Romantic Love- Sexual orientation and Gender differences, Triangular theory of

love- role of Passion, intimacy and Commitment

Romantic love as an attachment- Attachment Styles

Sexual Orientation and Love

Sexual orientation refers to a person’s preference for emotional and sexual relationships with
individuals of the same gender, the other gender, or either gender. Heterosexuals seek
emotional-sexual relationships with members of the other gender. Homosexuals seek
emotional-sexual relationships with members of the same gender. Bisexuals seek emotional-
sexual relationships with members of both genders. In recent years, the terms gay and straight
have become widely used to refer to homosexuals and heterosexuals, respectively. Gay can
refer to homosexuals of either gender, but most homosexual women prefer to call themselves
lesbians.

Many studies of romantic love and relationships suffer from heterosexism, or the assumption
that all individuals and relationships are heterosexual. For instance, most questionnaires on
romantic love and romantic relationships fail to ask participants about their sexual orientation.
Thus, when data are analyzed, there is no way to know whether subjects are referring to same-
or other-gender romantic partners. Assuming that their subjects are all heterosexuals, some
researchers proceed to describe their findings without any mention of homosexuals. Because
most people identify themselves as heterosexual, hetero-sexism in research isn’t likely to distort
conclusions about heterosexuals; however, it renders homosexual relationships invisible.
Further, research on same-sex relationships tends to focus on white, middle class Americans .
Consequently, psychologists don’t know as much about the range of homosexual relationships
as they would like to. Researchers are now devoting much more attention to this issue.

we do know that homosexual romances and relationships are essentially the same as those of
heterosexuals. Both groups experience romantic and passionate love and make commitments to
relationships . Both heterosexual and homo-sexual couples hold similar values about
relationships, report similar levels of relationship satisfaction, perceive their relationships to be
loving and satisfying, and say they want their partners to have characteristics similar to theirs.
Further, both groups desire positive qualities, such as caring and friendliness, in a partner .
When relationship differences are found, they are much more likely to be rooted in gender than
in sexual orientation.
Gender Differences

Stereotypes hold that women are more romantic than men. Nonetheless, research suggests just
the opposite—that men are the more romantic gender . For example, men hold more romantic
beliefs (“Love lasts forever” or “There is one perfect love in the world for everyone”) . In
addition, men fall in love more easily than women, whereas women fall out of love more easily
than men . Research has found that although participants (both male and female) believe that
women are more likely to confess love first, in reality, men are more likely to say “I love you”
first, and they report more happiness when receiving confessions of love.

In contrast, women are more likely to report physical symptoms associated with being in love—
for instance, feeling as though they are “floating on a cloud” —and they are somewhat more
likely to verbalize and display tender emotions . We should note, however, that men and
women have more similarities than differences when it comes to relationships. It appears that
the notion that men and women are from different relational planets is somewhat of an
exaggeration.

Triangular Theory of Love

Robert Sternberg’s (1986, 1988, 2006) triangular theory of love posits that all love experiences
are made up of three components: intimacy, passion, and commitment. Each of the
components is represented as a point of a triangle, from which the theory derives its name .
Intimacy refers to warmth, closeness, and sharing in a relationship. Signs of intimacy include
giving and receiving emotional support, valuing the loved one, wanting to promote the welfare
of the loved one, and sharing one’s self and one’s possessions with another. Self-disclosure is
necessary in order to achieve and maintain feelings of intimacy in a relationship, whether
platonic or romantic.

Passion refers to the intense feelings (both positive and negative) experienced in love
relationships, including sexual desire. Passion is related to drives that lead to romance, physical
attraction, and sexual consummation. Although sexual needs may be dominant in many close
relationships, other needs also figure in the experience of passion, including the needs for
nurturance, self-esteem, dominance, submission, and self-actualization. For example, self-
esteem is threatened when someone experiences jealousy. Passion obviously figures most
prominently in romantic relationships.
Commitment involves the decision and intent to maintain a relationship in spite of the
difficulties and costs that may arise. According to Sternberg, commitment has both short-term
and long-term aspects. The short term aspect concerns the conscious decision to love someone.
The long-term aspect reflects the determination to make a relationship endure. Although the
decision to love someone usually comes before commitment, that is not always the case (in
arranged marriages, for instance).
Sternberg has described eight types of relationships that can result from the presence or
absence of each of the three components of love. Of these relationship types, nonlove, is not
pictured in the diagram because it is defined as the absence of any of the three components.
Most casual interactions are of this type. When all three components are present, consummate
love is said to exist.

