Chapter 6 Lecture

Friends

Sexual and Relational Wellness

Forming Relationships

• Healthy relationships evolve, they don’t happen spontaneously
• Adolescents learn by observing “role models” on how to interact with one another
• Most adults don’t receive any formal training for building, nurturing, and maintaining relationships
• As a result, adolescents have a difficult task of learning how to foster healthy relationships without the benefit of previous modeling
• Lesbians have difficulty finding role models for dating based upon past culture

Stages of Dating

• Attraction (first stage)
• Ritual (shared experiences that deepen a bond)
• Information Sharing (disclosing more personal information as well as engaging in physical contact e.g. kissing, etc.)

• Activities (personal interests that allow mutual acceptance)
• Emotional Intimacy (feeling of knowing and being known)
• Commitment (feelings of attachment and the desire to be in a more intimate relationship)

Gender Role Attributes

• There is a profound influence on the development of relationships based on psychological factors such as masculinity and femininity
• Recent studies showed a blend of masculine and feminine traits labeled androgynous
• Androgynous individuals were believed to possess the traits that allowed them to function more equally in a relationship and to fare better psychologically

Sociological Factors

• These factors impact the development of relationships
• Some scholars suggest women are more relational, whereas men are more autonomous
• Females and males tend to be socialized differently according to values and beliefs of their culture
• In the United States, men tend to embrace the cultural and psychological aspects of an individualistic society, while women tend to embrace the messages of a collective society

Theories of Love

• Maslow’s D Love & B Love
• D Love is based on deficiency (meet one’s unmet needs)
• B Love is based on being secure and having freedom
• Sternberg’s Triangular Theory
• Focuses on 3 components with 9 combinations of love

    • Commitment
    • Intimacy
    • Passion

• John Alan Lee’s Six Love Styles
• Erotic love
• Ludic love
• Pragmatic love
• Manic love
• Altruistic love
• Storgic love

Biochemistry of Love

• Helen Fisher’s hypothesis is that the neurotransmitter, dopamine, is a major player in romantic love. Researchers discovered that many brain parts become active when a person is experiencing love.

• It seems that there is a shift in brain physiology that corresponds with the length of a relationship.

Traits of a Successful Relationship

• Separating emotionally from the families of origin and creating a new family
• Maintaining autonomy and balancing it with togetherness
• Establishing a vital sexual relationship that remains free from distractions
• Recognizing the changes that occur with parenthood and keeping communication open
• Confronting crises and facing adversity together
• Determining safe ways to express differences, conflicts, anger, and seeking resolution
• Creating humor that keeps the little things in perspective and maintains the dynamic stimulation
• Nurturing and comforting each other, allowing dependency and vulnerability to feel safe
• Remembering the early romantic, idealized images of love for the partner while facing the reality of shifts in the relationship
Types of Relationships
• Marriage and Other Committed Relationships

    • Marriage Rate is down & Americans are waiting longer to get married and fewer are having children

• Coupled Households

    • Cohabitation: unmarried partner households

• Interracial and Mixed Race Couples

    • 15% of new marriages are between spouses of different races

Types of Relationships

• Lesbian Couples

    • In 2010, there were 131,729 same-sex married couple households, and 514,735 same-sex unmarried partner households in the U.S.

• Bisexual Couples

    • Women are more likely to identify as bisexual than men

• Transgender Couples

    • Transgendered persons have a sexual identity different from their sexual physiology

Terminating a Relationship

• The estimated rate for divorces and annulments seems to have slowed since 2000
• The National Center for Health Statistics reported for 2010 the national divorce rate was 3.6 per 1,000
• Divorces is one of the most stressful thing a person can go through in life
• The emotional and financial effects of divorce are greater for women, especially older women

Love Addiction

• This is a relationship built on faulty thinking and feeling
• This pattern has been described as love/avoidance addiction
• It occurs when the “love addict” partner feels the need to be rescued and the other partner “avoidance addict” attempts to avoid involvement with the partner
• Their fears become abandonment and intimacy, which become reversed over time
• The relationships will deteriorate until one partner leaves

Potential Sources of Conflict

• Imbalance of Power
• External Affair
• Money
• Household Labor

Resolving Conflicts-Fighting Fair

• How couples fight or handle fundamental disagreements has been shown to be a major predictor of whether the relationship will last
• Rosenberg’s “NVC process”

    • Transforms conflict into mutually satisfying outcomes

• The concrete actions we observe that affect our well-being
• How we feel in relation to what we observe
• The needs, values, desires that create our feelings
• The concrete actions we request in order to enrich our lives

Celebrating Motherhood

• West Virginia became the first state to recognize Mother’s Day in 1910.

• The responsibility of every parent is to protect and nurture a child and also to prepare that child for success and happiness in family relations, school achievement, work satisfaction and other life challenges.

• Three common types of parenting

    • "Giving Orders”
    • “Giving In”
    • “Giving Choices” – democratic parenting style

• Four ways to form strong relationships with children

    • Show respect
    • Have fun
    • Give encouragement
    • Show love