Article on the topic: “RELATIONSHIP OF TYPES OF LOVE WITH MARRIAGE SATISFACTION”

Science is trying to explain the emergence of love by chemical reactions in the brain. On the website of the American anthropologist Helen Fisher (helenfisher.com) you can get acquainted with the results of studies of romantic love from the perspective of biochemistry, physiology, neurobiology and evolutionary theory. Thus, it is known that falling in love reduces the level of serotonin, which leads to a feeling of “love-sickness,” and increases the level of cortisol (the stress hormone), which makes us constantly feel anxious and excited.

But where does our confidence come from that the feeling we experience is love? This is still unknown to scientists.

Rubin's scales of sympathy and love

Psychologist Zeke Rubin was one of the first to propose a method for empirically measuring love. He argued that romantic love has three components: affection, caring, and intimacy.

• Attachment is the need to be close to another person and receive (show) his support. Important components of this feeling are physical contact and approval.
• Caring is the act of promoting the well-being of another person. At the same time, the needs of others are valued as highly as their own.
• Intimacy is the degree of trust in another person at which you can share your innermost thoughts, feelings and desires.

Moreover, Zeke Rubin developed two questionnaires to assess these three components of love. According to the psychologist, the difference between sympathy and love can be seen in the way we evaluate another. His questions are formulated in such a way that you can assess the feeling of sympathy and love for another person, and then compare the results.

After distributing the questionnaires to the survey participants, the researcher asked them to base their answers on the feelings they had towards their good friend and their significant other (wife, husband, lover). As a result, it turned out that although good friends received high ratings on the sympathy scale, only the closest, most beloved people of the respondents were rated high on the love scale.

Article on the topic: “RELATIONSHIP OF TYPES OF LOVE WITH MARRIAGE SATISFACTION”

RELATIONSHIP OF TYPES OF LOVE WITH MARRIAGE SATISFACTION

Many authors in psychological science have been studying such a phenomenon as “marital satisfaction,” but there is still no formed unified concept on this matter.

Many foreign and Soviet authors have studied the satisfaction of marital life. Yu.E. turned their attention to this side of family life. Aleshina, S.I. Golod, T.A. Gurko, G. Navaitis, V. Satir, G. Spaniel, V.A. Sysenko, H. Feldman, A.V. Shavlov, E.G. Eidemiller, V. Justitskis, N.G. Yurkevich, and others [1; 3; 4].

The most complete definition of marital satisfaction is given by S.I. Hunger: “Satisfaction with marriage develops as a result of adequate implementation of the idea (image) of the family that has developed in a person’s mind under the influence of encounters with various events that make up his experience (real or symbolic) in this field of activity” [1].

Satisfaction with marital relationships is defined as an internal subjective assessment, the attitude of spouses to their own marriage; one of such assessments may be different types of love in marital relationships.

Authors such as John Lee, Robert Sternberg and Susan Hendrick have studied types of love. R. Sternberg developed this topic most well, and that is why we chose his concept as the basis for this study.

Robert Sternberg (one of the first theorists to propose a scientific point of view on such a complex phenomenon as human love) developed a three-component model of love, this model includes three main components:

1. intimacy is a feeling of closeness between people, mutual affection;

2. passion is a motivational component of love, it manifests itself in the form of a desire to connect with a loved one, which determines sexual arousal and the desire for sexual relations [6];

3. devotion (decision) - this component is revealed as two people get closer. Devotion is divided into 2 parts: a) the short-term part is the decision that a certain person loves another person; b) long-term - awareness of the extent to which a person is ready to fulfill this obligation, that is, to continue to love [6].

The components of love combine to form different types of love. There are eight combinations of love components:

Table 1.

A combination of closeness, passion, intimacy

The components that form types of love play an important role in married life. The type of love is the basis of family life, in which the attitude of the spouses towards each other is expressed, and depending on what components are included in this structure: passion, commitment or intimacy, certain patterns of behavior develop that influence family life, and, therefore, , on marital satisfaction.

Domestic and foreign researchers have made a number of attempts to generalize and classify factors influencing the quality of family relationships [2; 4]. But, despite the fact that modern science has accumulated extensive material on various factors influencing the success of a marriage, the problem of how the types of love in the relationship of spouses are interconnected with marital satisfaction has remained behind the scenes. In modern science, marital satisfaction has not been studied from the point of view of its dependence on the types or components of love.

Object of study

– marital satisfaction.
The subject of the study
is the relationship between the type of love and marital satisfaction.

