SEXUAL ATTARACTION AND ROMANTIC LOVE: FORGOTTEN VARIABLES IN MARITAL THERAPY*

The purpose of this paper is to address the lack of attention in the mariage therapy literature ot romantic love and sexual attraction. Although mot coupples marry because of romantic love and tent to divorce when they “fall out of love,” few guidelines are available to therapists concerning how to deal with love as an issue in therapy. In contrast to models of marriage therapy which focus on rational skill devlopment, the model presented here is based on the assumption that marriage problems are emotional in nature and that the success of marital theapists is dependent upon skill in addressing emotional states. Based on recent findings in neurobioloy, this model contends that the affective dimension of love is precognitive and similar to the attchment between infant and parnent. By providing nonverbal and precognitive experience whithin therapy that can alter the emotional pattern of couples, therapists can increase the likelihood of a successful outcome.     

“The Compass of Our Life”: A Qualitative Study of Marriage and Faith Among Chinese Immigrants

Twenty highly religious Chinese Christian married couples (n = 40) were interviewed to examine how religious faith influenced their perceptions of marriage and family life. Most participants held advanced graduate degrees (14 PhD and 13 MS degrees). Their ages ranged from 28 to 66, and the number of children ranged from one to four. Grounded theory methods (including open coding and axial coding) were applied to analyze the data. Based on the interview data three emergent themes were identified: (1) Moving from atheism to theism (“God is love”), (2) changing perceptions of marriage (“Marriage is established by God”), and (3) a new priority (“Put God first”). Supporting qualitative data are presented in connection with each theme. Implications for research and practice related to Chinese immigrants’ marriage and family in the United States are discussed.     

The Effects of Marital Culture and Social Structure on Marital Aspirations and Attitudes in “Fragile Families”

This research brings together insights from the fields of sociology and social work, providing an integrated study of marriage as a cultural and structural institution. The goals of the study are twofold: first, to empirically assess the predictive power of cultural versus structural elements of marital aspirations and attitudes among “fragile families”; second, to determine if the aforementioned relationship and outcomes differ by immigrant status. The results offer more support for the role of structure than the function of culture, suggesting that rather than demonizing disadvantaged families for having “defective” cultural values, policy planners and human service providers should recognize the importance of educational attainment and economic productivity in fragile families. Even populations most disposed to hold more “traditional” views of marriage and family life are constrained by the realities of structural disadvantage.     

Three critical questions for future research on lesbian relationships

ABSTRACT

In this article I discuss three questions that should be priorities for future research on lesbian love and relationships. The first question concerns the very definition of “lesbian relationship,” given how many women may be engaged in same-sex relationships without identifying as lesbian. The second question concerns the potential influence of childhood neglect and abuse on adult women's same-sex relationships, a topic that has important implications for both psychological well-being and relationship functioning. The third question concerns the potential downsides of legal marriage for women's same-sex relationships, a topic that is particularly important in light of the newfound legal recognition of same-sex marriage in all 50 states. Although there are many understudied questions in the domain of women's same-sex relationships, research on these three questions has particularly strong potential to advance our understanding of lesbian love and relationships in important ways.     

In guten wie in schlechten Tagen?

In this contribution the model of frame-selection as an approach to integrate “normative” and “rational” action is being used for the explanation of divorce, operationalized and empirically tested with data of the Mannheim Divorce Study. Not only the evident effect of the “framing” of marriage at the beginning on the subsequent stability of marriage is shown, even after introducing control variables, but also a non-trivial interaction that is predicted by the model and that can be regarded as a “hard” test of it, namely the interaction of the framing of marriage with the belonging to a certain marriage cohort. At the same time this contribution is also discussing possibilities and advantages of a “general” theory of action for the social sciences in general.     

