanying this process are changes in our interpersonal needs. We need to feel accepted, rather than ostracized – we need to feel close with others, to feel known. Eventually, we need to learn how to establish sexual relationships.

Adolescence

In our teen years, we spend less time with our families and more time with our peers. We turn to our friends for important attachment needs:

1. Proximity seeking: We try to approach and stay near our friends.

2. Separation protest: We resist being separated from our friends.

3. Safe haven: We see friends as a source of comfort in times of stress.

4. Secure base: We use our friends as a foundation from which to explore and dare new things.

Often people will still maintain family as a secure base, while they will likely use friends, from the age of 11 – 14, as a safe haven.

Young Adulthood

During late teens and twenties, we learn how to form enduring, committed intimate relationships. Once out of college, people tend to see their friends less often. We tend to have fewer friends but deep, interdependent relationships with the friends that we do have.

Midlife

In midlife, people often begin to couple up, spending less time with families and friends. A pattern of dyadic withdrawal happens – as we see more of our lover, we see less of our friends. Romantic couples have more contact with friends they have in common, but tend to have fewer friends overall. People tend to see less of friends who their spouse might see as a romantic rival. Still, social networks grow with marriage because of the addition of a new family (the in-laws). It’s actually hard on a marriage when couples do not have friends in common.

Old Age

Elderly people tend to have small tight-knit social networks, but spend less time with casual friends. Socioemotional selectivity theory argues that seniors simply have different interpersonal goals than young people – they are present-oriented rather than future-oriented. Emotional fulfillment becomes more important, and quality time is more valuable. Interaction with friends in your old age helps bolster against illness and mental distress.

Differences in friendships

Gender Differences in Same-Sex Friendships

Women’s relationships are generally characterized by emotional sharing and support and self-disclosure (face-to-face friends). Men’s friendships are characterized by shared activities and companionship (side-by-side friends). This difference emerges from a cultural phenomenon in which men are discouraged from emotional intimacy with other men. Society pressures men to show more emotional constraint than women.

Individual Differences

High self-monitors tend to construct broad activity-based social networks. They tend to be less invested than low self-monitors on average. Friendship networks of straight people tend to be less sexually diverse than those of homosexual people. Some of us think of ourselves as autonomous and independent, while others think of themselves as social and communal. Interdependent self-construal describes the extent to which we see ourselves as dependent on others.

Difficulties concerning friendships

Shyness

Shyness, a combination of social reticence and inhibited behavior, comes in the way of making friends. Shy people are anxious and inhibited around others, worried about being judged and feeling awkward around others. They tend to be more guarded in their interactions. While we all experience shyness, some people are chronically shy. They fear negative evaluation from others. They tend to have a low self-regard and have less social skill. To be shy is self-sabotaging – if you fear negative evaluation, your avoidance behaviors might cause you to be negatively evaluated. Your self-regard won’t have a chance to rise because you won’t get the social support you need. People tend to read shyness as aloof and unfriendly. Shy people tend to make fewer, and less-satisfying, friendships.

Treating Shyness

There are formal programs you can take that help you overcome shyness and learn to be assertive. Most shy people, though, can learn to be more social by relaxing and putting aside worries about being judged. Shyness often depends on the amount of pressure one feels in any given social situation. Shy people are more relaxed when they can be more anonymous and interact at their own pace.

Loneliness

If you have no intimate friends, you may feel a mix of unpleasant boredom, sadness and desperation. That’s loneliness. It also occurs when the quality of partnerships we have is significantly below the quality that we want. Having many superficial friends, one can still be lonely. We can suffer from social isolation, a feeling of dissatisfaction resulting from a lack of a social network. We can also feel emotional isolation, the lack of a single intense relationship. Too little social connection in general makes us feel that we have insufficient ties. This goes back to the need to belong: loneliness arises when the need goes not satisfied.

Dealing with Loneliness

Loneliness is often temporary. It is also heritable – some of us are more genetically inclined to feel lonely. Higher neuroticism increases the chances that we will be lonely, suggesting that personality also has an impact. Men tend to be lonelier than women, probably partially due to cultural norms that stop them from opening up emotionally. “Macho” men need women to keep from being lonely, because it is more acceptable to express emotions to your partner than to another man. Lonely people tend to have negative attitudes towards others, which can exacerbate the issue. Depression can result from loneliness, and make it even worse. Depressed people often engage in excessive reassurance seeking, doubting the sincerity of acceptance and pressing onwards for a sense of truth. Loneliness usually seems desperate and hopeless, but when people attribute their distress to outside, unstable influences rather than internalizing their loneliness, they are much more likely to find themselves making emotional connections again. Optimism makes us friendly, and being friendly gets us those friends we desperately need.

Facebook Friends

Most of our friends on our ‘Facebook friends list’ are either strangers or mere acquaintances. And you’ve probably accepted requests from people you do not even like. Only a few of our hundreds of ‘friends’ really know you well. People who use Facebook a lot are likely to have more Facebook friends than others, but there is not a difference between the amount of face-to-face friends or how close they are with each other. Facebook has advantages when it comes to expanding your casual social networks. However, it has its downsides, too. By not getting many ‘likes’, self-esteem of insecure people can become even lower. And scrolling through updates wherein everybody else seems to be having lots of fun can result in envy or disappointment.

What are the elements of love and romance? - Chapter 8

History of Love

Attitudes towards love have varied on four dimensions:

1. Cultural value

2. Sexuality

3. Sexual orientation

4. Marital status

In Ancient Greece, for instance, passionate sexuality was less important than platonic love between two men. In Egypt, importance was put on maintaining a royal bloodline, and sex was about procreation. Courtly love was more about being noble and romantic, while marriage was still not really about love.

Types of Love

Sternberg’s Triangular Theory of Love suggests that love is made from three basic building blocks:

1. Intimacy (emotional): warmth, understanding, trust, support, sharing.

2. Passion (motivational): physical desire, longing and excitement.

3. Commitment (cognitive): feelings of permanence and stability and the decision to work to maintain a relationship.

In this theory of love, each relationship falls somewhere between these three points. A relationship where all three are absent is not love, but merely a superficial relationship. Liking occurs when intimacy is high but passion and commitment are low – this characterizes friendship. Infatuation is strong passion without intimacy and commitment, which happens when we have a crush on someone or a quick, sexual fling. Empty love is commitment without intimacy or passion, and can occur in burned-out relationships, or possibly in arranged marriages. Romantic love is when passion and intimacy are both strong. Companionate love is when intimacy and commitment are strongest – this is often the case in a long, happy marriage with a slow sex life. Fatuous love is characterized by passion and commitment without intimacy, which might occur in a whirlwind courtship. Consummate love is when all three blocks come together, and is the sort of love that everyone seeks but barely anyone can maintain.

Physiological elements of love

Looking at the physical elements of love, researchers were able to determine that passion and intimacy are distinct experiences governed by different regions of the brain. It is possible, then, to desire people we do not love and feel little passion for people we do. Simply explained, passion (a.k.a. lust) is regulated by sex hormones and motivates men and women to reproduce. Attraction, a fuel of romantic love, is our motivation to bond and is regulated by dopamine and serotonin in reward centers of the brain. Attachment (companionate love), is regulated by oxytocin. These systems can act independently or interdependently. Different types of love overlap in messy, unforeseen ways, meaning that how we feel about people is much more complicated than the word “love” implies.

Romantic and Passionate Love

Romantic love has a vital element of passion, and any form of arousal (good or bad) can influence feelings of romantic love. According to Elaine Hatfield and Ellen Berscheid, passionate attraction is rooted in physiological arousal coupled with the belief that another person is the cause of that arousal – the two-factor theory. Which mean that there is an element of perception involved. If you just went sky-diving on a date, you might subconsciously link the person you’re with to the heightened state of arousal actually caused by the activity, and read it as sexual arousal. Or, in the case that you meet a very unattractive person, you feel extra disgusted by them. Positive and negative arousal has the same influence – they simply intensified our reactions to a person.

Thoughtful love

Romance is not just passion, but involves how we think about and perceive things. Zick Rubin created a Love Scale and a Liking Scale in 1973, which reflected the cognitive element of romantic love. One theme is intimacy, another is dependence, and yet another is caring. The Love Scale involves both giving and taking. There is also a certain intensity about it – it is more urgent. We think our friends are nice, but we couldn’t live without our lover. The saying that “love is blind” turns out to be somewhat true – people hold idealized images of their lovers which do not necessarily reflect reality. Love is also exclusive – when we are focusing on our love for one person, we actually will not notice other alternatives. Arthur and Elaine Aron’s self-expansion model suggests that the self also changes when we fall in love – we perceive the self as expanded, incorporated into the identity of our partner. “I” becomes “we”. We also learn a great deal about ourselves from interactions with our partners.

Companionate Love

Companionate love is a settled and comfortable companionship characterized by commitment and intimacy. A measure of this kind of love, created by Nancy Grote and Irene Frieze, is the Friendship-Based Love Scale: measuring romantic relationships based on a deep sense of trust and companionship. While it may be somewhat blander than romantic passion, it is the reality for couples that have managed to stay with each other for a long time.

Physiological Elements

Companionate love is related to the neuropeptide oxytocin, which promotes relaxation and reduces stress, while strengthening the bond between two people. Mothers experience it when they breastfeed, for instance, and adults experience it when they kiss. People with higher levels of oxytocin in their blood will be kinder when dealing with touchy topics with their spouses. While what you’ve seen here is a very fragmented view of love, keep in mind that all these chemicals and processes occur in the body, and people who are companions may also experience passion for one another.

Compassionate Love

The third type of love, which occurs in successful romances, is altruistic in nature. Compassionate love combines the trust of intimacy with compassion and caring that involves sacrifice on behalf of the beloved. Compassionate love is characterized by high empathy with your partner, and the feeling that you would rather suffer then allow them to be hurt. Compassionate love is not blind, but rooted in a real understanding of our partner’s weaknesses and a love that carries on regardless. The thoughtful and generous behaviors that occur in compassionate love relationships are good for its quality. Great compassionate love for the better half, characterized by compassionate acts, is associated with relationship satisfaction.

