Category Archives: modern love studies

modern studies of love, cultures across the world

Mobility of Intimate Relationships in Online Dating Apps

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Online dating applications facilitate interpersonal connections between individuals, enabling them to pursue various motivations, such as seeking sexual encounters, romantic relationships, emotional intimacy, or other forms of interpersonal connections.

Many women and men feel ambiguity regarding the opportunities associated with online dating apps. They frequently do not know exactly what they hope to gain from using a dating app. They might anticipate a connection that develops into a committed monogamous relationship, but these relationships can change over time and are flexible. Users can meet for sex, become friends, or friends with benefits, and possibly form a couple before deciding to become friends again without engaging in sexual activity with one another.

Andrea Newerla, a researcher from Paris Lodron University Salzburg in Salzburg, Austria, and Jenny van Hooff, a researcher from Manchester Metropolitan University, United Kingdom, analyzed the dating app user experience in Germany and the United Kingdom.

They conducted an in-depth analysis of interviews with online app users in the United Kingdom (van Hooff, 2020) and Germany (Newerla, 2021), and their findings were quite intriguing. Researchers performed a thematic analysis on the data collected from both cultural samples.

In a previous article, I described the summary of their research findings about the ambiguities and opportunities men and women experience using dating apps.

In this article, we’ll look into the users’ perceptions of the mobility of intimate relationships.

Experiences of Mobility in Intimate Relationships

For many users, dating practices are marked by ambivalence as the potentialities and possibilities afforded by dating apps emerge as spaces for new forms of intimacy. Normativities are challenged, and spaces are opened up for forms of love and desire that cannot be subsumed under the ideal of the romantic or partnership model in their pursuit and realization of these potentials.

Friendships formed through dating apps, as previously stated, are an important experience for some of our participants. And the descriptions clearly show that these relationships, which were initially defined by sexual attraction, are malleable and can evolve into new forms of intimacy.

Matteo, a 34-year-old man, for example, began using dating apps in 2015. His main goal was to find a romantic partner:

‘I was not as sex-positive as I am now, and society was not at the point we are now. So the main goal was to find a partner’.

Matteo found himself in new cities more frequently as a result of geographical changes, and apps assisted him in meeting new people. He was open to casual sex at this point, but not to the possibility of a romantic relationship if the person was ‘right for him’. As he describes in his relationship with Beate, he developed a variety of ways to be intimate with people in Berlin, blurring the boundaries of friendship and couplehood:

‘It was only sexual, but there was a connection with Beate. She was a person that I was liking. When we started to play [sexually], I realized that I really enjoy this, the motion of playfulness and connection when it’s in consent. It’s clear what we are there for. (…) and from this moment on me and Beate started to have a sex relationship which also developed something more complex. I also developed feelings for Beate that were not immediately mutual (…) Beate was not interested in a relationship that was more romantic, but I was. But we found a common ground and we have been experimental quite a lot.’

(Matteo, M 34, German study).

Beate eventually fell in love with someone else, and Matteo became friends with her. ‘We are still in a good connection,’ Matteo says of this development. It was unclear at the time of the interview whether Beate’s new relationship is open to additional sex partners. Matteo describes the possibility of him and Beate sharing this level of sexual intimacy again. However, Matteo says in the interview that it could remain a platonic friendship without sexual physicality. It’s clear that he sees this intimate relationship as a process, that he’s open to its evolution because he likes Beate and wants to see how their relationship develops in the future.

Here Is How Rob Describes his Relationships on Dating Apps

Rob, who has used dating apps on and off since Tinder debuted in 2012, explained how the connections made on apps evolve and develop based on the circumstances:

‘Being on Tinder you can have a few girls that you’re messaging or seeing or whatever, and it’s actually good because you know you’re not going to get married, because you live in different cities, or you’re too different, but you still have this connection, when you’re bored you can chat, or sext, and there’s no expectation. I don’t know how you’d define it, but I’ve had a few of those kind of relationships, and they’re good because you’re both on the same page’.

(Rob, M 34, UK study).

Rob describes a liminal relationship that maintains an emotional and sexual connection but will not develop into a committed couple relationship. These relationships defy traditional heteronormative conventions, but they are meaningful to participants and are not time-limited. While these types of relationships are often portrayed negatively in popular culture as ‘breadcrumbing’ (sporadic contact with no follow-through), for Rob, they are meaningful ties that do not fit into normative understandings of relationships.