Discourses on Non-conforming Marriages: Love in Taiwan

In contemporary Taiwan, arranged marriage seems a remote legend. However, the mainstream ideology of romantic love and marriage is a recent phenomenon that started only half a century ago. The debate on love and marriage that took place a hundred years ago has been reopened in current Taiwanese society on transnational marriage and same-sex marriage debates, which are regarded as non-conforming marriages in a specific historical period. We argue that the hegemonic ideology of romantic love has produced a powerful exclusionary effect on cross-border marriages based on ethnic and class discrimination, but also an inclusive effect on same-sex marriage in present Taiwan society, which underscores the power of the discourse of love in modern Taiwanese social life. The love discourse can be progressive in a specific historical conjuncture, but it can also be regressive by excluding other forms of intimacy.     

Australian Association of Almoners — (Victorian Branch)

Review of Literature on Adjustment Process Marriage is seen as “a phenomenon of the life cycle extending over a period of many years, during which time it has several aspects, several stages, requires several kinds of adjustments and behaviors of its participants”.¹ The emphasis is on marriage as a personal relationship which requires particular skills in order to fulfil particular functions, both personal and social. There are several areas of potential adjustment, role expectations and performance, sex, finances, social activities, relatives, religion, and mutual friends. Values, shared goals, gratification of emotional needs, and creative growth and development of individuals, both as individuals and as members of a family, are vital factors in influencing the success and adjustment of any marriage.     

Perceptions of Cousin Marriage Among Young Bedouin Adults in Israel

Abstract

Attitudes of young Bedouin adults (26 men and 23 women) in Israel towards cousin marriage, a traditional marriage pattern in the Bedouin society, were investigated. A Bedouin clan (population 3,400) with a high rate of cousin marriage and consanguinity was targeted for this study. Thirty-seven percent of the respondents expressed unconditional positive attitudes towards cousin marriage, while 22% said that this form of mate selection is inevitable because of the parents. These views represented the persistence of this tradition in Bedouin culture. However, there was also support for change and modernization, reflected in a negative view of parental intervention (8%, all men) as well as in a new predilection for romantic love (22%). A majority (65%) of the respondents held the view that cousin marriage is associated with genetic diseases. However, the biomedical discourse of genetic risk did not change the traditional Bedouin method of mate selection and was rather incorporated into the traditional discourse through a system referred to as “healthy consanguinity” (namely the option of premarital carrier matching). The paper concludes by considering the persistence of consanguinity from educational, political and cultural perspectives.     

Motivations for Extradyadic Infidelity Revisited

Relationship infidelities are motivated by many distinct factors, with previous research indicating motivations of dissatisfaction, neglect, anger, and sexual desire (Barta & Kiene, 2005). We expand on this by demonstrating additional, empirically distinct motivations for infidelity. Using an Internet-based questionnaire, participants (N = 495), most of whom were young adults, self-reported their infidelities. In addition to evidence for previously studied motivations, our data demonstrate additional factors, including lack of love (“I had ‘fallen out of love with’ my primary partner”), low commitment (“I was not very committed to my primary partner”), esteem (“I wanted to enhance my popularity”), gaining sexual variety (“I wanted a greater variety of sexual partners”), and situational factors (“I was drunk and not thinking clearly”). Our results also show personality correlates with infidelity motivations. Consistent with predictions, attachment insecurity was associated with motivations of anger, lack of love, neglect, low commitment, and esteem, while unrestricted sociosexual orientation was associated with sexual variety. Implicit beliefs (e.g., growth, destiny, romanticism) were differentially associated with sexual desire, low commitment, lack of love, and neglect. These findings highlight multifaceted motivations underlying infidelity, moving beyond relationship deficit models of infidelity, with implications for research and psychotherapy involving people’s romantic and sexual relationships.     

Superstition effects versus cohort effects: is it bad luck to be born in the year of the fire horse in Japan?