Target

– study the relationship between types of love and marital satisfaction.

When forming a hypothesis

we assumed that the types of love and marital satisfaction are interconnected in such a way that the more components are represented in the relationship, the stronger and longer the union, and this may indicate satisfaction with the marriage; also, the types of love in marital relationships differ depending on the gender of the spouses.

Methods and empirical sample of the study.

In this research work, we want to establish the relationship between different types of love in the relationship of spouses and marital satisfaction. In order to achieve this goal and test the hypothesis of this study, 25 married men and 25 women were taken.

To identify the components of love in marriage and the types depending on them, the “Triad of Love” questionnaire according to R. Strenberg was used.

To understand what kind of marital satisfaction the respondents had, we took a test for marital satisfaction by V.V. Stolina, T.L. Romanova, G.P. Butenko.

Research results and discussion

When processing data using statistical methods, namely “contingency analysis” (Table 2), we concluded that in the case of a combination of all three components, we can talk about perfect love (Table 2). This type of love accounts for the largest number of respondents with complete satisfaction with marriage.

Table 2 shows how types of love influence marital satisfaction, namely, we can say that people in family relationships have significant and practically complete satisfaction with marriage if they have perfect and friendly love. According to R. Sternberg, the combination of all three components leads to a love that lasts for many years and does not fade for a long time. This type of relationship is characterized by a vivid appearance of physical intimacy between partners even after ten and fifteen years of marriage. They understand each other, support in difficult situations and are determined to nourish each other and their relationship further with affection and care. Not one of them has any thoughts that someone else could be better than the person next to them. Creating such relationships is not easy, but it is possible, and maintaining them is real everyday work, which a very small percentage of people are capable of. This type of relationship may well turn into love-friendship if passion fades away [6].

Table 2.

The relationship between R. Sternberg’s types of love and V.V.’s marital satisfaction. Stolina, T.L. Romanova, G.P. Butenko

To identify the relationship between marital satisfaction and love components, we applied correlation analysis using the Spearman correlation coefficient.

Table 3 shows that marital satisfaction among people in marital relationships has a positive relationship with the components of love. That is, the more satisfied a person is with his marital life, the more he is characterized by high values ​​of such components of love as passion, devotion and intimacy. When combined, these characteristics in a relationship are expressed in perfect love, which encourages married people to maintain love for many years, while maintaining a warm, friendly relationship and at the same time, which is not without passion. Such couples strive to preserve their families. Thus, these results are explained, if passion, intimacy and devotion are present in the couple, then it is possible that this married couple will be more satisfied with the marriage.

Table 3.

The relationship between marital satisfaction V.V. Stolin, T.L., Romanova, G.P. Butenko. with components of love according to R. Sternberg

For a large number of people in this sample, the perfect type of love prevails, friendly love takes second place and fatal love third (Table 4.). The results show us that women have more friendly love than men, while men, on the contrary, have perfect love. Speaking about fatal love, you can notice that it manifests itself in men and women in this sample equally.

These results may be due to the fact that for men in marriage it is important not only a feeling of affection, emotional closeness to their spouse, responsibility for maintaining their relationship, help and support, but also physical intimacy.

While women are more emotional in their relationships with their spouses, it is important for them that there is understanding, support, and spiritual closeness in family relationships. They express a greater need for communication, a mutual desire to support their spouse in difficult situations. If in family relationships the spouses show warmth in the relationship, then for women such a marriage is optimal; she strives to maintain these relationships for a long time, while she may not feel a strong physical attraction to her husband.

Table 4.

The relationship between R. Sternberg's types of love and the gender of respondents

Conclusions:

1. The more satisfied a person is with his marital life, the more he is characterized by high values ​​of such components of love as passion, devotion and intimacy.

2. There is a relationship between types of love and satisfaction with marriage, because with perfect love there is almost complete satisfaction with marriage.

3. The more components of love are represented in a relationship, the stronger and longer the union.

4. There are differences between the types of love in men and women. Women have more friendly love in their relationships than men, while men, on the contrary, have perfect love.

Bibliography:

1. Aleshina Yu.E. Marital satisfaction and interpersonal perception in married couples with different lengths of family life: dis. ...cand. psychol. Sci. – M., 1995. – 250 p.

2. Andreeva T.V., Tolstova A.V. Temperament of spouses and compatibility in marriage // Ananyevsky readings: abstracts of reports. scientific conf. (2001). – St. Petersburg, 2001. – pp. 20–25.

