ESSAY INTERPERSONAL RELATIONS

Realized by Elena Consuegra Fuentes

What are the factors that determine the development of attraction for a person outside an
established long term-relationship or marriage, to an extradyadic or extramarital affair?
Discuss the psychological factors that work to prevent or facilitate such a development.

Most adults know what attraction is, indeed they may even have experienced it for
something or someone. However, do they recognise what they are feeling, and do they know
how to define attraction? Focusing on what attraction to a person is, it could be defined,
according to Baron and Byrne (2005), as a person's judgement of another person along an
attitudinal dimension whose extremes are positive evaluation (love) and negative evaluation
(hate). In addition to this cognitive-evaluative dimension, this judgement is associated with
behaviours, feelings and other cognitions. From this definition we can see that attraction is
something that can develop or not, as a consequence of facilitating or preventing factors.

When we find ourselves in a relationship or marriage, assuming it is of our own free

will, we are with our partner because we had previously felt an attraction to his or her and then
it evolved into something else that made us want to stay with that person. But if human beings
choose to be with that person, why is it that sometimes an attraction to a person outside the
established long term-relationship can develop?

Romantic love is an important part of relationships because it produces a hormone

called oxytocin which facilitates trust and monogamy in the relationship. On many occasions,
couples can fall into the dynamic of negative attributions and this can be a very stressful
situation for those involved, allowing the relationship to become vulnerable and this
vulnerability can precipitate the development of an attraction to another person. This weakness
in the relationship occurs because when we are in stressful relationships and troubled marriages
oxytocin is at low levels. However, if a marriage did not have these negative attributions but
positive ones, it could be argued that this attraction to another person outside the relationship
would not have occurred, as oxytocin levels would not have dropped.

Although romantic love may be an important part of a relationship, it is not everything,

because there are also other types of love, for example passionate love. Passionate love involves
very intense feelings of bonding with the person, which means that it is not possible over the
long term, as such intensity over such a sustained period of time is inconceivable. It is clearly
known that testosterone plays a very important role in sexuality, but it also has a great
relationship to passionate love. This hormone gives us the reason why passionate love does not
help to maintain long-term relationships, since several researches have shown that compared to
men in short-term sexual relationships, men in long-term relationships have relatively lower
levels of testosterone, and married people have lower levels of testosterone compared to single
people.

Continuing with the hormone testosterone, an experiment was conducted where

testosterone was administered to middle-aged men and women to increase their sexual desire,
increased levels of sexual activity and sexual thoughts, however, the increase in this hormone
did not result in increased romantic passion or increased attachment to their sexual partner
(Sherwin and Gelfand, 1987; Sherwin, Gelfand and Brender, 1985). This experiment
demonstrated that the three emotion-motivation systems (sex drive, attraction and attachment)
that we possess can also act independently of each other (Black, 1996; Morell, 1998). Taking
this information into account, it can be argued that if one of the relationship has high levels of
testosterone and does not have much passionate love or attachment for his partner, this
testosterone could make him look for another sexual partner to "unload" the increase of thoughts
and sexual activity that he possesses since he cannot do it with his partner because he no longer
generates that lust. This neural independence of romantic love may explain contemporary global
patterns of adultery and divorce. As these factors function independently, a person may feel
attachment for their current partner but may also feel sex drive or romantic attraction for another
person, which could explain why adultery occurs because if they are driven by this sex drive
despite their feelings for their partner, this would lead to infidelity.

In addition, depending on the attachment strategy a person has developed, whether

secure, avoidant or anxious, this may have consequences for the relationship. For example,
people with avoidant attachment are less willing to be compassionate towards others and to
provide care, this condition may predispose them to infidelity as they do not feel compassion for
their partner's feelings, so they may focus only on their own desires and have relationships with
another person, regardless of the possible harm they may cause to their partner.

Throughout our growth, from the time we are small to where we are now, we are
learning. Just as this is reflected in the type of attachment we develop as mentioned above, it
can also be seen in the way we view love or relationships, i.e. we learn how they "should be".
This is what the theory of Love as Story (Sternberg, Hojjat &, Barnes, 2001) tells us, where it is
stated that love stories are learned by directly or indirectly observing how other people
"interpret" their relationship scenarios. Our whole environment is constantly showing us love
stories and from them we form our idea of what love and relationships are. For this reason, if
you have grown up with a relationship model in which infidelity is normal, perhaps developing
an attraction to a person who is not your current partner and having a relationship with them is
seen as something totally natural. In today's society, infidelity is becoming normalised for this
very reason, because there are many movies, real life situations and even porn where cheating
on a partner is shown as a good thing. On the other hand, if the history we have as a model and
have learned is that there is no room for cheating in relationships, since a relationship is two
people who love each other and provide each other with exclusivity, this would be a preventive
factor for infidelity. One solution to this would be to promote among young people readings and
programmes that demonstrate a good model of love, without cheating and infidelity.

In conclusion, attraction in relationships is a complex phenomenon because of its

influence by various factors. Although romantic love, supported by oxytocin, plays an essential
role in relationships, its presence does not guarantee immunity against external attractions.
Vulnerability in relationships can arise when partners make negative attributions to each other,
as this process is linked to low levels of oxytocin in stressful or conflictual situations, which can
lead to the development of attractions to others. In addition, the complexity of attraction is
reflected in the independence of sexual desire, attraction and attachment systems, as
demonstrated by studies with testosterone. This sheds light on contemporary patterns of
adultery, where attraction to another may coexist with attachment to the current partner.

Finally, attachment strategies, whether secure, avoidant or anxious, also play a crucial
role in predisposition to infidelity. For example, individuals with avoidant attachment may lack
compassion, focusing on their own desires and leading them to seek external relationships. Love
as Story theory highlights how our perceptions of love are shaped by observed stories,
influencing the normalisation or prevention of infidelity. Ultimately, understanding how
attraction to another person outside the relationship can develop, and knowing which factors
precipitate and which prevent it, empowers individuals to make informed decisions and foster
healthy relationships based on mutual respect and open communication.

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