The year of the fire horse (called “Hinoeuma” in Japanese) is one of the sixty Chinese zodiac symbols used to count years. According to superstition, fire horse women are said to have troubled marriages, to mistreat men, and to cause early deaths for their husbands and fathers. No such stigma applies to men born in these years. This paper attempts to investigate the impact of women’s birth in the most recent fire horse year (1966) on the outcome of their lives by using individual-level microdata. We find that there is no evidence of disadvantages to fire horse women in human capital investment, performance in the marriage market, or intra-household allocation of resources after marriage. We provide two plausible explanations for this lack of impact from the stigma: a cohort size effect and a dynamic transition in the share of arranged and love marriages. The latter affected parents’ decisions in 1966 as well as the performance of fire horse women in the marriage market and in intra-household resource allocation after marriage. This finding suggests the importance of careful attention to the dynamic effects of society and the economy that may occur before the emergence of a cohort size effect.     

A special kind of married man: notions of marriage and married men in the Swedish gay press, 1954–1986

There has long been ambivalence in the LGBT movement and related research as to the meaning of gay identity in relation to marriage. The article explores changing homonormative discourses of marriage and married men within the Swedish gay press from the mid 1950s to the mid 1980s. Expressions of the changes are a shift in language and in views of extramarital relationships, openness, and gay male identity. As a result of the shift, “married men,” including both “married homosexuals” and “bisexuals,” came to be distinguished from “gays.”     

In Search of Resiliency in Families

Abstract

This study explores the process of relationship development in marriages that foster personal and relationship growth. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with twelve individuals/six couples in marriages that promote individual and relationship growth. Grounded theory methodology was employed and “Empowering Connections” emerged as the core theme. Empowering connections are characterised by a process of growth captured by the following categories: “Connecting Emotionally,” “Loving Respectfully,” “Expanding One's Self,” and “Experiencing Empowering Connections.” The results of the study contribute to the understanding of marriage and provide insight to premarital couples, people who want to improve their marriage, and to therapists working with couples.     

The Lovers of Venice: Musset’s Works and Life in Kuzmin’s A New Rolla

The title of Mikhail Kuzmin’s Novyi Rolla [A New Rolla] has been considered cryptic despite its evident allusion to Alfred de Musset’s “Rolla,” a poem with which it shares little. In this article I argue that the link to Musset is clear if we read A New Rolla as responding not just to “Rolla,” but also to Musset’s novel La Confession d’un enfant du siècle [The Confession of a Child of the Age] and his biography. From this composite source Kuzmin takes up the themes of a debauchee finding love, love as serial yet serious, and a love triangle in Venice, as well as an apostrophe to the kiss. Kuzmin endorses most of Musset’s idea of love, but rejects the egalitarian ideal implicit in the sympathetic treatment of the prostitute Marion in “Rolla.” A secondary allusion to Nikolai Nekrasov’s “Kogda iz mraka zabluzhden’ia” [When, out of the darkness of error] reinforces Kuzmin’s rejection of the egalitarian ideal of sexual love. The allusions to Musset and Nekrasov amount to anachronisms that partially undermine the precise temporal setting of A New Rolla. Kuzmin’s work thereby occupies an intermediate position among his period pieces, as it is neither openly playful like Venetsianskie bezumtsy [Venetian Madcaps] nor constructed with its seams hidden like the Aleksandriiskie pesni [Alexandrian Songs].     

Synergists and Qualities Salient to Low-Income Parents' Positive Assessment of Marital Health

Researchers sought low-income couples who considered their marriages to be “good or very good” to inform the process of how individuals and their partners establish and maintain a healthy marriage under significant financial limitations. Twenty married parents participated in semistructured interviews that sought their insights into backgrounds and antecedents that impacted their own and their partners' development and current positive marital assessment. Analysis using grounded theory methods generated a model that posits synergists enhancing the development of qualities that contributed to spouses' positive assessments. The four synergists were sensitizing experiences, a partner-as-rescuer mind-set, acute parental influences, and religious influences. The four requisite high-priority qualities associated with these synergists were love, commitment, appreciation, and child-centeredness.     

