love actually

• What is intimacy? 

  • Knowledge 
  • Interdependence 
  • Caring 
  • Trust 
  • Responsiveness 
  • Mutuality 
  • Commitment
• Types of love in Ancient Greece:

  • Eros: sexual passion and desire, named after the Greek god of fertility
  • Philia: friendship, values more than eros, deep friendship between brothers in arms who fought together, showing loyalty, sacrifice, and sharing emotions
  • Storge: natural and instinctual, familial love between parents and child, pets and owners, unilateral and asymmetrical, borne out of fondness and dependency
  • Ludus: playful love, affection between children or young lovers, expressed through activities like sitting at bars, dancing, and socializing
  • Agape: universal and selfless love, the most radical form extended to all people regardless of their relationship to you
  • Pragma: mature love, deep understanding in long-term relationships, focused on compromise, patience, and tolerance
  • Philautia: self-love, with two types - unhealthy variety associated with narcissism, and a healthier version that enhances your capacity to love and self-esteem
• • In order to overcome narcissism one must develop
  • Reason (faculty to think objectively)  
  • Humility (emotional attitude behind reason)
  • Objectivity (faculty to see people and things as they are)
  • Rational faith (belief rooted in experience of thought and feeling)
  • Courage (ability to take a risk)
• Evolution by natural selection: Those individual organisms with heritable traits better suited to the environment will survive
• Survival of the fittest: Fitness is reproductive success - passing on genes, babies
• Sexual selection: Natural selection acting on mate finding and reproductive behavior
• Kin selection: Natural selection in favor of behavior by individual that may decrease their chance of survival but increase that of their kin
• The Red Queen Hypothesis: sexual selection gives us genetic variety 

  • Gives us variety
  • Better chance of survival - less susceptible to viruses, germs, threats
• Evolutionary psychology: study of behaviors through the lens of evolutionary biology.
• What is the standard narrative of human sexual evolution:

  • Women are choosy about who they reproduce with 
  • Males and females assure the values of mates from perspectives based upon differing reproductive agendas/capacities
• Sociocultural theories: 

  • View that biology may play some role in different mating strategies between sexes but social structure plays a larger role 
  • As the social structure changes behavior should change
• critiques of sociocultural theories: is this mind body dualism?
• Factors contributing to attraction:

  • Affective influences: good mood vs. bad mood affects our first impressions
  • Propinquity effect: being near someone, like at school, gym, work, or classes, increases attraction
  • Similarity: assortative mating, where people match with partners similar to them in dimensions like career, profession, and religion
  • Social comparison theory: we constantly compare ourselves to others to obtain accurate evaluations, biased to view ourselves positively
  • Scarcity: the fewer options available, the more attractive those options become
  • Physiological arousal: our nervous system's activation can lead us to attribute feelings to the person near us
  • Neurochemical factors: hormones, pheromones, etc
  • Physical attractiveness: more significant for heterosexual males, looking for markers of reproductive success
• We assume beautiful people have good personalities but also are more promiscuous
• Certain standards for beauty seem relatively stable across cultures
• Reciprocity: desirability is dependent on their attractiveness and the probability of accepting you
• We like people who resemble us - Couples tend to match in demographic backgrounds
• What do people want (generally)

  • Warmth and loyalty 
  • Attractiveness and vitality 
  • Statius and resources
• Slight difference between men and women and how important attractiveness and resources are 

  • Warmth and loyalty are important for both 
  • Men put attractiveness first, women put resources first.
• Attraction processes among the LGTBQ people 

  • Physical attraction is as important to heterosexual people 
  • Similarity - may not be as important (more interracial/interethnic relationships) 
  • May be a smaller dating pool 
  • Propinquity may play less of a roll
• Monogamy: the condition rule or custom of being married to only one person at one time
• Consensual non monogamy: 

  • Open relationships
  • Swinging 
  • Polygamy: actual marriage
  • Polyamory: multiple simultaneous sexual relationships
• Cultural norms: guidelines for behavior
• Anthropology: social science that studies the development of human species, societies, cultures and their development
• Historical Perspectives: 

  • Societies attitudes towards love have profoundly shifted over time
• Kama Sutra: indian test meant to serve as a guide to sexuality eroticism and emotional fulfillment
• Romance/romantic love

  • Equality between sexes, similarities and complementaries 
  • Shift away from god is love 
  • Romanticism evolved to love is god 
  • Romantic love developed the concept of sexual love as an ideal 
  • Sexual desire and affection
• Caritas synthesis: 

  • Blend of heavenly eros and agape 
  • Charity or lovingkindness 
  • Reflects the relationship between humans and god 
  • Emphasis on love between humans and god 
  • Human love was deemphasizes; subordinated to the love of god 
  • Intense live of a mate distracts for love from god
• Courtly Love, known as "Amour Courtois" in French theory, is a constellation of attitudes and patterns of behavior characterized by a body of literature
• In Courtly Love, the Caritas synthesis was transformed and reduced to the human level, as people had needs not satisfied by the church
• Sexual love between men and women was ideal in Courtly Love, seen as ennobling for both genders
• Elaborate rules governed Courtly Love, with only nobles having the time to engage in such pursuits
• Love in Courtly Love had ethical and aesthetic rules, intertwined in courtship rituals that did not necessarily result in marriage
• During the time of Courtly Love, the norm was that one could not truly love their marriage partner
• Courtly Love involved intense passionate relationships that established a holy unity between men and women
• Arranged marriage

  Forced: individuals are not consulted, and have no say before marriage 

  Consensual: individuals are consulted, can refuse, and meet before
•  Lowest divorce rates in the world are noted to be areas with the highest rate of arranged marriages
• criticism of arranged marriages:

  • Stats include child marriages (consent, exploitation)
  • Differences in satisfaction, tied to social class
  • In some countries divorce is not a viable option
• Sigheh in Iran 

  • Temporary marriage 
  • Sex outside of marriage is a crime 
  • Contract for finite period of time - minutes to 99+ years 
  • Sexual escape valve
• Loving v. Virginia

  • 1948 two residents of virginia (one black and one white ) where marriage in the district of columbia 
  • Charged with anti miscegenation which banned interracial marriage - found guilty 
  • Went all the way to the supreme court 
  • Did this violate the equal protection law and 14th amendment? Yes> 
  • Virginia law and court found it violated 14th amendment and had no real purpose except racial discrimination although the court argued that the statute was legitimate because it applied equally to both blacks and whites.