Styles of Loving

Sociologist John Alan Lee described six types of love that vary in intensity:

1. Eros: Erotic loved characterized by a preoccupation for physical appearance and a belief in love at first sight.

2. Ludus: Love is treated as an uncommitted game, and the lover seeks to play the field.

3. Storge: Storgic lovers prefer friendships that grow into lasting commitments.

4. Mania: Manic lovers are demanding and possessive, full of fantasy.

5. Agape: Agapic lovers are altruistic and dutiful towards their partners.

6. Pragma: Pragmatic lovers are practical, careful, and logical in searching for a mate.

Individual and Cultural Differences

• Culture

Different types of love seem fundamental to human interaction and universal across cultures. However, there are some cultural nuances that make love manifest slightly differently from place to place. When describing the experience of falling in love, Americans will emphasize similarities and looks more than Chinese people will. Chinese people tend to mention a desirable personality, opinions, and their own physical arousal. Romantic fantasies are more common in America, while the acknowledgement that one’s partner is complicated and that love is a mixed blessing is more common in China. In individualistic cultures, people are more convinced that love is the only reason to marry, whereas collectivist cultures tend to be more open to the idea of arranged marriages.

Attachment Style

How do attachment styles influence our experiences of love? People with secure attachment styles tend to have a high regard for others and tend to be more open with their partners. Insecure people are more wary, while avoidant people tend to be downright suspicious, which gets in the way of intimacy. Preoccupied people tend to have dramatic love lives characterized by a sense of unease and apprehension. Avoidant people may be more detached with an impersonal form of passion and little intimacy. Secure people have more passionate partnerships, and more committed partnerships as well. When it comes to support, insecure people are not as effective at caregiving and are not very reassuring. People high in avoidance will sometimes get angry when asked to provide comfort, while anxious people will offer a lot of help but for selfish reasons.

Attachment can vary from partner to partner, from relationship to relationship, making it more complex and malleable than some will have you believe. We might have one attachment style with our mother, and a totally different one with our romantic partners.

Age

As people age, they tend to have relationships that last longer, and they tend to have more relationships overall. Most people get more relaxed as they aged, being more cheerful and positive towards one another, but not exactly emotionally intense.

Men and Women

Men and women are pretty similar when it comes to love. Minor differences include the fact that men may be more dismissing then women, and women slightly more intensely emotional than men. Men tend to have more romantic attitudes than women, believing if you love someone enough, nothing else matters. They are more likely to believe in love at first sight and tend to fall in love faster than women do. Women are more selective and cautious when falling in love. Men place passion on a higher level of importance than women do, while women place more emphasis on commitment.

Romantic Longevity

Does love last? It depends. However, usually it does not last as long as partners expect it to. Romantic love tends to decrease after marriage. As the years go by, scores on romantic and passionate love scales tend to decrease. A decrease in romantic love might be very rapid, dropping by half after only two years of marriage. The fourth year of marriage sees the most divorces worldwide.

Why Not?

There are actually several reasons why it shouldn’t surprise us that love declines over time. Fantasy enhances romance, but is also temporary. We can’t live in our ideals forever - reality eventually catches up with us. Novelty alone adds excitement and energy to love, and the Coolidge effect describes the fact that arousal is heightened with each new lover. When we fall in love, our selves expand and intimacy increases – many changes are afoot and we are constantly experiencing new, pleasant things. Passion is less lasting than intimacy and commitment.

The Future

Some couples do continue to feel romantic love for each other, but this love changes over time. Those couples will experience dopamine-rich sensations when looking at their lover and the monogamy part of their brain will also activate. The reason the divorce rate is so high is that many people feel that the “magic” has died. Companionate love, however, is very satisfying and much longer lasting – so as long as you don’t think passion is the only good part of your relationship, you may have a long and happily committed relationship.

What is the role of sexualty in relationships? - Chapter 9

Attitudes about Sex

Casual Sex

Attitudes towards sex have been gradually changing over time. While our grandparents might have grown up in an age when premarital sex was frowned upon, it is now considered normal. Most of us disapprove of sex between uncommitted partners, meaning that we hold a permissiveness-with-affection standard.

We are equivocal about hookups - sexual interactions with others that commonly last one day or night. Most of the time, nonromantic partners do not have the intention to begin a lasting relationship. Generally, people experience more positive than negative feelings after having an one night stand. But mixed reactions, both positive and negative, are also common. Moreover, people tend to prefer dating to hookups.

Men and women do, on average, have different sexual opinions. Men have, in general, more permissive sexual attitudes, especially towards casual premarital sex. Men are more likely than women to regret inaction in casual sex rather than regretting things they did do. This is likely because women have been, in the past, judged more harshly than men for sexual permissiveness. There is an asymmetrical double standard in which men are considered studs when they have many partners whereas women are considered sluts. Now, though, women who invite men over for casual sex are evaluated more favorably (better in bed, warmer, less dangerous, etc.)

Same-Sex Sexuality

Attitudes about same sex sexuality are still very negative, with almost half of Americans thinking that it is morally wrong to engage in such behavior. However, things are changing rapidly. Judgments on same-sex relationships have, interestingly, a good deal to do with people’s beliefs about why someone might be gay. When people believe it is a biological predisposition, they tend to be much more accepting of homosexuality than when they consider it a choice. The American Psychological Association has resolved that same-sex relationships operate in much the same way as heterosexual relationships, that orientation has nothing to do with your ability to be a nurturing parent, and that marriage is psychologically beneficial for people both gay and straight.

Sexual Behavior

Losing Your Virginity

Most of us have sex before we marry (about 95% of Americans), with the average age of first intercourse at 17. American teens are getting more responsible, using birth control when they first have intercourse… but still, one in four female teenagers in the United States encounter sexually transmitted infections. Most teens have intercourse with a steady, emotionally important partner. Girls tend to be ambivalent about having sex, while most young men are eager for it to occur. This is likely due to the different gender norms that encourage boys to chase girls and girls to hold back. When sex follows expressions of love and commitment, it is usually experienced as a positive development. When it occurs without those expressions, it can become something we regret.

Committed Relationships

The most common reasons why people choose to have sex include: attraction, pleasure, affection, romance, emotional closeness, etc. Sometimes, though rarely, the reasons are callous, like the desire to cause emotional harm, vengeance, or to gain an advantage. The main themes of our reasons for sex are emotions (an expression of love), physical urges (based on pleasure and attractiveness), pragmatism (in order to achieve a goal) and insecurity (e.g. to boost your self-confidence). The frequency with which people have sex is influenced by the type and duration of their relationships. Young couples living together tend to have sex three times a week on average, while married couples tend to have sex about two times per week. Single people have sex less often than that because they have no consistent access to a sexual partner. Older people tend to have sex less frequently than younger people. Keep in mind that if the reason you are staying with your partner is the sex, you might want to rethink your long-term prospects. Sex invariably diminishes in importance as a relationship progresses.

Sexual orientation also has an impact on the frequency of sex as well – gay men tend to have more sex with their partners than heterosexual couples and lesbians do. Lesbians have less sex than other types of relationships. However, when relationships mature, gay men actually experience the biggest decrease in sexual activity, having sex less frequently than heterosexual couples of a comparable age.

Infidelity

Most people tend to strongly disapprove of extradyadic sex (affairs). However, that doesn’t make it any less common. 21% of women and 32% of men have been sexually unfaithful to their romantic partners at least once. Men are more likely to cheat on their partners than women are, possibly because they hold more positive attitudes about casual sex. Gay men have more sex outside the dyad than both (lesbian) women and heterosexual men do. For some of us, sex is connected solely to love and commitment, but other people believe that sex without love is acceptable. These different approaches to sex reflect varying sociosexual orientations. An unrestricted sociosexual orientation describes people who feel like sex doesn’t have to be tied to love. People with unrestricted orientations are more often flirtatious and on the prowl for new partners. They tend to be sociable and drink more. Sociosexual orientation is related to the likelihood that people will have extradyadic sex. Over one’s lifetime, unrestricted people have more sexual partners and more instances of cheating than restricted people. We can actually pretty accurately recognize people with unrestricted orientations by their facial features and expressions.

Why Do We Cheat?

The good genes hypothesis suggests that some women – especially those with less-desirable mates – can profit from a strategy in which they pursue long-term partners who can proved resources while sneakily seeking good genes for their children from other men. Men may cheat (evolutionarily speaking) because it gives them a higher chance of passing on their genes to the next generation.

Sperm Competition

Historically, men have encountered situations involving sperm competition, which occurs when the sperm of two or more men occupy a woman’s vagina at the same time. In fact, research has found that the shape of a man’s penis is particularly adept at removing the sperm of previous lovers, and men who have been cuckolded will engage in the sort of sex (involving deep thrusts) which most effectively achieves this.

Sexual Desire

On average, men have higher sex drives than women do, experiencing more frequent and more intense desires, motivating them to engage in more sexual activity. Men masturbate more often than women do, want sex more often than women, and typically want to begin having sex in a relationship earlier than women do. Men fantasize more about sex than women, spend more money on sex, and are more accepting of casual sex and men would like to have sex with more people than women do. This can lead to mismatches in sexual desire, in which the husband feels unfulfilled and the wife feels badgered. Unfortunately, there comes a certain attitude of exchange in sexual relationships, whereby if a man spends a good deal of money and effort on a date, he expects (even unconsciously) that it will lead to sex, and that he then deserves sex.

Safe Sex

Many college students have experienced one-night-stands, often with a friend. These hookups often don’t involve consistent condom use, and a good deal of college students doesn’t consistently use contraceptives in dating relationships. This occurs because people underestimate the risks of sexual infections. Because they don’t know how many people around them have had STIs, they may underestimate their own likelihood to contract one. They often have an illusion of unique invulnerability, in which they believe that bad things are more likely to happen to other people. People also engage in faulty decision-making – they might intend to be safe, but in the heat of the moment allow sexual arousal to override their judgment. Intoxication only makes matters worse, as people experience alcohol myopia and are unable to make thought-through decision. Pluralistic ignorance occurs when people mistakenly believe that others engage in those same unsafe behaviors. Power inequality means that the sexual partner with the most power will have more of a say in condom use. People who are educated in a way that promotes abstinence as a contraceptive method sometimes also teach that condoms don’t work. And finally, most important of all, may be that men and women find sex less pleasurable when using condoms. Sometimes a condom just breaks the mood and decreases intimate and emotional satisfaction. Teens will have sex anyway, it just won’t be safe.