Here Is How Mona Experiences her Relationships on Dating Apps

Mona can easily organize various dates based on her immediate needs thanks to the variety of relationship forms available on dating apps. This is sometimes casual sex, but she prefers it when a relationship develops. Some dates have become friendships. There was no sexual contact in these cases, but they enjoyed each other’s company. However, these friendships are also physical: one friend, for example, comes over on a regular basis to cuddle and watch Netflix. She does not prioritize romantic relationships and emphasizes the importance of friendships throughout the interview:

‘It doesn’t have to be the romantic partner you wake up next to, it has to be a person you just get along with. (…) This realisation that I don’t have to expect a partner to fulfil all my needs, but that friendships are also a relationship that also fulfils needs like a romantic relationship, that was then for me like: bam. I communicate much more openly about this with my friends and also with the partners I am currently seeing.’

(Mona, F 33, German study)

Mona was dating four people at the time, all of whom she met through dating apps. Here, the apps have assisted her in finding people who think and live similarly to her, as they are all interested in multiple relationships, identify as polyamorous, and have openly communicated their relationship status through the apps. Their experiences have allowed them to communicate more openly about their own needs.

Here Is How Alex Explains her Relationships on Dating Apps

People came up with creative ways to use dating apps. Sexual relationships turned into friendships or, in Alex’s case, a professional network. Even though he hasn’t found the long-term relationship he was looking for through dating apps, his experiences show how relationships can change:

‘A long period on Tinder would be six plus dates, usually it doesn’t go anywhere. Usually relationships are sexual. I’d always chat to multiple people at once and occasionally see multiple partners at once. Most encounters have been enjoyable and interesting, some I’m still friends with, one is now our company solicitor, but most I don’t speak to.’

(Alex, M 29, UK study)

Alex is a marketer, and his professional and personal networks frequently cross and overlap. He describes it positively, saying that sexual encounters evolve as dates take on new roles in his life. The normative categorization of romantic and sexual relationships does not apply to Alex’s experience with dating apps, and the normative hierarchy of intimacy does not currently apply to his personal relationships. Alex also emphasizes the importance of transitioning into and out of different relationship forms as key moments of communication and connection in and of themselves.

Challenges to Being Open in Online Dating Apps

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Online dating apps assist people to connect with each other, and individuals pursue their own motivations, whether for sex, love, intimacy, or any other kind of interpersonal motivation.

Do people use dating apps for love or for sex? Many men and women experience the ambivalences and possibilities of being involved in dating with online apps. They often do not have a clear idea of what they expect from using a dating app. They might expect a connection leading to a committed monogamous relationship, but these processes are mobile and flexible over time. Users can meet for sex, become friends, then friends with benefits, possibly form a couple, and later they decide to be friends again who do not have sex with each other, and so on.

These processes of communication in online apps are not clearly dichotomous, either for love or for sex. Contemporary intimate relationships are mobile and flexible and cannot be simply categorized as for love or for sex.

Andrea Newerla, the researcher from Paris Lodron University Salzburg, Salzburg, Austria, and Jenny van Hooff, the researcher from Manchester Metropolitan University, Manchester, UK, completed an analysis of the users’ experience with dating apps in Germany and the UK.

They conducted an in-depth analysis of interviews they administered among online app users in the UK (van Hooff, 2020), and Germany (Newerla, 2021), which showed quite interesting findings. Researchers did a thematic analysis of their data in both cultural samples.

Ambiguities and Opportunities in Dating App Practices

 Researchers revealed that using dating apps presents participants with both ambiguities and opportunities, particularly in “being open.”

The study reveals a tension between participants’ romantic love ideas and the more fluid, undefined relationships found on dating apps. Alternative relationship practices, such as monogamous romantic models, have become available to users who initially didn’t consider them. Participants often struggle to articulate what they perceive as an important intimate encounter.

