The Failure Of A Psychodynamic Relationship

There are seven different types of relationships that you can have; liking, infatuated love, romantic love, empty love, companionate love, fatuous love, and consummate love. You either have a high or low level of passion, intimacy, and commitment. Consummate love is basically the model relationship and has a high level of each component. This is the kind of relationship that people strive for and search for but is not always found. The liking relationship has a low level of passion and commitment but a high level of intimacy. Empty love has a low level of passion and intimacy, but a high level of commitment. With the empty relationship the couple has no romantic feeling, or feelings or closeness; they are just in a commitment relationship. Companion love is pretty common because the type of relationship has a low level of passion, with high levels of intimacy and commitment. This is seen in many marriages because the passion between them has begun to fade. As you can see each type of relationship has a different combination of components.

Can you be friends with someone you like? The dynamic of cross-sex friendships is an interesting area of study and one of which has little data. Moreover, research on this narrow subject is rather limited and comes from fairly old studies. The idea that men and women cannot be ‘just friends,’ is due to the idea that there must be some aspect of physical and or romantic involved. As Reeder discussed traditional societal norms and expectations of male-female relationships have played a role in how we view cross-sex friendships today. The literature on cross-sex friendships has explored the role of attraction and the impact it has on the dynamics of cross-sex relationships.

Now onto more serious aspects on love from three different fields which are Psychology, Neuroscience, and Sociology. The article Are We Confusing Passionate Love with Irrationality? Putting Passionate Love into a Cognitive-Behavioral Framework , by Joana R. Podina, Lavinia Uscatesci, and Cristina Magoase discusses love to be related to irrationality. This article informs me with research that three academic fields have done while studying passionate love. To support their study on passionate love the authors include a study on people who are recently in love or were in love in the past, they test their passionate love, irrationality, and rationality. The description given by those three fields for passionate love is the following:” it is a transitional phase from lust to companionate love, while conceptually it is generally regarded as an emotional/ motivational state of “longing for union with another.” In the article, passionate love is described as

It is an intense feeling of affection that compels us to do things that push us forward in a new direction that can be brought upon by a significant other. These feelings of affection are known as love and all love starts off with the sense of lust. Lust can be very dangerous to a man who is lost in the world looking to find himself. One can lose themselves entirely to these emotions for their lover and begin to forget their principles to living their life. Once a person no longer values their ideals they have become astray from their habitual self. In the novel Siddhartha by Herman Hesse, the main protagonist is faced with this ordeal and completely immerses himself, losing sight of his original journey.

In 2001 and 2012, there were studies both lead by April Bleske-Rechek about attraction in cross-sex relationships conducted in 2 parts. She collaborated with David Buss in the 2000 Study “Can Men and Women Be Just Friends?”. Bleske-Rechek and Buss focused on two key things: Sex differences in perceived benefits and costs of opposite sex friendships. (Bleske-Rechek, 2000). The researchers had 4 hypotheses, one being, “ For men, more than for women, one function of opposite-sex friendship is to provide sexual access to the opposite sex.” The second one being, “For women, more than for men, a function of opposite-sex friendship is to provide resources.” the third one, “For men and women, a function of opposite-sex

Disney’s “love at first sight” concept, eludes the viewer to conclude that by simply making eye contact with another, it is possible to instantly fall in love. According to psychologist Robert Sternberg’s “Triangular Theory of Love”, there are three components of a loving relationship: intimacy, passion, and the decision or commitment (Sterberg). “Love at first sight” falls under the passion category, characterized by the physical aspects of a relationship, including attraction and sexual consumption (Richardson). Despite the fact that passion is important, these relationships, lack intimacy, or all of the emotional aspects of an accord. Without intimacy, it is near impossible to sustain a happy and healthy relationship as both partners do not practice empathy, make attempts to understand their mate, nor do they show proper compassion to their lover. Furthermore, the relationship also lacks decision or commitment, a vital aspect of any marriage. The commitment to sustain a relationship and marry another individual for life is the foundation of marriage. Without this foundation, a marriage cannot mature and develop as the companions change through the years. In order for a marriage to work, all three components must be present, and collectively work together to ensure a loving and structured

However, experience within relationships differs greatly, some are intense and passionate others are intimate and caring. Sternberg’s Triangular Love Theory (1997) suggests that love has three different components: intimacy, passion and commitment; Intimacy in which two people share confidences and is highlighted through friendships and romantic love affairs, Passionate love described as infatuation as well as romantic love, and commitment the expectation that the relationship is permanent (Sternberg, 1997).