Satisfaction

When people are in good health and have a steady partner, they tend to have happy sex lives. Many sexually active people, however, have experienced frustrating sexual problems (pain, lack of desire, difficulty reaching orgasm). All in all, a minority of adults 45 and older is currently experiencing a happy sex life. High levels of contentment are more likely to occur in deeply committed partnerships. Most married couples who have sex three times a week or more report a contentment with their sex lives, while on 32% of spouses were happy with sex once a month. Frequency matters more for men than for women. Sexual interactions are most rewarding when they make us feel competent, close to the person we’re with, and in control of our own actions. However, traditional gender roles often encourage a woman to be passive in bed, undermining their autonomy. Having sex in pursuit of positive outcomes (to increase intimacy, for example) is more fulfilling than having sex to avoid negative outcomes.

Communication & satisfaction

A major influence on sexual satisfaction is our ability to communicate about sex and desire. Many couples never discuss sex, as it feels awkward to do so. This can be an issue, because if we talk openly and fearlessly about our sexual likes and dislikes, we can achieve greater satisfaction. Heterosexual couples persistently neglect open communication. When they do communicate, however, sex becomes more satisfying for both partners. Better communication can also dispel miscommunication. Since men think about sex more often than women do, they are more likely to construe sexual implications in innocent interactions. (Interestingly, men who reject traditional gender roles and value equality make these mistakes fare less often). Explicit and unambiguous communication is sometimes needed to correct this.

Relationship Satisfaction

Of course, sexual satisfaction is largely related to relationship satisfaction. Stress makes us dissatisfied, and similar sexual histories actually increase our satisfaction. When sex in a relationship is satisfying, we tend to be happier with our relationship because pleasing sex makes a relationship more gratifying. Pleasing sex reduces stress and improves your mood.

Sexual Coercion

The desirable elements of sex are absent when sexual coercion occurs – when one partner intentionally cajoles, induces, pressures, or forces sex on the other against their will. Pressure can vary from coercive verbal persuasion (guilt, threats, etc.) to plying someone with alcohol, to the threat or use of force. A person might be coerced or tricked into being sexually touched, or into full intercourse. Because these sexual acts are unwanted, they are disrespectful and victimizing, and have a damaging effect on relationships. When a woman is plied with alcohol or verbally manipulated into sex, people may consider her partially responsible for the act. Overall, men use more violence and sexual coercion than women do. People who engage in this sort of behavior tend to have belittling, unsympathetic attitudes towards the opposite sex. Women who are victimized in this way tend to have poorer mental and physical health afterwards. If potential partners see sex as a contest, they will be more likely to enact this sort of behavior. If a woman resolves in advance to rebuff this sort of sexual misconduct, they will be better prepared. It’s important to be frank and direct before an intimate interaction begins.

What can cause stress in relationships? - Chapter 10

Perceived Relational Value (PRV)

Perceived relational value (PRV) is the degree to which others perceive their relationships with us to be valuable, important, or close. When that is lower than we would like it to be, this can be very painful. People include us to varying degrees – at maximal inclusion; people seek our company and find us a vital member of their social world. When we are actively included, we might be invited but not necessary. Ambivalent inclusion occurs when we are neither accepted nor rejected. We might encounter passive exclusion, where we are ignored, or active exclusion, where we are avoided. Worst of all is maximal exclusion, when we are told to leave or when people specifically leave because we arrive. Our reactions to inclusion/exclusion depend on our individual need to feel accepted. Being excluded because you are superior or skilled hurts less than being excluded because you are inadequate. Exclusion is more painful when we want to be accepted by our excluders.

Feeling Rejected

Hurt feelings are complex. Ambivalence, for instance, hurts almost as much as maximal exclusion. As soon as we feel unwelcome, it doesn’t matter how unwelcome we actually are. It just sucks. If we’re accepted, being adored doesn’t actually improve our self-esteem very much – we’re happy with just being well liked. While rejection hurts, decreases in acceptance might have a greater impact. If people seem to like us at first, but then begin to reject us or feel more ambivalent about us, it can really sting. It makes us feel that they got to know our true selves, and are thus rejecting us on a deeper level. This relational devaluation causes pain that can actually be related to physical pain. In fact, painkillers like acetaminophen can actually help relieve hurt feelings. Some people are more deeply hurt by relational devaluation than others, also now attachment styles are influential. People with anxiety about abandonment are more hurt by drops in PRV than people who are more secure. High self-esteem counters the effects.

Feeling Ostracized

Ostracism is a more specific form of rejection in which people are given the cold shoulder. They are, essentially, deliberately ignored by their partner. People ostracize their partners as a way to avoid confrontation, to punish their partners, or to help them cool off. However, ostracism makes us wonder why we are being ignored and often makes us frustrated and hurt rather than guilty and contrite. Humans are very sensitive to even the slightest hint of social rejection. Ostracism is damaging to relationships, is dehumanizing, and threatens our attachments to others. When ostracized, we feel out of control, rejected, and worthless. It may cause us to make dumb choices that backfire on us. In order to relieve the uncomfortable state of being ostracized, the victim may either start seeking ways to regain regard and become extra compliant, or they may start looking for less punishing partners. When we feel that we are being unjustly ostracized, we may get angry and dismiss the opinions of the person ignoring us. Hostility occurs, sometimes to the degree of violence.

The Green Monster – Jealousy

Jealousy is a negative emotional experience that can fill us with sad dejection and pride. Anger, hurt and fear are the three emotions that define this negative emotional experience. When we believe that our partner does not value us enough to honor their commitments to us, we feel hurt. If we feel a romantic rival threatens to lure our partner away, we worry about abandonment and feel fear. Being cast aside for someone else makes us angry, both with the rival and with our straying partner. Jealousy is also the most common motive for spousal homicide. But what if your partner does not get jealous – would you be disappointed? It depends both on what type of jealousy we’re talking about and what the partner does in response.

Types of Jealousy

Reactive jealousy occurs when someone notices an actual threat to a valued relationship. This might be something that occurred in the past, or something anticipated. The danger, however, is real. And often well founded! At least among college students, many report having interacted with (fondled, kissed, or more) someone else while in a relationship. Suspicious jealousy is when there has been no misbehavior, and one partner is just worried and mistrustful, extra-vigilant and suspicious of their partner’s behavior. While almost everyone experiences reactive jealousy at the time their other half have been unfaithful, people vary in their tendencies for suspicious jealousy.

Prone to Jealousy

What sorts of people are particularly prone to jealousy? One precursor to jealousy is a persons’ dependence on their relationship. People with attractive alternatives will feel less jealous because they have less to lose. People who feel that they are inadequate partners will feel less secure and therefore more often jealous, and people with high self-esteem are therefore less prone to jealousy. If people feel that they “married up” and are less desirable than their partner, they will feel more threatened by real or imagined alternatives. Attachment styles influence jealousy as well – people with a preoccupied style seek closeness and worry that they are not loved in return, making them prime candidates for jealousy. People with high neuroticism are particularly prone to jealousy. Macho men and feminine women (the extremes of the traditional gender roles) experience more jealousy, probably because the rules of traditional relationships engender strict expectations.

Jealousy Triggers (People)

Romantic rivals with “high mate value”, who make us look bad by comparison, are the most worrisome threats to our relationships and arouse more jealousy than other rivals. If they are friends or our partner’s former lovers, the impact is also stronger. The level of threat a rival poses is the best indicator – men will be more jealous of other men who are dominant, rich, and handsome. Both genders are particularly threatened by good-looking others. However, interestingly, we tend to overestimate how attractive our partners find our rivals – thereby suffering more stressed feelings than is justified.

Jealousy Triggers (Situations)

Jealousy is a natural, ingrained emotion. Our ancestors were more successful at mating when they reacted strongly to interlopers, a trait which was passed down to us. Since men and women have different reproductive priorities, we are also threatened by different types of infidelity from our romantic partners. Men face paternity uncertainty, so being suspicious and jealous actually proved more helpful in passing genes along, even when that jealousy was unwarranted. Men have more extramarital affairs than women, but are also more adept at detecting sexual infidelity in their own partners. Women, on the other hand, were more successful in raising children when they were able to sense a man’s infidelity – if their man was taking resources away from them and giving them to another woman’s child. Women tend to be more cautious, underestimating the commitment of their men. Men tend to be more wary of sexual infidelity in their mates, while women react more to the threat of emotional infidelity. While studies have shown the evolutionary perspective to have merit, they have caused controversy.

Questioning the Evolutionary Perspective

One issue people have with the methodology of such testing is that it uses a forced-choice sort of question that tends to exaggerate even relatively minor differences between the sexes. When this is done differently, allowing people to say whether both types of infidelity are threatening, most people do judge them equally. The different types of infidelity also seem to mean different things to both genders. Men are more accepting of casual sex, on the whole, so women tend to see it as more casual, while emotional infidelity is proof of a deeper threat. Men see women as loving people more often without sex being involved, but that they always love the people they have sex with – we assume that women can separate love and sex less easily than men can. This perception explains the differences in jealousy. Research taking these other elements into account does still support the evolutionary theory. When men and women suspect cheating, women are quicker to suspect an emotional bond, while men are quicker to suspect sexual infidelity. When there is no chance of producing a child (i.e. in a same-sex partnership), both men and women are more preoccupied with the possibility of emotional infidelity. At the end of the day, men and women do not differ much: we all tend to get hurt or angry by the prospect of an (emotional and sexual) love affair.

Responses

People react to the hurt, anger, and fear of jealousy in different ways. They might retaliate in harmful ways, like violence or antagonism, or try to reciprocate and induce those jealous feelings right back. They might act in ways meant to protect the relationship that often backfires – limiting their partner’s freedom, threatening their rivals, or spying. If they respond by expressing their concerns and trying to work things out by making themselves more desirable, this tends to be more successful. Attachment style has an impact on which coping method we turn to. Secure and preoccupied people will try to repair their relationship, while dismissing and fearful styles might avoid the issue and pretend nothing is wrong. Women more often seek to improve their relationships, while men tend to try and protect their egos by threatening the rival and pursuing other women. Women are more likely than men to try to make their partners jealous in order to elicit attention and commitment, which usually backfires.

