Investment And Conflict Of Romantic Relationships

A relationship? Something meaningful? Forever? HA! All ploys and devious schemes devised by horifically cruel creatures, in order to have their every wish granted for all of eternity. These terms were created to destroy our lives, they were created by the most evil and demented of all creatures, The Female. Ask any boyfriend, or should I say "slave", and they will tell you that the Female is a very mean creature that gets her every way without any questions. They turn us into their servants and force us into a permanent relationship, or a permanent "slavery", as I prefer to call it.

Relationship maintenance involves the actions and activities used to sustain the desired quality of a relationship. (Weiten et al., 2016, p. 257) These actions include being positive, open, assuring, and doing joint activities. Agnew and VanderDrift showed that these actions can be used to promote interdependence and stability or can protect a relationship from threat. (Weiten et al., 2016, p. 257)

The second major psychological perspective is that of learning. The perspective of learning is “concerned with how the environment and experience affect a person’s actions” (Wade and Tavris, 2011). When applied to a relationship standpoint many factors come into play. As a child who was raised to respect women, my mom always encouraged me to have healthy long-term relationships and not be a “player”. This lead to me implementing those ideas into my life and sticking with

It should be noted this model cites antecedent apprehension concerning commitment as the cause of increased break-ups and

Kerchoff and Davis used their model to do a study on students who had been together for more than or less than 18 months. They were asked to complete questionnaires over 7 months on attitudes and personality of their partners compared to theirs; it was found that this was important in relationships up

People constantly evaluate the rewards and costs of their relationship as well as the rewards and costs of interaction with another individual. Rewards and costs can be tangible, such as money or gifts, or psychological, such as social support or intellectual stimulation (Unger & Johnson 604). According to Unger and Johnson, “if the reward/cost balance is more favorable than that of other potential relationships, the person will remain in the relationship, if the costs outweigh the rewards and an alternative relationship with more favorable outcomes is available, the person will leave the existing relationship in favor of the alternative” (604). Yet each reward and cost is different to each individual. To better understand reward and costs is to better understand each individual.

Hazan and Shaver (1987) aimed to investigate whether they could classify the responders’ love relationships as secure, ambivalent, and avoidant, whether there was a correlation between the formed attachment pattern from childhood and attachment pattern during the love relationships, and whether there was a correlation between the distribution of childhood attachment patterns and adult love relationships’ attachment patterns.

According to Thibauilt and Kelley (1959), people weigh their costs and benefits of their relationship to determine satisfaction and commitment. Essentially meaning people form relationships in which the incentive is more significant than the action. George Homans summarizes his proposition into three sections: (1) rewards

Sociological perspectives explains love relationships as not perfect but a working progress. A commitment which relies on continuous maintenance and reassurance. Love relationship practices and investments are configured in experiences that will be shared in the past, present and in the future.

The fairy tales say that once upon a time a girl met a boy; they fell in love, and lived happily ever after. Reality is not that simple. Long-term relationships force couples to get to know each other, involve themselves in each others’ worlds, fight through the hard times, and eventually develop deeper connections through distinctive stages of Knapp’s relationship model. Although I have dated the same person for over two years, the stages of our communication make it seem as though I am now dating a different person following dissolution and subsequent repair. However, even the most exhilarating of roller coaster rides develop through a combination of ups and downs, much like the stages of a relationship.

Romantic entanglements clearly at their core are made of benefits and costs. The first step to seeing just how social exchange theory applies to romantic relationships is to understand just what some of the benefits and consequences are. "The major benefits of romantic relationships were companionship, affection, happiness, exclusivity, feeling loved, loving another, intimacy, self growth, self understanding and self esteem" (Duck, 1991; McAdams,'l984,1988; Rook & Pietromonaco,1987; Weiss 1969,1974). People are usually of two minds either positive or negative. So, a person either thinks of all the positives and everything they could get from a romantic relationship that would make their life better, or they are more concentrated on the cons,

Commitment follows when the two parties know enough about each other to develop the ability to predict each others’ behaviour and therefore elicit reward/pleasure/satisfaction from each other.

Self-interest forms a base for every relationship, be it is friendship, marriage or trade. Love and friendship are regarded as two of relationships where no one seeks a hard-headed purpose but seemingly many humans enter into a relationship just to extract some benefit from it. In both the plays, William Shakespeare with his famous piece, the Merchant of Venice and Arthur Miller with his famous play, The Crucible have depicted the role of self-interest in human relationships. They emphasize this theme through examples of love, friendship, power

Our relationship is successful because we use the relational maintenance strategies of recognition and acceptance to sustain our relationship. Even

To explain human relationships further, the social exchange theory can be another definite explanation to help distinguish how we feel to be with other people and how one perceives to be with them, either to rekindle their relationship or to question the decisions that make to be in a relationship (Kelley 1959). The social exchange theory can be defined as a term that allows behaviour to be exchanged to allow a relationship between two people to happen (Huston et al., 2013). An individual social life involves interactions between two people which can be viewed as social exchanges in terms of costs and benefits (Nakagawa et al., 2013). By taking the view of human relationships the social exchange theory argues that individuals engage in a cost benefit analysis which forms their relationship with others (Milkie et al., 2004). When the costs and benefits are equal in a relationship, it is defined as equitable (Siddiqui 2008). Moreover, romantic relationships may be difficult for some people as it involves interpersonal skills in order to make them mutually satisfying therefore requires constant maintenance. Recently, Psychologists have begun to look at the breakdown of relationships and the characteristics which requires them to fail. The breakdown of relationship is a theory which explains the failure of certain human relationships and the factors that may be involved such as lack