“Living Together” as a Developmental Phase: A Holistic View*

“Living together” is examined not simply as a new cultural variant or trial marriage but as the effort of some young adults, particularly on campus, to deal with several fundamental aspects of moving from childhood to adulthood, or an additional “rite de passage.” It seems that increasingly many young people are trying to deal with the tasks and marked discontinuity in our culture between childhood and adulthood by this new open arrangement. To evaluate and respond appropriately to this transitional solution, the adult community-college authorities, parents, counselors, and others-might find it helpful to view holistically the many developmental tasks which must be dealt with simultaneously during this process. So viewed, “living together” can be seen as a creative solution for some rather than as “moral disintegration.”     

青年婚恋观现状透析

当前,“80后”正值婚恋高峰期。在改革开放和多元时代下成长起来的“80后”在恋爱观、择偶观、性观念和婚姻观上有着自己独特鲜明的看法。他们直白朴素的恋爱观、多元务实的择偶观、热情与保守相交织的性观念以及“个人主义”的婚姻观,不仅直接影响着个体对未来婚姻、家庭的责任和义务的承担,而且还间接影响着整个社会的主流婚恋价值观趋势。对“80后”婚恋观现状及其原因的探讨,有利于“80后”树立起正确的婚恋观,实现婚姻家庭幸福;有利于社会稳定及和谐社会的构建：更有利于实现中华民族的伟大复兴。     

Conflict and Compatibility? Developmental Idealism and Gendered Differences in Marital Choice

Developmental idealism (DI) theory suggests that individuals who endorse DI schemas about marriage are more likely to choose their own spouses and do so for love. Such DI schemas conflict with South Asian gender schemas about marriage for women, but not for men. In turn, such conflict and compatibility may create gender differences in incorporating DI into expectations and experiences of marital choice and love in South Asia. Connections between endorsing DI as an abstract model of the world and using DI as a concrete guide for marriage may also differ by gender. Using survey data from Nepal, the author finds that men are more likely than women to expect to choose their own spouse and do so for love. Their parents' expectations show the same gender differences. Men are also more likely to choose their own spouses in practice. Connections between abstract and concrete DI are not stronger among men though.     

“I Try Not to Depend on Anyone but Me”: Welfare‐Reliant Women's Perspectives on Self‐Sufficiency,Work, and Marriage*

Welfare reformers sought to reduce “dependency,” or reliance on state‐supported cash benefits and deployed a discourse of “self‐sufficiency” to promote the legitimacy of efforts to remove welfare recipients from publicly funded cash assistance through either wage labor or marriage. We use longitudinal, qualitative interview data collected from 38 initially welfare‐reliant women to examine what self‐sufficiency means to them and their perspectives on how work and marriage affect their ability to be self‐sufficient. Grounded theory analysis revealed that for these women, self‐sufficiency means formal independence from both the state (i.e., Temporary Assistance to Needy Families [TANF]) and men (i.e., marriage). Although they value marriage as an institution and would ideally marry, they do not consider marriage to be a likely route to self‐sufficiency given the pool of men available to them. Rather, they embrace their own market‐based wage labor as the means by which they can attain some measure of independence. Taking our lead from the women in this study, we challenge the emphasis on marriage in current welfare policy. We argue that employment training that results in better jobs for women and men and work supports that make low‐wage work pay are clearly the appropriate direction for policy aimed at the welfare‐reliant and working poor.     

Tensions of Marriage: Love, Cooperation, Capitulation, Annihilation

This paper addresses the inevitable conflicts endemic to couple relationships. These conflicts are a manifestation of the mutual subjugation experienced by all couples engaged in an ongoing intimate relationship. The author describes this universal dimension of the life of a couple, applying what Ogden (1994a) calls “the subjugating intersubjective third”—a third subject co-created through mutual projective identification, binding them together as a couple. The unconscious and conscious relationship between each partner and “the third” generates a spectrum of primitive emotions from bliss to entrapment. Consequently, an identical situation in a relationship can evoke feelings of love and cooperation or capitulation and annihilation in one or both partners, depending on what is occurring in “the third,” of which the members are both creators and captives. A clinical case illustrates this dynamic.