Coping with Jealousy

Ways to prevent yourself from becoming jealous include avoiding ambiguous situations (like Facebook) where innocuous comments or behaviors might be misconstrued – avoid snooping. If jealousy is justified, try working on reducing the connection between your relationship’s exclusivity and your sense of self-worth. One technique is self-reliance – trying to stay cool and avoid feeling angry. Another is self-bolstering, which involves boosting your self-esteem by thinking about your good qualities. If you’re unable to do that, therapy can help by reducing irrational, catastrophic thinking, enhancing self-esteem, and improving communication skills. Most of us do not need therapy as long as you are aware of the fact that you are a valuable and worthwhile person - with or without the love of your romantic partner.

Deception

One great strain on relationships is deception. A deceptive behavior is one that intentionally creates an impression that the deceiver knows to be untrue. People might lie, mislead, or conceal information by not mentioning details. They may try to divert attention from important facts, avoid touchy subjects, or mix truth and lies into misleading half-truths.

Lying in Relationships

Studies have found that most college students lie twice a day, and adults about once per day. Lies may be casual and spontaneous, tend to be mostly successful. The most common type of lie is one that profits the liar, either by warding off embarrassment, guilt, or inconvenience. People lie when trying to appeal to people they are attracted to. Men might lie to make themselves look more ambitious, while women may lie about intentions towards sex, and are more likely to fake orgasms. A quarter of lies are told to benefit others, to save their feelings. People will lie when honesty would hurt someone’s feelings. We may claim to agree with other people when we don’t, pretend we are happier than we are, and other such lies that help smooth out social situations. These patterns of lying come up in close relationships as well. People are more likely to tell lies about topics that could destroy their reputation to their closest partners. Even when lies are undetected, they can impact a relationship. People don’t like to lie – it makes them feel distant and uncomfortable.

Deceiver’s distrust occurs when someone who lies to others begins to perceive the recipients of their lies as less honest. This is because they assume people are just like them, and that others share their deceitful motives. Lying can sully a relationship even when the liar is the only one who knows about it. Recipients tend to feel that the lies liars tell are more offensive and harmful than the liars themselves do.

Liars

Who lies? Some people lie more than others, usually those who are more focused on the impressions they make on other people. If you are outgoing and sociable, you may be more likely to lie and more convincing. Frequent liars may not necessarily be good at lying. A liar’s performance has to do with the liar’s levels of guilt and motivation. Lies tend to be short and undetailed when about an unimportant topic, but when about something more important they tend to be more convincing in terms of content. Because of motivation, however, those important lies tend to come across rehearsed and are thus easier to detect. A liar’s nonverbal behavior tends to give them away – they will make more grammatical errors, for instance, and blink less often. Inconsistencies in body language, tone of voice, and content of speech tend to give someone away – it’s not just one thing that’s wrong, but people can tell if something is “off” about the liar.

Detecting Lies

While people differ in their mannerisms and we can’t generally say that people in general behave in particular ways when they lie… we all have a certain idiosyncratic “tell” or two. If we see a break in someone’s mannerisms, we might suspect that they are acting strange because of a lie. We are better at detecting deception in people we know well. However, while intimate partners know the most about each other, they have a strong truth bias that blocks lie detection. This truth bias is based in trust – we assume our partner will tell us the truth. The more trusting and intimate the relationship, the worse both parties are at detecting lies. Large-scale studies have found that in general, we can all distinguish truth from lies 54% of the time – which is really not great. In intimate relationships, that number is even worse – when the truth does come out, it is usually later on because of physical evidence, information from others, or confession. Undetected lies can poison a relationship’s atmosphere and contribute to suspicion and doubt, or worse – betrayal.

The Sting of Betrayal

Partners sometimes do harmful things, and sometimes they fail to do good things, and in doing so violate our expectations of them. A betrayal is a hurtful action from someone we trust and from whom we didn’t expect such treachery. Of course, infidelity is a huge form of betrayal. Yet many other behaviors are included – cruel gossip, sharing intimate secrets, hurtful teasing, breaking of promises, failures in support, or abandonment are all types of betrayal. When one is betrayed, their perceived relationship value experiences a sudden drop. A betrayal has more sting if it comes from a close other – meaning that casual acquaintances cannot hurt us as much as trusted intimates can. When our feelings get hurt in daily life, it is more likely at our romantic partner’s hand. Even if unintentional, little betrayals and pains can be very damaging. Caring and trust are integral to intimacy, but betrayal can happen in a relationship very often. This might occur because we have multiple intimate relationships – with friends, family, and lovers. Whenever we give the balance to one relationship at the expense of another, we may enact a betrayal, even if it is inescapable. Even with the best intentions, we may betray our closest friends.

Individual Differences

Some people betray their close partners more than others. The Interpersonal Betrayal Scale, developed by Warren Jones, can detect individual levels of betrayal tendency. College students majoring in social sciences, business, education, and humanities are more likely to betray others than those in physical sciences, engineering, and technical fields. Older and better-educated people tend to betray people less. People who repeatedly betray others tend to be unhappy and maladjusted. They tend to come from broken homes, have more psychiatric problems, and are more suspicious and vengeful. Yet those who betray tend to judge their transgressions to be less severe than the betrayed do.

Two-Sided Coin

People are often self-serving when they look at their own actions, including betrayal. We often excuse and minimize our own harmful behavior, while our partners consider themselves grievously wronged. Yet the betrayed is right – betrayals tend to have a lasting negative effect on a relationship.

Coping with deception

When wronged, people may become vengeful and feel like their mistreatment should be repaid in kind. A bad idea, if you think of the consequences. If one feels betrayed, the perspective of victim and perpetrator are often different concerning the appropriate level of punishment, which could end in a cycle of vengefulness. We tend to underestimate the gravity of actions of our own that we find to be condemnable in others. A second problem is the expectation of how satisfying revenge will be. Vengeful people are more likely to ruminate about past wrongs and nurse grudges that keep their wounds fresh. They stay distressed instead of those who got over it and moved on. Finally, vengeful people are acquisitive and manipulative and tend to score high on neuroticism and low on agreeableness.

Forgiveness

To go on and move past a betrayal, forgiveness is necessary. Forgiveness is the decision to give up one’s perceived or actual right to get even with, or hold in debt, the person who wronged them. The harmful conduct is acknowledged, and the harmed partner extends mercy on the misbehaver. To forgive is to put away spite and stop retaliating, even when you don’t condone or forget the partner’s misbehavior. Forgiving comes more readily to some than others. People with a secure attachment style are more forgiving because they tend to engage in less angry rumination. People high in agreeableness also forgive more easily. Neuroticism and narcissism impede forgiveness, because narcissists’ sense of entitlement fosters vengefulness. Neuroticism helps people nurse a grudge.

Forgiveness is easier when there is a humble and sincere apology by the betrayer. Another component is empathy on the part of the victim – if you can imagine why someone did what he or she did and can admit to your own imperfections, you are more easily able to forgive them. Finally, brooding about your partners’ transgressions keeps you preoccupied with the damage they did. Anger and resentment stay as long as we let them. Retribution burns bridges, but forgiveness builds them, and leads to better and more repentant behavior on the part of the wrongdoer. People who are able to finally forgive their partners also benefit from less hurt and more empathy and connection. Keep in mind, though, that forgiveness is helpful when it is for a rare misstep, but if we are frequently wronged, we may lose self-respect. If we consistently forgive an unrepentant partner, our self-esteem can be damaged.

How to deal with conflict? - Chapter 11

Interpersonal conflict occurs when one person’s motives, goals, beliefs, opinions, or personal behavior interfere with (or are incompatible with) those of another. Conflict comes from dissimilarity. While we are all different from one another in significant ways, conflict arises when one’s wishes or actions actually impede or obstruct those of someone else. Not all conflicts are noticeable from the outside – we may be unaware of how we impede our partner, or what our partner sacrifices for us.

Can You Avoid Conflict?

No, conflict cannot always be avoided. People have changing moods and preferences and those can differ and cause two partners to be at odds. It is common that one person may have certain goals that the behavior of their partner impedes. Some conflicts are unavoidable because people themselves experience opposing motivations (dialectics) that can never really be satisfied because they contradict one another. This means that a person is drawn in opposing directions at different times, increasing the probability of interpersonal conflict on the way. For instance, a very human dialectic is the tension between (1) personal autonomy and connection to others. We want to be free to do what we want, valuing our independence and autonomy. Yet we also seek warm connections with others. In any given moment, we may be conflicted as to whether we want to pursue independence or belonging, intimacy or freedom. Another dialectic tension is between (2) being open and being closed – self-disclosure is highly intimate, but it makes us vulnerable and can be uncomfortable. We experience a dialectic where we feel the need for (3) stability and yet seek change. There is also a tension between (4) integration and separation from the social network – how much do we want to stay at home with our lover and how much do we want to go out with our friends.

Frequency

People frequently engage in conflict with their partner. Children and parents are often at odds, adolescents experience seven conflicts a day, couples report 2 conflicts a week and spouses report seven conflicts in the course of two weeks. Many conflicts are never spoken about – we say nothing, perhaps, or push it under the rug to keep the peace. Some people experience more conflict than others. This has to do with personality – neurotic people are impulsive and touchy, having more unhappy disagreements, while people high in agreeableness tend to get along. Attachment style plays a role – an insecure or anxious attachment style can cause one to feel there is more conflict in their relationships than secure partners do. Younger people often experience more conflict with their partners, but relationships often grow more placid as they age. When couples are incompatible, conflict is sure to arise more often. Partners tend to sleep bad after they wrangle and that make them feel ill tempered the day after. As a result, more conflicts arise. Alcohol can exacerbate conflict, making people sour and blaming.

The Course of Conflict

Instigation

The interdependency that characterizes intimate relationships provides abundant opportunities for conflict. Parents disagree most often about how to manage, discipline, and care for their children. Division of household chores is the second most common conflict, followed by communication. While sixth on the list, disagreements revolving around money are often the most enduring and painful. Instigating events can be placed in four categories:

1. Criticism – verbal or nonverbal acts that are seen as communicating dissatisfaction with a partner’s behavior, attitudes, or traits. Conflict occurs when the target of criticism interprets it as unjust or needless, regardless of the intentions of the partner.

