Other Interesting Research
A Tripartite Conundrum
Cultural models are useful in unifying the many facets of love and sex, although they can be challenged by interest groups like Christian fundamentalists, libertines, etc. However, is the conflict between sexual desire and passionate love, passionate love and comfort love, or do we have a three-way dilemma? [27] Different cultures place different levels of emphasis on different types of love. The tripartite conundrum is between sexual, romantic, and companionate love. Companionship (or comfort) love is more platonic, invoking feelings of friendship, understanding, and concern. It is more of a spiritual love. [2-3] Passionate (or romantic) love is an erotic idealization of another. Sexual love is more physical. [2-3]
Cultures often have to deal with the conflict between sexual passion and romance. Sexual desire is about wanting physical gratification or some sort of arousal. Without passionate love, interest in the partner is lost after satisfaction, but with passion, it intensifies. [2-3] In some Papua New Guinea ethnic groups, sexual intercourse is considered filthy. Yet men still seek it out as a sort of guilty pleasure. [3] For the Mormons, Lahu, Tamil Nadu, etc., they only slightly acknowledge the connection of love to sexual desire. [3] For the Marri Baluch, Inuit Eskimo, etc., they doubt the connection. [3] For the United States, urban China, and other developed nations, the connection is openly avowed. [3] The Caribbean, Southeast Asia, and others developed sex tourism, where sex-scape zones allow people to pursue their sexual desires.
The Makassarese of South Sulawesi, Indonesia view passionate love as an illness. [3] In the polyandrous societies in the Himalayas, people are swept up by passion such that women forsake dyadic exclusivity (spending time with only one husband at the time) to manage all of her husbands.
Among the Aka, there is a conflict between the genders; men feel companionship love for their spouse but seek out another wife to have children, while women will use physical violence to keep their husbands. The Aka understand both the wives’ feelings and the men's desire to seek another wife. American swingers try to emphasize comfort love while discouraging passionate entanglement and remaining open to sexual desire.
Fischer and William Jankowiak’s research proved that romantic love is present in most cultures, and it is not just a Western product. On the other hand, Charles Lindholm argues that romantic love is not universal because it requires frequent mobility, weak social networks, and few alternatives for intimacy. [7]
In the Marri Baluch of Afghanistan, men express “love” for a married woman while denying sexual interest. This may be because they actually lack sexual interest or just find it convenient to deny it. This is called “chaste love”, a form of comfort love, where sexual or erotic factors are excluded. [16] For the Lahu and Miao of China, chaste love is a high ideal and married couples sing love songs about other people. The expression of erotic feelings is considered rude, though this is due to ethical cultural standards of propriety rather than the absence of feelings. [16]
Most cultures have mixed feelings about love and would prefer that love is carefully controlled. Forms of sexual regulation include harem polygamy, seclusion of men and chaperonage, obsession with virginity, allegiance to parents rather than spouses, circumcision, the men’s house complex, an association of women with impurity, and patterns of sexual promiscuity that undermine relationships. [19] The discontinuities between verbal and body language are why cultural rules about sexual desire are difficult to enforce because the discontinuities send mixed messages. The sexual metaphors deemed appropriate by a culture says a lot about how they see appropriate discourse, but they are not immune to confusion.
The de-erotic posture forbids explicit sexual metaphors in public because they are considered vulgar. This style is common among ranked or stratified societies were sexual topics are limited between people of the same sex and similar age. [22]
The poly-erotic style accentuates sexual imagery in everyday conversations. Sexuality is deemed as a source of pride. For example, among the Tongan (from the country of Tonga), men joke about sex all the time and the women physically hit the men in good humor. This mixes words with physical touch. African-American teenagers use humorous put-downs in their sexual conversations. The difference between the Tongan and the U.S. is that the former prefers to keep displays of affection private, while the U.S. idealizes it. [22] In Trinidad, disease, cultural diffusion, and social stratification have changed the culture’s poly-erotic style to a uni-romantic one. Romantic metaphors replaced sexual metaphors. [22]
So in the end, this three-way problem’s solution may not actually exist. There are so many historical factors to consider and the cultural platform that these three love types exist on constantly changes. What can be taken away is that a majority of the problem comes down to the changing desires of the people in their culture, their situation is different from their ancestors from several hundred years ago. As the culture changes and adapts to new situations, so too will the needs of the people within that culture and what they define as love.
Jankowiak, W. (2008). Intimacies: Love and sex across cultures. New York: Columbia University Press.
Do Love Languages Affect Relationship Satisfaction?
A 2006 empirical study by Egbert and Polk saw that Chapman’s love languages were highly correlated with Canary & Stafford’s relational maintenance categories; couples tended to rank highly on both. This research suggests that expressing the proper love language is a relational maintenance activity. One 2017 study determines exactly how much does a couple’s love language alignment affect relationship satisfaction, as well as the role of behavioral self-regulation.
