4: Relationships and Communication
Love and intimacy go hand in hand. Love is the physical, emotional, sexual, intellectual, or social affection one person holds for another. Concepts related to love include: adoration, desire, prefer, possess, care for, serve, and even worship. Intimacy, on the other hand, is a close relationship where mutual acceptance, nurturance, and trust are shared at some level. In order to understand love in human relationships, you must first understand how the socialized self either enhances or inhibits your capacity to love.
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- 4.1: Intro to Relationships and Communication
- Attachments are crucial to human existence and are essentially the emotional context of those relationships we form in life. As an infant you learned to trust those who cared for you; you learned that they returned once they were out of view and were dependable. Eventually, as your cognitive development matures, your brain allows you to love the person you are attached to and to care for them—whether or not they are caring for you.
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- 4.2: Theories of Love
- Love is a multidimensional concept and psychologists and sociologists have defined it in a variety of ways over the years. John Lee is perhaps the most quoted researcher on love with his six love types. Lee assumed that we all shared six core components of love and that our current loving relationship can be assessed and measured. Lee also claimed that there are qualities of love types—some more long-lasting and supportive of relationships and some pathological and defective which inhibit relati
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- 4.3: Theories of Mate Selection
- How do strangers transition from not even knowing one another to eventually cohabiting or marrying together? From the very first encounter, two strangers begin a process that either excludes one another as potential dates or mates or includes them and begins the process of establishing intimacy. Intimacy is the mutual feeling of acceptance, trust, and connection to another person, even with the understanding of personal faults of the individual.
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- 4.4: Marriage
- Marriage is very popular among U.S. adults, in part because it does offer many rewards that unmarried people don't enjoy. Marriage has become socially controversial in part because of the intense political efforts to legalize marriage for same-sex couples. Regardless of your moral position on the issue of same-sex marriage, you can see the political quest for it as an indicator of just how rewarding it is to be legally a “married couple.”
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- 4.5: Cohabitation
- Cohabitation is the heterosexual, bisexual, and homosexual moving in together of two partners without going through the formalities of legal marriage. Although similar in form and function, cohabitating couples live differently in many significant day-to-day aspects when compared to married couples. Also, many cohabiting couples eventually choose to marry, but their risk of divorce is higher than among couples that never cohabited.
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- 4.6: Marrieds and Non-Marrieds
- There are known benefits to being married and in a long-term relationship rather than being single, divorced, or cohabiting. The list below shows health benefits from the cohabitation and marriage study of the National Survey of Family Growth. Better mental and physical health with better medical insurance coverage prove to be crucial qualities for marrieds. As far as children are concerned, having better care and better adult outcomes are crucial factors.
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- 4.7: Violence in Relationships
- Violence is a serious public health problem in the United States. From infants to the elderly, it affects people in all stages of life. In the United States, violence accounts for approximately 51,000 deaths annually. In 2007, more than 18,000 people were victims of homicide and more than 34,000 took their own life. Estimating the size of this economic burden is helpful in understanding the resources that could be saved if cost-effective violence prevention efforts were applied.
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- 4.8: Sexual Violence
- Sexual Violence (SV) refers to sexual activity where consent is not obtained or freely given. Anyone can experience SV, but most victims are female. The person responsible for the violence is typically male and is usually someone known to the victim. The person can be, but is not limited to, a friend, coworker, neighbor, or family member.
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- 4.9: Intimate Partner Violence
- Intimate partner violence (IPV) is a serious, preventable public health problem that affects millions of Americans. The term “intimate partner violence” describes physical, sexual, or psychological harm by a current or former partner or spouse. This type of violence can occur among heterosexual or same-sex couples and does not require sexual intimacy.