2. Illegitimate demands - requests that exceed the normal expectations that partners have for each other.

3. Rebuffs – Situations in which one person seeks a certain reaction from the other, but the other fails to respond as expected.

4. Cumulative annoyances – seemingly trivial events that get annoying the more they occur. We can develop social allergies, hypersensitive exasperation when an event occurs again (women tend to get irritated with men’s uncouth habits, while men get annoyed with women’s lack of consideration)

From an evolutionary perspective, conflict in relationship is also a result of men and women’s differing reproductive motivations. Differences in sexual desire can cause conflict for most couples and require negotiation and trade-offs as long as the relationship lasts.

Attribution

Of course, conflicts themselves are riddled with possibilities for exacerbation – we each bring a different perspective to the table. The actor-observer effect means that partners will explain behavior differently. The self-serving bias leads us to look at our own behavior in a more forgiving way. We see others as biased where our own perceptions must be impartial. Misunderstandings can result when we don’t think about the other person’s point of view, leading to attributional conflict. In such a conflict, the more the other disagrees with us, the more we are convinced that we’re right. The explanations that intimate partners have for behaviors they encounter have a major influence on how upset they feel about them. If attribution for the behavior is external and unstable (not their fault, a one-time thing), then strong negative emotion like anger is unwarranted. If, however, we think that it is internal and stable (they always do that because that’s who they are), we will feel the behavior is intentional and get annoyed. Happy couples tend to attribute more kindly than unhappy couples do. We are more likely to announce are displeasure with an unwanted behavior if we think it is something our partner can change.

Engagement/Escalation of conflict

Once a conflict is instigated, people must decide whether they will engage in it or put it aside. Sometimes both partners want to avoid an issue, and will evade the conflict. This happens if the event is seen as trivial or the issue seems intractable. If the conflict is engaged, couples will begin to negotiate to seek resolution through problem solving. Yet sometimes what occurs is escalation. Escalation is characterized by dysfunctional communication, the bringing up of other unrelated issues, belligerence and disrespectful scorn. Partners may say nasty things to each other when fighting, including direct and indirect tactics. Direct tactics manage the conflict in a straightforward manner; indirect tactics are less explicit in intentions.

Nasty Tactics

Direct tactics are in-your-face and make it clear that you are displeased. They include:

1. Accusations that criticize attribute negative qualities to the other partner.

2. Hostile orders for the other to comply, sometimes laced with threats.

3. Antagonistic questions that put the partner in difficult positions

4. Surly / sarcastic put-downs that communicate disgust, including interruptions and shouting.

Indirect tactics, these include:

1. Condescension and implied negativity.

2. Dysphoric affect, like expressions of melancholy, dejection, or whining.

3. Topic changes, in which the partner tries to preemptively, shut down the topic.

4. Evasive remarks, which do not acknowledge the partner or the conflict.

Damaging Effects of Surly Interactions

Nasty tactics all tend to inflame rather than diminish conflicts, and frequent use of them during conflicts can lead to dissolution of marriage. Defensiveness, stonewalling, and belligerence are all infuriating to experience, and have a real physical impact, increasing our heart rates and causing stress hormones to flood our blood streams. We will get sicker sooner in relationships with lots of conflict. We can become angry when confronted with a partner’s ill-temper, and the negative affect reciprocity effect is a pattern in which we trade escalating provocations back and forth. This usually only happens in unhappy couples. Some people are less likely than others to experience anger in such an extreme way – those with secure attachment styles, for instance, experience milder responses to conflict than insecure people do.

Demand/Withdrawal of conflict

One damaging interaction pattern that exacerbates conflict is the demand/withdrawal pattern, in which one person becomes the demander, criticizing and nagging, while the other withdraws, avoiding confrontation and becoming defensive. This pattern is self-perpetuating, as the demander is frustrated by the withdrawer, who becomes even more resistant in response to the pressure. There is a gender difference here – women are more often the demanders, and men the withdrawers. This might be due to the gender roles women and men are taught – women are taught to express, men to maintain their autonomy. Part of it also comes from a power dynamic – those who hold the power in a relationship will be more resistant to requests for change.

Negotiation/Accommodation of conflict

Successful conflicts are more likely to follow a negotiation/accommodation pattern. Negotiation needs partners to be calm. There are a number of nice tactics that partners can use to facilitate positive conflict resolution. And again, some of the tactics are direct, and others indirect.

Nice Tactics

Direct nice tactics openly address the issue, including:

1. Showing willingness to deal with the conflict: accepting responsibility, offering concessions or compromises.

2. Paraphrasing the other’s point of view, thereby showing support.

3. Using “I-statements” to self-disclose.

4. Showing approval and affection.

5. Friendly, non-sarcastic humor is beneficial to a disagreement, but snarky humor that ridicules the other is not.

Optimism helps – if we have positive expectations of the outcomes of a conflict, we are more likely to reach a positive conclusion. It’s important to value your partner’s outcomes as much as your own.

If anyone begins getting annoyed or defensive, it’s a good idea to take a break from the conflict, think in a neutral way about your conflict from the perspective of a third person, and return to it with a clear mind after a few minutes. Continued use of this method is likely to leave both partners with a more satisfying romantic relationship.

Typology of Responses

These four categories can be active or passive, constructive or destructive:

1. Voice: Active and constructive – you try to improve a situation by discussing matters, changing behavior or seeking counsel.

2. Loyalty: Passive and constructive – you optimistically wait and hope for the situation to improve.

3. Exit: Active and destructive – leaving, threatening to end a relationship, or becoming abusive.

4. Neglect: Passive and destructive – you avoid discussing critical issues and reduce interdependence with the partner.

When both partners chose destructive responses to conflict, the relationship is in a risky place. Remaining constructive in the face of a lover’s temporary disregard (accommodation) is a very valuable method of coping.

Types of Couples

John Gottman identified four relationship profiles that show how different couples respond to conflict:

1. Volatile: These couples often argue, and do so passionately, trying to influence each other and displaying negative affect, while remaining witty and loving.

2. Validators: Polite fighters who collaborate through their problems and express empathy for the other’s point of view.

3. Avoiders: These couples rarely argue and avoid confrontations and when they do, they are mild and ginger. This tends not to lead to real problem-solving, but does keep the peace.

4. Hostiles: These couples have harmful, caustic arguments. They criticize too much; show contempt and defensiveness, and arguments get more oppressive as they go on. Hostile couples are meaner to each other on average.

The main take-away here is that if a conflict discussion gets sour, sarcastic, and surly, it becomes corrosive. Conflicts are corrosive when interactions are venomous.

Outcomes of conflict

Putting an End to Conflict

Conflicts can end well, or they can end poorly. There are five main ends to conflict, two of which are more negative:

1. Separation: An undesirable result of conflict – both partners withdraw without resolution, possibly causing irreparable harm to the relationship. It offers no solutions and can simply delay discord.

2. Domination: One partner gets his or her way while the other succumbs. This happens routinely when one person is more powerful than the other. They may be happy with the result, but the submissive partner may harbor resentment.

3. Compromise: Both parties reduce their aspirations so they can find a mutually beneficial solution. Nobody gets what they want, but nobody leaves empty-handed.

4. Integrative agreements: A win-win solution is found, where both partners’ aspirations are creatively satisfied. This is particularly difficult to achieve.

5. Structural improvement: Usually this occurs after significant turmoil and upheaval – partners encountering serious conflict may rethink their habits and muster the courage to change.

The Benefits of Fighting

It is important to express your feelings and dissatisfactions – to withdraw and hide your problems can only really make things worse later. While conflict is rife with dilemmas, it is an essential tool to promote intimacy. If you confront a conflict head-on, you must use good methods to fight well and reach positive results.

Couples who fight badly can learn to fight constructively. The most successful conflict-management skill is self-control. You have to work at being optimistic, avoiding blame, and mastering anger. Don’t withdraw when your partner raises a concern or complaint – you can reschedule, but make sure to follow-through. Don’t get negative – stifle your sarcasm, reduce your contempt, and don’t express disgust. Sour behavior is corrosive. Don’t get caught up in negative affect reciprocity. If you feel things escalating in a destructive way, stop and take a step back.

The Speaker-Listener Technique

One particular technique used by marriage therapists is the speaker-listener technique. This provides a structure for calm, clear communication. It is designed to provide a structure to communicating about contentious issues, and interrupt the misperception that happens when people respond to quickly to one another without really thinking about whether they understand the content. One part of this technique is to allow only one person to speak at a time, letting them explain their entire point of view before moving on to the other person. It is also important to hold off the moment of problem solving until both parties have fully explained how they feel and why. “I” statements are important, and it is also helpful to let the listener paraphrase what you’ve said – if they are inaccurate, it is better to politely restate your point to clarify. Paraphrase what you hear, but don’t put words in the other person’s mouth. Focus on the message rather than the wording of that message. When done discussing a conflict, you can then properly collaborate on a solution. A good, fair fight can then be beneficial to the relationship.

What is the power play all about? - Chapter 12

Where Power Comes From

Social power is the ability to influence the behavior of others and to resist their influence on us. Looking at it from an interdependency perspective, the one who controls the valuable resources has the power. If I have something you want, then I am better able to get you to do what I want. A person with power doesn’t need to actually possess a desired resource, as long as they control access to it. The greater one’s desire or need for a resource, the greater the power of the gatekeeper. The principle of lesser interest suggests that the person who has more alternatives or lesser interest in keeping a romantic relationship will have more power. That men tend to want more sex gives women, in principle, a bit more power. Of course, if what we want is something we could easily get elsewhere, the power of our partner is diminished.

Traditional Power Roles

One of the reasons that men tend to be in a more powerful role than women in traditional marriages is that they work outside of the home, having more access to financial resources and coming into more contact with other options. Interdependence theory looks at fate control – a form of power in which one can determine what their partner receives and therefore control their outcomes. A more subtle form of control is behavior control – by changing one’s own behavior, one encourages their partner to alter their own desirable actions. One partner’s power may be matched by counterpower from the other, so that both are able to exert some level of control.

