A person who feels personally attacked or victimized by a partner’s criticism or contempt is likely to respond with defensiveness. This involves constructing a defense rather than attempting to discuss and resolve an issue. Defensiveness can take the form of self-protective responses, such as making excuses, denying responsibility, or replying with a criticism of one’s own. Thus the recipient of the contemptuous criticism described earlier might respond by saying, "You think I’m a boring lover? Take a long look at yourself. All you ever care about is your own pleasure, and you never give me a chance to say what I want!" In this situation one partner attacks and the other defends and counterattacks. Will a relationship that involves such tactics survive? Not likely.
Stonewalling
Stonewalling occurs when a person concludes that any response to a partner’s criticism or complaint will not be helpful or productive and therefore decides not to respond
at all. The stonewaller simply puts up a wall and refuses to communicate, responding instead with silence, by walking out of the room, by turning on the TV, by picking up a book, or the like. This silent-treatment tactic communicates disapproval, distancing, and the belief that nothing one can do will improve the situation, so one might as well say nothing. A person who stonewalls a partner may have found that previous efforts to defuse the partner’s critical attacks have been ineffective and that it is therefore no longer productive to engage in seemingly futile dialogue.
Belligerence
The fifth destructive communication tactic involves a confrontational, "in your face" type of interaction that is likely to emerge as a relationship suffers from prolonged patterns of poor communication. Belligerence often entails a purposely provoking style of interaction intended to diminish or challenge a partner’s right to influence patterns of interaction in the relationship. For example, a belligerent person might say to his or her partner, "So what if I always want to be on top when we have intercourse. What are you going to do about it?"
Clearly, all five of these destructive tactics erode and interfere with rather than improve a couple’s communication. Such styles of communication are likely to increase conflict and negativity, diminish positive exchanges between partners, and cause an escalation of hostility rather than solve problems. People in a relationship characterized by these negative, harmful exchanges may eventually decide that they would be better off ending the relationship—a conclusion supported by Gottman’s research finding that long-term relationship survival rates are low for such couples.
We can conclude from the research on couple communication that partners who have satisfying, long-lasting relationships communicate in ways that differ markedly from those used by partners who have unhappy, often short-lived relationships. Positive communication strategies are not limited to those discussed in this section. Many of the strategies outlined in this chapter, when incorporated into a couple’s communication about sex and other relationship issues, are predictive of satisfying and enduring partnerships.
Summary
What Is Love?
■ Zick Rubin developed a 13-item questionnaire for measuring love.
Types of Love
■ Passionate love is characterized by intense, vibrant feelings that tend to be relatively short-lived.
■ Companionate love is characterized by deep affection and attachment.
■ Robert Sternberg’s triangular theory maintains that love has three components: passion (the motivational component), intimacy (the emotional component), and commitment (the cognitive component). Various combinations of these three components yield eight different kinds of love.
■ John Allan Lee proposed a theory that describes six different styles of loving: romantic, game playing, possessive, companionate, altruistic, and pragmatic.
Falling in Love: Why and With Whom?
■ Falling in love has been explained as resulting from the need to overcome a sense of aloneness, the desire to justify sexual involvement, or sexual attraction.
■ The intense feelings of being passionately in love might have a basis in surging levels of the brain chemicals norepinephrine, dopamine, and especially phenylethylamine (PEA). The progression from passion to deep attraction might result from the gradual increase of endorphins in the brain.
CHAPTER 7
■ Factors known to contribute strongly to interpersonal attraction and falling in love include proximity, similarity, reciprocity, and physical attractiveness. We often develop loving relationships with people whom we see frequently, who share similar beliefs, who seem to like us, and whom we perceive as physically attractive.