Transcript Forming Intimate Relationships

Forming Intimate
Relationships
intimate relationships are and have been the
base of many movies, sit coms, tv shows etc
Think even of Romeo and Juliet
According to the Functionalists
• North Americans have a diversity of roles
that they can play - ‘choices’ about
marriage, non-marriage etc
• individuals must decide who to marry,
whether to marry or not, and even what
their marriage will be like
• the bottom line is that people worry about
whether or not they will be able to form a
satisfying relationship that will last a lifetime,
without having to give up who they are and who
they want to be
Types of Marriage
Today there are many different ‘kinds of
marriage:
polygamy - marriage between 1 man and 2 or
more women
polyandry - marriage between 1 woman and
2 or more men
• Serial monogamy - the trend in Western society
for men or women to have a series of spouses
one after the other
What effect do you think that immigration and the
exposure to ‘other’ ideas has had on the North
American traditional idea of marriage?
Key questions for this chapter
• What is the nature of sexual attraction, mate
selection, and romantic love?
• What is the relationship between attraction
and marriage roles?
• How do couples negotiate satisfying roles in
their relationships?
• What are the factors that are determined to
forming enduring relationships?
• How do couples manage conflict in their
relationships?
Attraction, Mate Selection and
Romance
• Do most Canadians have the ‘idea’ or
assumption that intimate relationships are based
on romantic love and sexual attraction between
2 people?
• Many marriages are based on free-choice mate
selection, meaning that individuals make
personal choices and let ‘nature’ take its course –
meet someone you are attracted to, you fall in
love and then decide to get married
Romantic love
• Marriage probably had its root in the biological
need to reproduce
• Anthropologists and sociologists are still
deciding whether or not romantic love is a new
concept or whether love has a basis in human
biology
• Marriage has become the basic social and
economic unit in human societies
Romantic Love – a Hindrance?
• In many societies today, romantic love has been
considered a hindrance to marital stability
• Why do you think that is, and, do you agree?
• Marilyn Yalom, of Stanford University suggests
that if a man and woman who lived and worked
together would eventually grow to love each
other, regardless of how their marriage came
about
Theories of Mate Selection
• Read the text book from pages 192 – 196
• Fill out the chart