Resources for power

There are different types of resources that one can control in order to exert different types of power:

1. Control of rewards: You can give something pleasant or take it away (reward power)

2. Control of punishments: You can do something negative to them, or remove something they don’t like (coercive power)

3. Control of authority/social responsibility: Your authority lets you tell them what to do (legitimate power) and makes the other believe they are obliged to obey.

4. Control of respect and/or love: They identify with you and want to remain close to you (referent power)

5. Control of expertise: You have a broad understanding they desire (expert power)

6. Control of information: You have specific information they need (informational power)

Legitimate power occurs in some cultures where it is believed that the husband is actually in charge of his wife, and that she must obey him. The reciprocity norm also causes us to feel like we have to return favors.

Gender and power

Across the world, in all cultures that accumulate wealth, men have more power on average than women do. One reason is a disparity in relative resources. Men earn more than women do, even for the same kinds of work. Women with full-time jobs earn 80% as much as men do. Men are more likely to sit in positions of high executive power, which also earn more. In three quarters of American marriages, men make more money than their wives. Some resources (like money) are universalistic. This means that they can be exchanged in a variety of situations, giving the possessor of that resource more freedom in deciding what to do with it. Particularistic resources (e.g. a partner’s love for you) are limited for use with a single person, often in a single circumstance.

Social norms also maintain male dominance – patriarchy norms confer higher levels of expert and legitimate power on men. In fact, legitimate power feels “unladylike” in American culture, undermining women’s chances to reach a powerful role. And if a women has the leadership role, she will be evaluated more severely than when a man would be the leader. Cultural tradition keeps men in charge most of the time. However, women commonly persuade their men what to do when it comes to decisions concerning household or kids. Equity is difficult because we also don’t know what it looks like. Looking at the division of household chores, wives’ duties tend to be constant while men’s are intermittent. Despite that most people would like to be in equal relationships, in reality, most heterosexual couples experience substantial inequality. Men also have coercive power based on their size and strength, though of they use coercion, it often leads to more resistance and is a counterproductive way to influence an intimate partner.

The Power Process

Powerful people tend to be happier and have higher self-esteem, probably because they feel in control and often get what they want. They will often feel that they can even control chance. They will pursue things they want actively, negotiating and taking what they want, often without considering if other people would like it. They tend to be less adept at comprehending other peoples’ point of view. Feelings of power make us look for partners who are more attractive than we might be interested in if we felt less powerful. Power tends to make us more sexually interesting to those with lesser power. Powerful people also judge others’ moral transgressions more harshly in their own, making them more hypocritical than less powerful people are. When people are powerless, they may get depressed, become more cautious and fear more punishment than powerful people do.

Conversation

Women will speak to each other with more implicit strength and power than they will use when speaking with men, allowing themselves to be interrupted more by men. Men interrupt female partners more often as well, reinforcing a power differential. This very subtly affects power dynamics in a heterosexual relationship, as the person perceived as more powerful wins more negotiations and ends up with more of the resources.

Nonverbal Behavior

People with high status and power tend to have a posture that reflects this – they sit broadly, take up more space, stand taller. When men or women are posed in ‘powerful’ positions, they even feel more powerful and testosterone levels rise. Less powerful people literally shrink themselves down to make way. Powerful people use more intense facial expressions and tend to stand with an asymmetrical lean. If you assume more space, you actually end up feeling more powerful.

Nonverbal Sensitivity

Women tend to be more accurate judges of the emotions of others. This skill is an accession because the sensitivity and precision with which partners communicate nonverbally (allowing more effective communication) predicts how satisfied they will be with each other. Nonverbal sensitivity, however, is a sign of being the less-powerful in a relationship, since the subordinate hast to spend more time keeping track of how the boss is feeling. Those adept at telling when their superior is in a good or bad mood are more easily able to get what they want.

Power Styles

How do people get what they want? Sometimes we are direct – we simply ask for what we want. Sometimes actions are more indirect – we may hint at something, or pout when unfulfilled. The more satisfied people are in their relationships, the more at ease they feel to use a direct approach. People who take an indirect route may be less satisfied with the results. When people seek cooperation or collaboration from their partners, their strategies tend to involve both members of the couple (bilateral). Some people also take independent unilateral action, doing what they want without involving their partner. People with more power tend to use bilateral strategies more often, likely because they are more able to successfully influence their partners. In gay and lesbian relationships, both partners use both types of strategies in a more equal amount. In heterosexual relationships, this is different – men take a power role and are more bilateral while women tend to use more unilateral strategies, adopting styles that are more powerless and discontent. This pattern isn’t a sex difference – it’s a gender difference, based on gender norms. Still, no matter who they are, people behave according to their status in any given interaction. Both men and women will have a direct, bilateral style when they are in power and the reverse when they have low-status.

Power Outcomes

First of all, it is important to note that things are changing – younger generations of women are higher in instrumentality, and younger people tend to have more egalitarian views of marriage. In many relationships, though, despite our desire for equality, our patriarchal society still influences our daily actions. The outcome of power asymmetry can be subtle, and often unseen – on the face of it, a couple may seem fair or equal. Research has found that when both partners’ wishes and preferences are given equal weight, couples tend to have more stable and happier lives together and are less prone to divorce than when one of the partners calls the shots. When men relinquish their superior power, women experience large increases in happiness and men are also a little bit happier. The only downside for men is that they must do a little bit more housework.

Two Faces

Power has a negative face in that a person in power wields control over outcomes, which can be used selfishly. However, when people adopt communal orientations in their committed relationships, they use their power for the benefit of both the partner and their relationship, showing benevolence. People with interdependent self-construals are routinely generous when resolving conflicts with people of lower power. Power doesn’t necessarily corrupt. Yet there is also a dark side – some people (often men), actively pursue dominance, and tend to be controlling, domineering people with unhappy partners. When unable to get what they want, they might use violence as a way to exert control.

Violence

Violence is behavior that is intended to do physical harm to others. That might be minor or severe. The conflict tactics scale takes the severity of violence into consideration, ranged from little harm to atrocious injuries. On this scale. people describe their use of aggression, and those actions are categorized by how much harm they do.

Prevalence

Domestic violence is much more prevalent than one might expect. About half of women and more than half of men have reported being physically assaulted at some point in their lives, with 22 percent of women and 7 percent of men being the victims of domestic violence. If screaming, ridicule, and threats are included, it is found that most relationships experience that sort of aggression. (Psychological) aggression is, obviously, harmful to marital satisfaction.

Types of violence

There are three major types of violence in romantic relationships, each coming from a different source.

1. Situational couple violence (SCV) tends to occur when a heated conflict gets out of hand, usually when both partners are angry and usually tied to specific arguments. It tends to be occasional and mild, unlikely to escalate into life-threatening forms of aggression. It also tends to be mutual. When intimate partner violence occurs, it is usually this type of violence.

2. Intimate terrorism (IT) is when one partner uses violence as a tool to control and oppress the other. There are many tactics that define intimate terrorism, including physical force and coercion, but extending to intimidation, economic abuse, use of make privilege, use of children against the spouse, minimizing their feelings, isolating them, intimidating them, or emotionally abusing them. Intimate terrorism is more dangerous than SCV because it is more likely to escalate over time and seriously injure its target.

3. Violent resistance is when a partner forcibly fights back against intimate terrorism. This only occurs in some instances of intimate terrorism, making it the least common of the three.

Gender Differences

While men and women are equally prone to situational couple violence, men are disproportionately perpetrators of intimate terrorism. Interestingly, women are slightly more likely to be physically violent than men are in relationships, though with different severity. Women are more likely to throw things, kick, bite, scratch or punch, while men are more likely to choke, strangle or beat up their partners. Men are more likely to rape and murder their partners. When studies look at young couples, the women may be more violent, but when they look at older married couples, husbands tend to be more violent while women engage in more indirect aggression. So the genders are equally likely to use violence, but men are more likely to cause injuries and to use violence as a tool of domination and influence.

Correlation between situational couple violence and intimate terrorism

It is important to distinguish between situational couple violence and intimate terrorism. Most acts of violence in SCV result from impulsive failures of self-control, while intimate terrorism is a long program of ruthless subjugation.

Situational Couple Violence

One useful model of situational couple violence is the I3model. This organizes influences into three types – instigating triggers (which cause one or both partners to be frustrated), impelling influences (which make it more likely that partners will feel violent), and inhibiting influences (which stop us from acting on violent impulses). Impelling and inhibitory influences can be further categorized into distal influences (background/culture and family experiences), dispositional influences (personality/beliefs), relational influences (state of relationship), and situational influences (immediate circumstances).

Instigating Triggers

The I3model is set in motion by instigating triggers like jealousy-provoking events, discovered/remembered betrayals, real/imagined rejection, or any typical conflict exacerbations mentioned previously. One potent instigator is the violence or abuse of our partners.

Impelling Influences

Impelling influences predispose one to violence. This might be having witnessed violence between parents, or seeing a good deal of violent films, for instance. They could also include personal characteristics – high neuroticism, adherence traditional gender roles and people with opinions that tolerate ‘a little force now and then’ make the use of force more likely. Relational patterns of interaction, like poor communication skills or mismatched attachment styles, will lead to more violent outbursts.

Inhibiting Influences

What stops people from enacting their violent urges? Violence is less likely when people believe in gender equality, and conscientious people are also less likely to be violent when angry. Individual capacity for self-control is particularly important. If we’re usually able to control our impulses, we are better able to do so in an argument. Satisfied couples with good problem-solving skills are also less likely to lash out. Alcohol is a major fuel for violence. If inhibiting influences are very weak, slight provocations may be enough to elicit a violent response. However, even when neither partner is prone to violence, situational factors where tempers are high may instigate SCV anyway. If violence happens once, it is likely to happen at some point again.

Intimate Terrorism

The I3model also provides some explanation for intimate terrorism, but with a different mix of influences. People who terrorize their partners may resort to violence because they are clumsy and their threats of arm are a misguided effort to keep partners from leaving. Others have more of a malevolent bent – they are antisocial or narcissistic and violence is used as a tool, a means to an end. Intimate terrorism is often learned, to some degree, from growing up in a home with violent conflict between parents or sexual abuse. Learning hostile, misogynistic gender roles and attitudes make men more likely to think of women as adversaries and objects. They engage in more surveillance and violence in general. They are also more aggressive in general, towards others and pets.