3. Golod S.I. Family stability: sociological and demographic aspects. / S.I. Hunger. – M.: Nauka, 1984. – 56 p.

4. Grozdova E.V., Leader A.G. Complementarity of spouses and marital satisfaction // Family psychology and family therapy. – 1997. – No. 2. – P. 40–55.

5. Gurko T.D. Transformation of the family institution: problem statement // Sociological studies. – 1995. – No. 10. – 80 p.

6. Strenberg R.J. Triangular theory of love / R.J. Sternberg. – St. Petersburg: 2001. – [Electronic resource] – https://klex.ru/3my (Date of access: 03.15.16).

Elaine Hatfield's Theory of Passionate and Compassionate Love

According to psychologist Elaine Hatfield, there are two forms of love : passionate and compassionate.

• Passionate love is a feeling of strong sexual desire, attraction; a strong desire to be with another person. Passionate love is usually short-lived and lasts from six months to three years, but it can develop into compassionate love.
• Compassionate love includes feelings of affection, respect, trust, affection, and this feeling lasts much longer.

Hetfield also makes a distinction between reciprocated love, which leads to feelings of euphoria and contentment, and unrequited love, which leads to frustration and despair. According to the psychologist, for mutual and unrequited love to arise, a number of factors must be present, in particular:

— The right time is the readiness to fall in love.

- Similarity. As a rule, people fall in love with people who are similar to them.

— Early attachment style. Long-term, lasting relationships usually occur between well-adjusted people who have a strong and sincere attachment to each other. An impulsive, restless person who quickly falls in love and quickly cools down is most often not capable of a long-term relationship.

When you're in love

Falling in love appears when passion flares up between two people, but they are not yet close to each other and do not owe each other anything. As long as there is no intimacy in this relationship, it can end at any moment. With the advent of intimacy, they develop into romantic relationships and have the chance to become perfect love if people decide to take on certain obligations agreed upon in the couple.

If long-term relationships are built only on passion, as often happens in the modern world, the union turns out to be extremely fragile. Any blow can shake him, be it difficulties in everyday life, the emergence of a new passion, or simply the discovery of differences that are unacceptable for partners.

Six styles of love by John Lee

Canadian psychologist John Lee compared different love styles to a “color wheel.” In his opinion, just as there are three primary colors in the color spectrum, there are three main styles in love:

- Eros - love for an ideal image, both physical and emotional; most often based on physical attraction.

- Ludus is a type of love that is played as if it were a game, or as if they were participating in some kind of competition (which often leads to the simultaneous presence of several partners).

— Storge is love that often arises on the basis of friendship and develops into deep affection.

Just as the three primary colors of the color spectrum combine to create complementary colors, combinations of the three primary love styles create new variations, such as:

— Mania is a combination of love-eros and love-ludus, or obsession. It involves powerful emotional ups and downs, intense jealousy and strong possessiveness.

- Pragma combines ludus and storge - this is practical, rational love. Each partner in such a couple wants to achieve a certain goal. The expectations for this relationship are carefully considered, measured, and realistic.

- Agape is a combination of love-eros and love-storge. This is an all-consuming and selfless feeling.

When you're in love

Falling in love appears when passion flares up between two people, but they are not yet close to each other and do not owe each other anything. As long as there is no intimacy in this relationship, it can end at any moment. With the advent of intimacy, they develop into romantic relationships and have the chance to become perfect love if people decide to take on certain obligations agreed upon in the couple.

If dol

The result is eight love types, of which the eighth - absence of love - is additional.

Pure romance

When passion and intimacy arise between two people, they are in the stage of romantic love. With the same worldviews and the ability to turn a blind eye to each other’s shortcomings, this type of relationship has every chance of developing into true love if the couple decides to acquire mutual obligations.

Without obligations, relationships can last for quite a long time if both partners are satisfied with everything: physical intimacy and emotional satisfaction received by each makes this union quite strong.

Friendship-love

Relationships where there is intimacy and mutual commitment are one of the most stable types of relationships. This type of love can develop in long marriages, when the spouses no longer need the power of passion to bind the couple together. They respect and appreciate each other, support each other and are going to live together until the end.

The same type of relationship can arise in young people with their high awareness. If the main thing between them is intimacy and commitment, they may not need passion to decide to be together.

In addition, friends can have the same relationship - then they get a very strong and tender friendship, but without sexual overtones.