Communal Strength: Sacrifice In Relationships

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There might be love, there might be commitment, and there might even be a solid friendship but that doesn’t necessarily guarantee that there will be desire in a long-term romantic relationship. Although love and desire are two separate entities that may conflict sometimes, they really do coincide in a relationship. Love is defined, as an intense feeling of deep affection while desire, on the other hand is defined as a strong wish or want for something. An essential component of maintaining desire in a romantic relationship is communal strength. Communal strength is defined, as an individual’s motivation to meet their partners needs. Experimental, observational, qualitative, and quantitative studies using this measure of communal strength have …show more content…

Kogan et al., (2010) demonstrates the benefits of sacrifice for people who are highly motivated to respond to a specific romantic partners needs through quantitative and qualitative studies. Sacrifices are greatly involved in communal strength and it has been shown that the more willing people are to make sacrifices, the more likely they are to maintain the desire in their relationships and stay with their partner over time (Kogan et al., 2010). It was predicted that individuals who were more motivated to respond to their romantic partners needs in a communal manner enjoyed more emotional and relational benefits. This study selected sixty-nine romantic couples. The participants ranged in age eighteen to sixty years and had been dating for six months to thirty years; forty-eight percent of the couples were cohabitating. Participants were recruited through the use of both paper flyers and online flyers in the San Francisco Bay Area. The sixty-nine couples were to complete an initial survey that recorded their daily experiences and after agreeing to continue to take part in the study, the participants were emailed an additional initial online survey that was to be completed before the couple arrived at the lab for training. The lab training was implemented to describe an overview of how they would be asked to complete a ten-minute online survey for fourteen consecutive nights. Results showed that the higher individuals were in communal strength toward their romantic partner, the more they experienced positive emotions during the daily sacrifices, felt appreciated for their efforts, and reported high relationship satisfaction on days when they made sacrifices (Kogan et al., 2010). The results confirmed that daily sacrifices in a communal relationship lead to a heightened sense of desire and

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