Aside from an aggressive attitude, intimate terrorists often feel inadequate and see violence as a source of power. They tend to feel intellectually inferior to their partners and have low self-esteem. Poverty may play a role in this. Unfortunately, intimate terrorism can lead to a cycle of abuse, as children raised in violent homes are more likely to be violent themselves. It’s not inevitable that people will enact violent urges, however, and many people don’t despite having a predisposition to do so.

Rationales

How do men rationalize intimate terrorism? Some of them subscribe to masculine codes that promote their authority over women but feel that they are inadequate as men. Abusive men feel their behavior is a legitimate response to disrespect and mention their partners’ provocation as the cause of their behavior. They often do not label themselves as real abusers because they didn’t enjoy hurting their spouse or they held back where they could have gone further. Only about half of abusers, because of the power of rationalization, actually express regret. Women are often surprised when they encounter domestic aggression and have a hard time making sense of it, often because they are influenced by norms that tell them to forgive and forget, and that tend to blame the victims. Women may feel betrayed, but at the same time blame themselves out of shame, ignorance, or hope. Intimate terrorism fosters low self-esteem, mistrust of men, depression and even post-traumatic stress disorder. There are also social costs: like absence from work or becoming homeless.

Interdependence

Sometimes the victims of intimate violence do not leave their partners – one-third of abused women. They don’t leave because they don’t believe they will be better off elsewhere, or they love their partners most of the time, and thus forgive the intermittent violence. The costs of leaving may be high, especially in people with a low economic status. Some people don’t leave because they don’t want to – they have high anxiety about abandonment and are drawn to controlling men.

How do break-ups come about? - Chapter 13

Prevalence of divorce rates

Current divorce rates are higher than they were a few generations back. Roughly 50% of marriages ultimately end in divorce. Only 64 percent of married couples make it to 10 years. The median age at which people encounter their first divorce is between 29 and 31. Only about 52% of American adults are presently married, and 25% of American children live in single-parent homes.

Why the Increase?

There are plenty of possible explanations for this increased divorce rate. For one, we have different and more demanding expectations for marriage than once existed. People will live together, or be single parents, or whatever, and it is not socially frowned upon. Marriage used to be a practical necessity. Now, it is simply a path to personal fulfillment, rather than societal or financial fulfillment. We have overblown romantic notions (maybe the result of media) that marriages should be passionate and exciting, rather than comfortable partnerships. It often falls short of the demands we put on it. We marry for love and passion, yet we change as we age.

The Changing Face of Marriage

Since women have joined the workforce, more conflict arises between work and family than once existed. As both partners work more, they are able to spend fewer hours together, and household chores become more of an issue. Working also exposes women to more men that they might find interesting. Women are no longer as financially dependent on men as they once were, meaning that if they are dissatisfied with their relationship, they are more readily able to escape it. Poverty can have a very damaging effect on relationship, as stress undermines a marriage. Changing gender roles also mean that women are becoming more instrumental and assertive. Many marriages divide household responsibilities more equitably, which makes men less happy but women much more content. The fact that Western culture may be becoming more individualistic means we rely on our spouses for more social support, which may also affect divorce rates. We expect our spouses to fulfill more roles than ever. Furthermore, we don’t look so negatively at divorce as we used to – it used to be considered a shameful failure. No-fault laws in the 1970s made it easier and more socially desirable, and now it is seen as better to end a bad marriage rather than suffer through it. Finally, men and women may work less hard to save a shaky relationship when divorce seems an expedience option.

Cohabitation

People who cohabit for a long time before they marry actually have an increased chance of divorce. However, if they get engaged and then cohabit for a shorter period of time, they are more likely to experience a lasting marriage. Cohabitation changes peoples’ beliefs and expectations about marriage, leading to less respect for the institution of marriage, lower expectations about marriage outcomes, and more willingness to divorce. Children of divorced parents are more likely to be divorced themselves when they grow up. Children of divorce tend to have less faith in marriage and less trust in their romantic relationships.

Predicting Divorce

Barrier Model

George Levinger’s Barrier Model of divorce identifies three types of factors that can breakup relationships:

1. Attraction: enhanced by rewards and diminished by costs.

2. Alternatives: are there other options out there? Is being single more attractive?

3. Barriers: things that make it difficult to leave

Many barriers to divorce are psychological (social pressures, religious constraints), some are material (financial costs). People married for 12 years were surveyed and expressed that they were worried about losing their children, or were depend on spouses, or might face financial ruin.

Vulnerability-Stress-Adaptation Model

Benjamin Karney and Thomas Bradbury had a general model of marital instability focusing on three other main influences contributing to divorce. People enter marriages with enduring vulnerabilities increasing their risk of divorce, like one’s family, education, social skills, or maladaptive personality traits. Their adaptive processes determine whether they will respond to stress in a productive or unproductive way. The abundance of stressful events in a marriage also influences how marriages last. A period of unemployment, a death in the family, the birth of a child… all these are stressful. Coping skills determine whether stress increases or decreases. Failure to cope can worsen the quality of a marriage. Frustrations and stressors we experience outside of the home might cause stress spillover, in which we take out our stress on our spouse.

PAIR Project

The Processes of Adaptation in Intimate Relationships (PAIR) project studied 168 couples over a span of years. It found that after 13 years, one third of couples had divorced and nearly another third were unhappy. The rest were happy, though not as overjoyed as when the marriage began. Why does this happen? One view is that marriages that fail are predestined to fail. Another view is the emergent distress model, which suggests that the bad behavior that leads to divorce only occurs after marriage, as some couples fall into a rut of increasing conflict and negativity. A third possibility is the disillusionment model. This suggests that couples begin their marriages with romanticized views of their relationship and gradually realize they are being naïve. Each of these three perspectives suggests a different way to prevent divorce. The enduring dynamics model suggests that we should be careful in courtship. The emergent distress model argues that couples need to work against disagreeableness and try to remain generous with each other. The disillusionment model suggests that we should be realistic from the start. The disillusionment model is the best predictor of whether couples will divorce – the sharper the drop in satisfaction after marriage, the more likely for divorce to occur. Couples with the sharpest drop in satisfaction experienced the biggest change in their love for each other and their romance faded more, and more quickly, than did the love of other relationships.

Early Years

Another longitudinal study was called the Early Years of Marriage Project (EYM). Interestingly, this compared black couples and white couples and found that while a third of white couples divorced after 16 years, one half of black couples did. Why? Many had lower incomes and more stressors, and many had children before marriage, both significant risk factors. Economic hardship increases the risk of divorce, no matter how much they care about their marriage.

Perceptions

Cultural context can support or undermine marital success, and can also change how we view divorce. Yet our personal contexts (our social networks of family and friends, where we live, our age) are also influential. Our relational context – the particularities of our romantic relationships – also has an impact. These three levels of analysis are important to consider when we try to explain marital instability. A study looking at the areas of dissatisfaction people experience found significant gender differences. Women complained more about infidelity, substance use and abuse, while men complained about poor communication. Ex-wives complained more than ex-husbands. While few people acknowledged broader contexts, these contexts may have been important yet harder to see from an insider’s perspective.

Specific Predictors

Interesting to note – marriages that survive the initial effects of certain stressors may actually be hardier later on. Furthermore, when several specific predictors are combined, it’s the combination that could be damaging. There are a number of specific predictors of divorce, ranging from stress hormones to genetics, similarity, to stepchildren.

Breaking Up

The actual process of breaking up is interesting – people do not end committed relationships lightly. Most divorces are the result of a series of complaints that lead to a period of discontent, marked by a certain amount of ambivalence. People only really initiate divorce when they come to believe that they will be better off alone.

Premarital Partners

In non-married couples, there are different methods of disengagement. Some are direct, explicitly stated… yet most are actually indirect. There is also a distinction in whether one’s effort to depart is other-oriented or self-oriented – are we trying to spare our partner’s feelings or are we being selfish. Some forms of breakup allow our partner to save face, for instance bringing up issues and leading the discussion towards an end of a partnership, but framing it as a more mutual decision. Direct but selfish ways involve making a simple announcement that the relationship is over, then avoiding communication. An indirect yet selfish way is to behave badly so that our partner decides to end the relationship. A more considerate indirect way to end a relationship is to say you’d just like to be friends, even when you don’t.

Aside from distinctions in how direct people are when they end things, there is also a difference between whether the end is gradual or a person’s discontent is sudden. Only ¼ of relationships experience a sudden end. Two-thirds of the time, the decision to end a relationship is not mutual. Some exits are rapid, some are protracted. People often make several disguised efforts to break up before they succeed. Sometimes people attempt to repair their relationship, but most of the time they just let the relationship end. The most frequent pattern of exit is persevering indirectness, in which of the partners makes multiple indirect efforts to dissolve the relationship. The end usually begins when one partner starts noticing other people, grows more distant, and spends less time with the other. People differ in preference for the strategies they use and attachment styles are, again, influential.

Approaching Divorce

Initiating a divorce is complicated, full of ambivalence. The process of ending a marriage can take several years – dissatisfied spouses may spend five years thinking about separating. Steve Duck suggests five stages that occur in the dissolution of relationships:

1. The Personal Phase: a partner becomes dissatisfied, feeling frustration and resentment.

2. The Dyadic Phase: the unhappy partner expresses their discontent leading to negotiation, confrontation, attempts at accommodation, etc. People will feel angry, shocked, hurt, or relieved.

3. The Social Phase: partners begin explaining their distress to the broader social network, seeking support and understanding.

4. The Grave-dressing Phase: mourning decreases and partners begin to put their relationship behind them, revising their personal narrative.

5. The Resurrection Phase: Ex-partners re-enter society as singles and reflecting on how their experience changed them for the better.

The messiness of the divorce is what affects how the partners feel about each other afterwards. Couples with poor communication are more likely to lose touch after a breakup. For many, however, a breakup is a transition to a friendship.

Aftermath of divorce

Exes

Relationship churning – experiencing a breakup and then get back together. Churning is often harmful in relationships that maintain, relationship satisfaction will decrease and feelings of stress will increase. On the other hand, it does indicate that breaking up is not always permanent. Sometimes churning is just a phase in a long term relationship.