It seems to me, based on what I have heard from older people and what I have learned about society in even the recent past, the concept of the relationship is a fairly recent one. That is, the word itself was not often used; people had friends, family, business associates, and romantic or sexual partners, and all these types of relationships were usually identified specifically as to how they figured in a person’s life.

For many centuries, men have been pondering what the definition of love is. How does a certain individual captivate someone else's soul? Despite the fact that both love and lust involves intimacy, they are divergent. Romance can be gratifying while lust can be fleeting. A relationship solely based on lust will be short-lived. If people look deeper within, they will ultimately realize that love is paramount. Although lust itself is a by-product of a strong sexual desire rather than a deep affection, it is frequently misconceived as love in today’s modern society.

Romantic love is a mixture of intimacy and passion. Intimacy is an imitate act or sexual activity with another person of whom you have strong feelings for. Whereas, passion is strong and uncontrollable emotions. One might say that the “chemistry” or “passion” between themselves and another is uncontrollable. Intimacy is something that we have control over where

A recent article in Cosmopolitan addresses a most vexing uncertainty to those in friends with benefits relationships (FWBRs) in the aptly titled “Will Becoming Friends with Benefits Ruin Your Friendship?” As a college student in a culture that has evolved to embrace ambiguity, I was not surprised to find yet another popular culture piece offering advice on FWBRs. Upon reading the article, however, I was intrigued by the discovery that there is an array of actual academic research devoted to understanding this particular kind of relationship.

The theories of love covered many components and view about what love is, what drives us to want someone and also what brings someone to committing to that significant other for the long run. One theory that I found to be the most helpful in categorizing love and explaining what makes a person want to find love in the first place was the Sternberg’s Triangular Theory of Love. Sternberg’s Triangle Theory of Love have three points in the triangular shape which are decision/commitment, intimacy and passion. Decision and commitment is when a person consciously make the decision to do thing for the relationship and invest time into the relationship for better or worse. The person at this time is in total awareness and in control of what they would like to do in the relationship and where they would want to lead it in the future. Passion is when our partner reciprocates our passion or lust for them through kissing or making love. Intimacy is where we have become very emotionally invested in our partner expressing ourselves through communication. This theory is one that shows that couples can be a match or mismatch, but show points to where they are very compatible.

The term friendship is defined as a mutual strand of affection between two or more people. It is a stronger form of interpersonal bond than an association. It is a link between people who show trust and altruism with one another without the placement of sexual or physical intimacy that commonly happens in a romantic relationship. Friends tend to share common interests, demographics, backgrounds, and traits of the self. However, before we get to know a person, we use perception to categorize them into a certain role. It often causes us to assume that the other party is superior or inferior to us. We do this more often than not without even realizing we’ve engaged in perception. Perception played a very large part in the first meeting of my best friend, Cinda, and I.

Most men and women have different friendship ideals and norms from one another. It is imperative to provide a definition for friendship. Hays (as cited in Demir and Orthel, 2011) defines friendship as a “voluntary interdependence between two persons over time, that is intended to facilitate socio-emotional goals of the participants, and may involve varying types and degrees of companionship, intimacy, affection and mutual assistance”(p 175). For understanding purposes, future use of the term “relationship” specifically refers to a connection or association between two or more people that is independent of romantic relationship.

Humans are social creatures and making friends is part and parcel of life. It is considered as the most important fundamental experience of any one life. Friendship can be developed as private or public and it is studied in both ways ethically and philosophically as individually or socially. In my own definition, friendship is basically the mixture of emotions and feelings that are expressed in a way that makes a person feels important and loved. In a relationship, one person expects so much and likes to speak their heart out in time of need. In my opinion, friends are the ones with whom we develop several types of relationships and we keep so much love and emotions for the same person. Therefore, we always have different types of friendship with everyone.