Romantic Love as Attachment

Romantic Love as Attachment

In a groundbreaking theory of love, Cindy Hazan and Phillip Shaver (1987) asserted that
romantic love can be conceptualized as an attachment process, with similarities to the bond
between infants and their caregivers. According to these theorists, adult romantic love and
infant attachment share a number of features: intense fascination with the other person,
distress at separation, and efforts to stay close and spend time together. Of course, there are
also differences: Infant-caregiver relationships are one-sided, whereas caregiving in romantic
relationships works both ways. A second difference is that romantic relationships usually have a
sexual component, whereas infant-caregiver relationships do not.

Today, adult attachment theory is one of the most influential approaches to the study of close
relationships. Researchers who study attachment are keenly interested in the nature and
development of attachment styles, or typical ways of interacting in close relationships. Their
interest is fueled by the belief that attachment styles develop during the first year of life and
strongly influence individuals interpersonal interactions from then on.

Infant attachment. Hazan and

Shaver’s ideas build on earlier work in attachment theory by john Bowlby (1980) and mary
Ainsworth (Ain sworth et al., 1978). Based on actual observations of infants and their primary
caregivers, they identified three attachment styles. Over half of infants develop a secure
attachment style. However, other infants develop insecure attachments. Some infants are very
anxious when separated from their caretaker and show resistance at reunion, a response
characterized as an anxious- ambivalent attachment style. A third group of infants never
connect very well with their caretaker and are classified in the avoidant attachment style.
How do attachments in infancy develop? three parenting styles have been identified as likely
determinants of attachment quality. A warm/responsive approach seems to promote secure
attachments, whereas a cold/rejecting style is associated with avoidant attachments. An
ambivalent/inconsistent style seems to result in anxious-ambivalent attachments.
Adult attachment
● Secure adults (about 55% of participants). These people trust others, find it easy to get
close to them, and are comfortable with mutual dependence. They rarely worry about being
abandoned by their partner. Secure adults have the longest-lasting relationships and the fewest
divorces. They describe their parents as behaving warmly toward them and toward each other.
● Avoidant adults (about 25% of participants). These individuals both fear and feel
uncomfortable about getting close to others. They are reluctant to trust others and prefer to
maintain emotional distance from others. They have the lowest incidence of positive
relationship experiences of the three groups. Avoidant adults describe their parents as less
warm than secure adults do and see their mothers as cold and rejecting.

● Anxious-ambivalent adults (about 20% of participants). These adults are obsessive and
preoccupied with their relationships. They want more relationship closeness than their partners
do and suffer extreme feelings of jealousy, based on fears of abandonment. Their relationships
have the shortest duration of the three groups. Ambivalent adults describe their relationship
with their parents as less warm than secure adults do and feel that their parents had unhappy
marriages.

The current thinking assumes that attachment style is determined by where people fall on two
continuous dimensions. Attachment anxiety reflects how much a person worries that a partner
will not be available when needed. This fear of abandonment stems, in part, from a person’s
doubts about his or her lovability. Attachment avoidance reflects the degree to which a person
distrusts a partner’s goodwill and has tendencies to maintain emotional and behavioral distance
from a partner. People’s scores on these two dimensions as measured by self-report data yield
four attachment styles: secure, preoccupied (anxious-ambivalent), avoidant-dismissing, and
avoidant-fearful. You are already familiar with the secure style, and “preoccupied” is just a
different label for the anxious-ambivalent style. The dismissing and fearful styles are two
variations of the avoidant style.
Securely attached individuals (low on both anxiety and avoidance) enjoy close relationships and
are not worried that others will leave them. Those in the preoccupied category (high on anxiety,
low on avoidance) desire closeness with others but fear rejection. Those with an avoidant-
dismissing style (high on avoidance, low on anxiety) prefer to maintain their distance from
others and are not concerned about rejection, while those with an avoidant-fearful style (high
on both avoidance and anxiety) are uncomfortable being close to others but still worry about
rejection. There is evidence that this type of anxiety is at its highest in the early stages of a
relationship, before it becomes established.
Four attachment styles are distinctly different categories or typologies, that is not the case.
Recall that the two underlying dimensions of anxiety and avoidance are distributed along a
continuum (as indicated by the arrows in the figure) from low to high. This means that people
are more or less anxious (or avoidant) versus totally consumed by anxiety or totally without
anxiety. So, as you read about the four attachment styles, keep in mind that they are
“convenient labels for sets of anxiety and avoidance scores rather than distinctly different
categories that have nothing in common.