In interviews, ambiguities and mobility in intimate relationship development are not seen negatively. For example, 26-year-old Thorsten, who uses dating apps to meet women, describes dating as a process rather than a rigid one. He enters a polyamorous constellation with a woman, meeting other people and not limiting themselves. Despite feeling insecure, Thorsten sees potential in insecure experiences:

“I also find insecurity an exciting thing. I know so many people who are security people. […] I don’t want to be so obsessed with everything always being safe. I just find it much more interesting to live with such openness, to live with such contingency. Of course it’s not always nice, it can also be very difficult, but that’s precisely why I think it’s good to learn to endure it, to be able to live with it, to be able to deal with it. And not to let it limit or dominate you, but to recognise it, to articulate it, to be able to talk about it and to live with it.“

(Thorsten, M 26, German study)

As one can see, Thorsten enjoys mobile dating’s openness, allowing for experimentation, intimacy development, and personal growth, while others find it ambiguous and uncertain, offering opportunities for self-reflection.

Mark, after a relationship breakdown, has used dating apps for four years, navigating casual and committed relationships and highlighting the app’s potential for offline connections:

‘It opens up possibilities. So first of all I’m thinking if I want a long-term relationship with this person, and if not I think if there are other possibilities. but that’s not a bad thing I think, we live in a world that’s too po faced about sex. There’s something about Tinder that suggests that people are more open to whatever might happen. If you’re on Tinder you’re in a contract with each other, sex is a possibility, in a way that doesn’t happen outside of online dating. I’d never heard of polyamory before I went on Tinder, but now you can be open about seeing multiple people, rather than lying. That can only be a good thing.’

(Mark, M 32, UK study)

As we can see, Mark embraces the potential for diverse relationships through apps, including polyamory, as he adjusts his expectations to nonnormative forms, fostering positive connections.

Susanne, a 35-year-old polyamorous woman, shares her experiences of recognizing the romantic ideal and embracing multiple relationships, primarily using dating apps for sex but also expressing openness.

‘I think it’s always a question of how you use it yourself and I usually go in there with the feeling of ok I’m open for what’s coming now. There are phases where I say ok now I only want it for sex. And I always find this ’only’ difficult. So I used it for sex. (…) I always call them ’regular sex partners’, because I don’t find one night stands so desirable myself, but they happen and that’s okay. But I would tend to be more interested in meeting more often and building up something sexually. So I’m actually open to that, but I always waver back and forth. For example, when I don’t have the emotional capacity to get involved with someone. If I’m processing a break-up or something and honestly want to leave myself the space for it.’

(Susanne, F 34, German study)

Susanne’s intimacy practices are broader, fluid, and mobile, embracing openness and the uncertainty of relationships beyond sexual experience. She welcomes this openness and views it as an opportunity to engage in diverse forms of relationships.

Irfan uses dating apps to meet potential partners outside his circle, experiencing freedom and short-term relationships while being relieved of long-term commitment pressure. Success comes from short-term connections:

‘Successful encounters have been girls that I’ve continued to date for several months after meeting. Really nice, genuine people that I enjoy spending time with. Removing the expectations that you’re going to get married or stay together means you can actually enjoy being with them.’

(Irfan, M 28, UK study)

Dating apps have broadened relationships beyond normative coupling, valuing connection over external expectations and transforming the way relationships are valued.

Mona discusses the development of intimate relationships through mobile dating, particularly through dating apps, as highlighted by a 33-year-old woman in an interview:

‘I know a lot more of my friends here in Berlin through Tinder, and it never developed into something amorous, but more like: ‘hey, we get along really well, we text all the time, we want to meet up, that’s really cool, but there’s just nothing.’ (…) Really good friendships have developed on Tinder and also good conversations. (…) In general, I don’t have any expectations, except to somehow get to know someone who is somehow quite nice. Someone who seems nice, okay, just a good evening, whatever it turns out to be. Whether it turns into friendship, as it does with some people because they understand each other well, but there’s nothing interpersonal about it, or a one-night stand or something longer-term. That is absolutely open to me. (…) Everything can happen, nothing has to.’

(Mona, F 33, German study)

Mona, like other participants, does not view openness as threatening in mobile dating. She sees it as a way for relationships to develop, varying depending on the person and time. This mobility in relationships is discussed in the next section.

Modern Intimate Practices in Online Dating Apps

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According to previous research on online dating app practices, there are two groups of users. Some are seeking casual sex, while others are seeking a committed relationship, as an imposed normative framework suggests.

Intimate Relationships in Online-Mediated Cultures

Sociologists have long discussed the impact of technology on personal life in the context of online dating apps. Initially, they welcomed the internet’s emancipatory potential, predicting increased safety, control, and freedom. The internet’s romantic freedoms have made intimate relationships less traditional, thus weakening patriarchal sexual and gender orders.

