Romantic love and sexual desire in close relationships.

Abstract

Drawing on recent claims in the study of relationships, attachment, and emotion, the authors hypothesized that romantic love serves a commitment-related function and sexual desire a reproduction-related function. Consistent with these claims, in Study 1, brief experiences of romantic love and sexual desire observed in a 3-min interaction between romantic partners were related to distinct feeling states, distinct nonverbal displays, and commitment- and reproductive-related relationship outcomes, respectively. In Study 2, the nonverbal display of romantic love was related to the release of oxytocin. Discussion focuses on the place of romantic love and sexual desire in the literature on emotion.

Love, desire, and the suppression of thoughts of romantic alternatives☆

“…Our studies add to the growing list of work investigating function-specific effects of emotion (Buss, Larsen, Westen, & Semmelroth et al, 1992;Fessler, Pillsworth, & Flamson, 2004;Gonzaga et al, 2001;Gonzaga et al, 2006;Lerner & Keltner, 2001). We supported the hypothesis that love, but not sexual desire, is a commitment device, helping an individual suppress thoughts of an attractive other.…”

“…Past research has shown that romantic partners are sensitive to the behavioral cues of love from their partner (Gonzaga et al, 2001(Gonzaga et al, , 2006. The current work is the first to show a causal link between the experience of love and cognitive processes that bolster commitment to a partner within an individual's own mind.…”

“…Other work has shown that love coordinates a number of different physiological, motivational, and behavioral systems to maintain commitment to a romantic partner (Ellis & Malamuth, 2000;Gonzaga et al, 2001;Gonzaga et al, 2006). In a related vein, for men there is a strong link between short-term mating motives, sexual arousal, and over-perceiving sexual arousal in the faces of attractive women (Maner et al, 2005).…”

“…We used sexual desire as a comparison. Although romantic love and sexual desire often co-occur, researchers have hypothesized that sexual desire promotes sexual initiation rather than the maintenance of established bonds (Buss, 2003;Diamond, 2003;Fisher, Aron, Mashek, Li, & Brown, 2002;Gonzaga, Keltner, Londahl, & Smith, 2001;Gonzaga, Turner, Keltner, Campos, & Altemus, 2006).…”

Oxytocin receptor genetic variation relates to empathy and stress reactivity in humans

“…In humans, intranasal administration of oxytocin increases generosity (8), trust (9), eye gaze (10), and the ability to infer the affective mental states of others (11). Furthermore, assessments of plasma oxytocin in humans find that oxytocin levels relate to parentchild bonding behaviors (12), feelings of romantic love and trust (13), and empathy and subsequent generosity toward strangers (14).…”