Unmarried partners usually stop having much to do with each other as time passes, their commitment fading even when they try to be friends. Very rarely, couples rekindle their romances – it’s more common that they regain some trust and ultimately become friends. They may experience a turbulent time as they try to figure out where the other fits in their lives. At least for a while, the ex-lover may play an important role in the person’s life. Many eventually find it easier not to communicate.

Getting Over It

How do we get over long-term relationships? Well, it depends on how important that relationship was to us. Some are richer, making it especially difficult to adjust, especially if that partnership involved high interdependence and if our self-concept expanded to include our partner. People experience extremely strong emotions at loss, but do heal. Initially, ex-lovers feel angry and sad, with very little relief. After two weeks, romantic love continues to recede and anger falls away to sadness. After a whole month, relief returns, and the process of rebuilding courage begins. This process is, overall, less awful than people expect. Though some relationships are more hurtful than others – it’s harder to be rejected than to do the rejecting. The more you ruminate on what you’ve lost, the more terrible you will feel, and for longer. Seeking meaning in experiences helps one adjust positively to a new life. People anxious about abandonment are likely to have the most trouble letting go.

Divorce Adjustment

Adjusting to divorce is much more complex than adjusting to a normal relationship. For one, people are better off when they leave a miserable marriage or an abusive partner. When a marriage seems like it is unsalvageable, a change is necessary. For years after divorce, however, people feel less well-off. After people divorce they often feel dissatisfied for a long time. Even so, divorces tend to end a painful pattern of decreasing contentment. A divorce is a monumental and devastating event that causes a scar. But the average path described here makes divorces look worse than they are for most men and women. Moreover, some people (9 percent) are even a lot happier after ending their marriage than they had been before. Only 2/3 of people who divorce after their 20s will get remarried, but those who do tend to do so within four years. This is often connected to a boost in well being. About three quarters of people who divorce report later that their divorce was a good development.

Social Networks

People look to their social networks for support during their divorce, spending more time with friends. Yet because they lose a huge amount of their social network when their marriages end, ex-spouses have a hard time replacing the friends they’ve lost. Divorced people also encounter a good deal of disapproval from their social networks, which can be very hard on them.

Economic Resources

Women tend to experience financial hardship when their marriages end, partly because only 50% of fathers pay the amount of child support they are supposed to. Some fathers are too poor, others are neglectful. Men may experience a drop in household income, but are more likely to live by themselves and not with children after they divorce, leaving them fewer financial responsibilities. To summarize, a man’s standard of living often increases after ending a marriage, whereas a woman’s declines.

Relationships between Ex-Spouses

Especially when a couple has children, a divorce does not mean the end of their interactions. Antagonism, regrets, nostalgia and ambivalence characterize ex-spousal relationships. These can be categorized as fiery foes, angry associates, cooperative colleagues, and perfect pals. Animosity defines the first two, while cooperation defines the second two.

Children

Compared to children of married parents, children of divorced parents exhibit lower levels of well-being, have a harder time adjusting, and have more problematic behaviors. Their adult relationships are more fragile as well. According to the parental loss view, children are seen to benefit more from the full attention of two parents rather than one. If a divorce occurs, they benefit more from spending time with both parents than if one parent moves somewhere far away. The parental stress model suggests that it is the quality of parenting a child receives that diminishes. Because parents are wrapped up in their own stressful event (divorce) they are less consistent in their parenting. Another stressor is economic hardship, as impoverished circumstances often follow divorce. The most potent influence is parental conflict. The more a child experiences their parents fighting, whether or not divorce occurs, the more anxiety they feel and the more problematic behavior they exhibit. Children are overall less affected by divorce if they are able to keep high-quality relationships with both parents afterwards.

What is the essence of relationship maintenance and repair? - Chapter 14

There are a number of relationship maintenance mechanisms that a person can use to sustain their partnerships, to be describe hereafter.

Commitment Reinforcement

Cognitive Maintenance

When people are committed to their relationships, they think about them differently. They no longer see themselves as separate entities, but as partners. This change in self-definition is called cognitive interdependence. Committed partners think of each other with positive illusions, painting their partner in an idealistic light. Faults are judged as trivial, positive traits as essential. As long as they are not too unrealistic, this idealizing helps people maintain their happiness and commitment. We feel that our own relationships are better than those of other people, we have a perceived superiority. This perceived superiority increases your chances of staying together. Satisfied partners tend not to look for new mates, displaying an inattention to alternatives. Uncommitted partners shop around, which puts their own relationship at risk. Commitment leads people to actively denounce what would otherwise be tempting alternatives. The more tempting the alternatives are, the stronger the committed partner will denounce them.

Behavioural Maintenance

Committed people are more willing to make personal sacrifices for their partners, even when it involves trivial costs or substantial, long-term costs. Prayer could be helpful. Controlled studies found that those who begin praying for the success and well-being of their partners become more satisfied with the sacrifices they make, and more forgiving too. And in general, those who pray for their partners tend to be more satisfied with and more committed to their relationship.

Relationships prosper when our partners encourage us to become the people we want to be. The Michelangelo phenomenon occurs when our partner endorses our new roles and the development of new skills, promoting our self-growth. Committed lovers will also accommodate each other, tolerating occasional mistreatment with the knowledge that it is temporary. Accommodation does take active self-restraint and self-control. It stops us from lashing out or engaging a partner’s provocations. Forgiveness is also more common in committed relationships. People differ in dispositional levels of self-control. It’s best to seek partners with a good amount of self-control, because a partnership will benefit in the long run. It is also important to maintain a spirit of play in a relationship – couples who stay content with one another find ways to engage in new and exciting activities together. Forgiveness in the wake of betrayal allows for healing and moving on.

Being Content

Contented partners try to maintain positivity, openness, and assurances of commitment. They tend to share a social network, share tasks, share activities, support one another, manage conflict well, exercise good judgment as to avoiding taboo topics, and maintain a sense of humor. The major ones are positivity, assurances, and sharing tasks – spouses who do their fair share of housework are better off.

Repairing Relationships

Solving Things Yourself

There are many methods to repairing relationships that have had their issues. For one, you can try to repair things yourselves, though your perceptions of your own behavior may be contaminated by self-serving biases. It can help to get the advice of a third-party observer. It can be problematic to follow a self-help guide in these attempts, as authors may not actually be accredited and may not have the knowledge to back up their advice. Many theories are merely pseudoscience. Still, the advantage of some of these advisors is that the send a message of optimism and encouragement that keeps people working at their relationships.

Preventative Maintenance – Taking Your Relationship for a Tune-Up

Couples who feel their relationships are in a good place (like couples engaged to be married) are encouraged to engage in some preventative maintenance. It’s never too early to work on your communication skills and your expectations, and goodness knows that a fair division of household tasks is much easier to set up at the beginning than along the road. Premarital counseling can provide help, as can a program called PREP (Prevention and Relationship Enhancement Program). This typically involves 12 hours of training across five sessions. Couples are encouraged to use the speaker-listener technique, look at their long-term goals, to make a point of having fun together often, to communicate openly about sex, and to become more aware of inappropriate expectations they might have about the other person.

Therapy

In many circumstances, once real problems occur, therapist intervention might be needed. There are different approaches to marital therapy, which either focus on problematic behaviors, on individual vulnerabilities or dysfunctional interaction, or emphasize past events.

Behavioral Approaches

Behavioral approaches focus on adjusting the behavior of the partners and making it more rewarding, seeking to replace punishing behavior with more gracious behavior. This includes traditional behavioral couple therapy (TBCT), which looks at a couple’s interactions and tries to improve it. Communication skills are taught that help partners express affection and to be more pleasant partners and manage conflict without getting too emotional. A quid pro quo contract may be written up in which each partner agrees to reward positive behavior from the other with good behavior of their own. Generous behavior is important, but distressed couples may still maintain a grudging disregard for one another.

Cognitive-Behavioral Couple Therapy

Cognitive-behavioral couple therapy (CBCT) focuses on the way we think about our partners and partnership, addressing selective attention, attributions, expectancies, and more adaptive relationship beliefs. The idea is that, no matter where the maladaptive cognition originated, a couple will be happier if they can judge and perceive each other more kindly.

Integrative Behavioral Couple Therapy

Integrative behavioral couple therapy (IBCT) is a newer approach that seeks to teach partners how to tolerate the unchangeable incompatibilities present in their relationships. It teaches communication skills and behavior modification techniques but also assumes that some problems will always remain. One technique is emphatic joining, in which spouses are taught to express pain and vulnerabilities without blame, getting empathy and understanding. They are taught to discuss problems with unified detachment that cools charged emotional reactions. There is also tolerance building, in which couples are taught to be less sensitive and intense in their reactions to problematic behavior.

Emotionally-Focused Therapy

Emotionally-focused couple therapy (EFCT) is related to attachment theory. It strives to improve relationships by increasing each partner’s attachment security. It tries to identify maladaptive cycles of emotional communication and restructure them to allow partners to feel safe, loved, and securely connected. There are three stages:

1. Assessment of the problem: partners identify their problems and emotional fears, fostering empathy and reducing blame.

2. Promoting new styles of interaction: partners admit their deepest feelings, accept the feelings of the other and explore new patterns of interaction based on openness and understanding.

3. Rehearsing and maintaining new styles of interaction: partners collaborate on new solutions to old problems and rehearse their new behavior.

Insight-Oriented Therapy

Insight-oriented therapy is a descendant of the psychodynamic theories of Sigmund Freud. It involves affective reconstruction, a process in which a spouse reimagines past relationships, including the unconscious injuries, in an effort to identify the coping styles that characterize their conflicts. They are guided through an inspection of their relationship history and must attend patterns of injury. The idea is to reach a place of insight, allowing both partners to see behavior in a broader way and become aware of the vulnerabilities they share. The therapeutic goal is for couples to gain more control over their conflicts by understanding that they have the freedom to behave differently and that they are doing the best they can.

Commonalities in Marital Therapies

Success in therapy depends on the sincerity with which couples invest in that therapy and the amount of effort they devote to the process. Marital therapy tends to help most couples. All of the therapies listed here share some common features, which is likely why they all work. Each helps explain the difficulties a marriage experiences, coming to a new perspective in which hope is acknowledged and change seems achievable. The therapist you select is almost as important as the type of therapy you choose – both members of the couple should respect and trust their therapist.