CHAPTER 11:

Being with Others: Relationships in Young and Middle Adulthood

11.1 Relationship Types and Issues

Friendships

 Friendship in Adulthood
 The affective or emotional basis of friendship refers to self-disclosure and expressions of
intimacy, appreciation, affection, and support, and all are based on trust, loyalty, and
commitment
 The shared, or communal nature, of friendship reflects how friends participate in or support
activities of mutual interest.
 The sociability and compatibility dimension represents how our friends keep us entertained and
are sources of amusement, fun, and recreation.
 trust develops on the basis of four SOURCES:
o (1) reputation;
o (2) performance, or what users do online
o (3) precommitment, through personal self-disclosure;
o and (4) situational factors
 Men’s, Women’s, and Cross-Sex Friendships

Men’s and women’s friendships tend to differ in adulthood, reflecting continuity in the learned
behaviors from childhood

 Love Relationships
Love is one of those things we feel but cannot fully describe.
 In an interesting series of studies, Sternberg (2006) found love has three basic
components:
o (1) passion, an intense physiological desire for someone
o (2) intimacy, the feeling that you can share all your thoughts and actions with
another; and
o (3) commitment, the willingness to stay with a person through good and bad
times.
 Love Through Adulthood
 Research shows the development of romantic relationships in emerging adulthood is a
complex process influenced by relationships in childhood and adolescence.
 Infatuation is short-lived. As passion fades, either a relationship acquires emotional
intimacy or it is likely to end.
 Trust, honesty, openness, and acceptance must be a part of any strong relationship;
when they are present, romantic love develops.
 to support the notion of “love at first sight” and are more likely to divorce (Hansen,
2006). If the couple spends more time and works at their relationship, they may become
committed to each other. By spending much of their time together, making decisions
 together, caring for each other, sharing possessions, and developing ways to settle
conflicts, they increase the chances that their relationship will last
 Falling in Love
 The best explanation of the process is the theory of assortative mating, that states people find
partners based on their similarity to each other.
 The rules governing partner selection during a speed dating session seem quite similar to
traditional dating: physically attractive people, outgoing and self-assured people, and
moderately self-focused people are selected more often and their dates are rated as smoother.

Developmental Forces, Neuroscience, and Love Relationships

As you no doubt know from your own experience, finding a suitable relationship, especially a love
relationship, is tough. Many things must work just right: timing, meeting the right person, luck, and
effort are but a few of the factors that shape the course of a relationship.

 dopamine system, which is involved in all of the basic biological drives. Once the
relationship settles into what some people might call long-term commitment and
tranquility, the brain processes switch neurochemically to substances related to
morphine, a powerful narcotic

 research indicates that the hormone oxytocin may play an important role in attachment.

o In men, it enhances their partner’s attractiveness compared to other females

o in women, it enhances their orgasms, among other things
 For women (but not men), blood levels of serotonin increase during periods of romantic love
 In addition, the stronger the romantic bond with their boyfriend, the less likely they are to be
able to identify the body odor of a different male friend (Lundström & Jones-Gotman, 2009).
That means that women’s attention is deflected from other potential male partners the more
they are romantically involved with one specific male.

Violence in Relationships

 abusive relationship

relationships in which one person becomes aggressive toward the partner.

 battered woman

syndrome situation occurring when a woman believes that she cannot leave the abusive situation
and may even go so far as to kill her abuser
  abusive partners, O’Leary (1993) proposed a continuum of aggressive
behaviors toward a partner, and progresses as follows:
 verbally aggressive behaviors,
 physically aggressive behaviors,
 severe physically aggressive behaviors, and
 Murder

11.2 Lifestyles and Relationships

 Singlehood
 Many women and men remain single as young adults to focus on establishing their careers
rather than marriage or relationships that most do later.
 Fewer men than women remain unmarried throughout adulthood, though, mainly because men
find partners more easily as they select from a larger age range of unmarried women.
 cohabitation people

in committed, intimate, sexual relationships who live together but are not married.

What Is a Successful Marriage and What Predicts It?

 marital success umbrella

term referring to any marital outcome.

 marital quality

subjective evaluation of the couple’s relationship on a number of different dimensions.

 marital adjustment
degree to which a husband and wife accommodate to each other over a certain period of time.
 marital satisfaction
global assessment of one’s marriage.
 homogamy
similarity of values and interests.
 exchange theory
relationship, such as marriage, based on each partner contributing something to the relationship
that the other would be hard pressed to provide.

Do Married Couples Stay Happy?

 vulnerability–stress–adaptation model

model that proposes that marital quality is a dynamic process resulting from the couple’s ability to
handle stressful events in the context of their particular vulnerabilities and resources.