Hypothesis 1: Compared to couples who have misaligned love languages, couples with aligned love languages will experience a higher degree of relationship satisfaction.
Hypothesis 2: Self-regulation behaviors will have a positive influence on relationship satisfaction for couples with misaligned love languages.
Love language alignment was determined using Egbert and Polk’s (2006) 20-question Love Languages scale. Alignment was operationalized as a binary variable; with 0 for not aligned and 1 for aligned. The scale showed moderate reliability for both genders, as indicated by the following decimal values:
Acts of service: 0.67 for males, 0.61 for females.
Physical touch: 0.80 for males, 0.74 for females.
Words of affirmation: 0.75 for males, 0.76 for females.
Quality time: 0.70 for males, 0.70 for females.
Gifts: 0.55 for males, 0.62 for females.
Relationship satisfaction was determined using Spanier’s (1976) seven-item Dyadic Adjustment Scale. DAS-7 scores range from 0 to 36, with scores less than 21 indicating relationship distress. This method is reliable; 0.72 for males, and 0.75 for females.
Self-regulation was determined using Wilson’s (2005) Behavioral Self-Regulation for Effective Relationships Scale. BSRERS scores range from 0 to 80. It has a two-factor structure: strategies (types of behavior) and effort (persistence in behavior). There is strong reliability: strategy has 0.91 for males and 0.88 for females, and effort as 0.78 for males and 0.83 for females.
The results did not support the first hypothesis; love language alignment nor implicit knowledge of a partner’s love language did not appear to promote higher relationship satisfaction. The second hypothesis was proven true only for when females exhibited self-regulatory behaviors, not men.
Bunt, S., & Hazelwood, Z. (2017). Walking the walk, talking the talk: Love languages, self‐regulation, and relationship satisfaction. Personal Relationships,24(2), 280-290.
Love Relationships and Identity Development in Selected Asian American Chick Lit.
The relation of affection is determined on the basis of two novels, Born Confused novel by Tanuja Desai Hidier and The Dim Sum of All Things by Kim Wong Keltner. Both of these writings are based on the contrasting feature of ethnicity gained by female protagonists that focuses on the self-identity of those girls after being in love relationship.
Born Confused shows the confusion occurred to the lead character that faced much confusion for her relationship throughout the adulthood phase. She is displayed as a baffling girl who is disoriented mentally for either choosing Indian culture or American culture.
The Dim Sum of All Things is about an American-born Chinese who tried to follow the American culture instead of giving first priority to the Chinese culture. As she did so she rejected to form the bond with the person belonging to her native culture and at the same was also confused to have a faith in Whites residing in America.
Both novels by Hidier and Keltner, though scripted with varying scenarios, are similar as it highlights the confusion created for the female protagonist. And, the major disorientation presented here is about their switching feelings about believing the norms and values of the native culture or the one followed by the loved ones in America.
Likewise, the chick lit novel based on Asian diaspora not only represents the idea of self-identification and love relation but also shows the importance of professional lives. It is also based on women's liberation, facing many of obstacles for reaching the stated goal in American surroundings even though representing Asian culture.
In regard to the neo-liberal romance rather than pure romantic lives, Thoma takes the example of the novel titled China Dolls: A Novel and Goddess for Hire. Here, Thoma illustrates the clear-cut idea about the women facing consequences to make a figurative image in society by working independently.
The study of Sellei, Barber, and Ruiz show that the present scenario of the movie they researched is based on the psychological context while previously it was just about the identity of females that used to be characterized throughout. The issue faced by modern womanhood is the basic genre of the movie because it highlights the terms and conditions of the popular culture. This concept is given by Ferris, Young, and Harzewski in 2006 which depicts the cross-conflict between the diverging religious backgrounds.
Bronfenbrenner and his findings in 2005 presented ecological system theory, which mentioned the importance of societal relationship development along with psychological fitness. The person's interaction with the development of individual changes will modify the way the environment is displayed and the communication link between the societal members will also be flourished. In order to portray this examination, Bronfenbrenner and Ceci introduced five differencing terms.
Microsystem oversees the direct intercommunication with the surrounding people.
Mesosystem shows the connection formed between the microsystems.
Exosystem studies the factors required for an individual to form microsystem and mesosystem connections.
Macrosystem represents the societal norms and values which is significant to be in the discipline.
Chronosystem demonstrates the history that has an impact on the present survival pattern.
According to Erickson, Bandura, Ajzen, and Fishbein, along with the intra-relationship mental analysis for understanding, the thoughts of other people is also important to generate feelings of love. By doing so, the conflict that particularly occurs between the groups of mankind reduces as they can understand the attitude and emotions of each other.
Overall, the research paper is about the girl's exploration of identity in the novels by Hidier and Keltner.
Mazloomian, M., M. M, R., & Ismail@Hamdan, S. (2016). Love Relationships and Identity Development in Selected Asian American Chick Lit. GEMA Online® Journal of Language Studies,16(2), 155-171.