However, some authors have negative and pessimistic views on the emergence of dating apps. They believe that such mobile services can damage intimate relationships.

Social networking and dating apps reclaimed the popularity of Christopher Lasch’s ‘ ideas of a culture of narcissism’ in the late 1970s. (Lasch, 1979) Increasing individualization and excessive consumerism have led to personal relationships crumbling due to emotional weight. It is asserted that technology has damaged interpersonal skills. The technologies prevent men and women from being fully present in relationships due to phone and internet-mediated distractions.

How Dating Apps Divide Love and Sex

The technological tools of dating apps allow us to organize intimate contacts by using rational procedures and question catalogs to calculate match probabilities. These tools have evolved from online dating to mobile dating, reducing physical and digital space. Many researchers focus on how people use dating apps and whether this challenges traditional commitment patterns.

According to some evidence, many users use online apps to engage in casual sex in addition to looking for a committed partnership. Mobile dating facilitates temporal, goal-oriented encounters for the easy establishment of relationships.

On the other hand, ‘real’ or authentic love seems possible only within romantic relationships, which some authors present as something to be preserved and protected. It is contrasted with casual sex as a commodified social form (Illouz, 2020) that accumulates capital in the form of multiple sexual partners.

Dating apps can help organize casual sex, avoiding long-term commitment. These sex-focused practices and relationships seem to be neoliberal, focusing on pleasure and satisfaction without real romance. These practices are aimless and fluid. They lack the goal of romantic relationships.

Casual sex, for many, is the choice of non-choice. Sexual partners relate to each other without pursuing a specific goal, such as initiating a romantic love relationship.

Some researchers suggest expanding traditional understandings of relationship formation and development to include the changes in interaction afforded by mobile dating.

A New Study on the Importance of Affectionate Touch in Romantic Love

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Touch is an important way people communicate love and intimacy in romantic relationships. Affectionate touch, such as hugging, stroking, and kissing, is common worldwide. Romantic partners across many cultures frequently use affectionate touch to express their love for a romantic partner, passion, desire, and intimate feelings.

The affection exchange theory explains how affectionate touch is beneficial for our romantic relationships and mental and physical health in various respects. It turns out that both giving and receiving affectionate messages through touching behavior boost our mood and reinforce our relational bonds. In the same way as other forms of affectionate communication, affectionate touch nurtures our mutual affection in a relationship.

What the New Study Explored

In their recent publication, Agnieszka Sorokowska and her authors reported two studies in which they examined the relationship between romantic love and affectionate touch behaviors. They administered a cross-cultural survey, collecting data from 7880 participants from 37 countries.

The two studies that the authors conducted revealed interesting results. Generally, this extensive cross-cultural research demonstrates the significance of nurturing love for affectionate touch behaviors and, conversely, the importance of affectionate touch for nurturing love. Although it may seem intuitive that love and affectionate touch are directly related, this new study is one of the few scientific studies that has convincingly demonstrated this association using empirical data.

These studies found that affectionate touch is consistently associated with love in a diverse range of cultures around the world. Partners with high levels of passionate and intimate dispositions more frequently use various kinds of affectionate touch in their romantic communication. However, the partners’ degree of commitment does not make them inclined to use more touching behavior. These differences in effects of these three components of love make sense since the first two are more emotional and physical, while the third is more rational but less physical.

Individual Differences in Affectionate Touch

The authors importantly noted that these statistical relationships substantially varied within cultures, in some cases higher than in others. I believe this means that despite the cross-cultural universality of affective touching in romantic relationships, individuals within those cultures may substantially differ typologically in their preferences for the use of affective touching in daily intimate encounters.

People’s attitudes toward touch are highly individual. And touch can be perceived as not necessarily pleasant, as in cases of social anxiety and touch avoidance. Some men or women may prefer avoiding touch or react negatively to touch, even in romantic relationships. However, even for those individuals who experience attachment avoidance and are less open to touch, more touch in a relationship can promote well-being. Individuals within any society may have different needs for affectionate touch behaviors. Some, for instance, may have a lower preference for interpersonal touch.

Cultural Factors Influencing Affectionate Touch

Collectivistic and individualistic cultural norms of proxemic behavior can have an effect on the frequency and cultural contexts in which men and women use their affective touch. Other cultural factors also play a role.

As the authors conclude, in more conservative and religious societies, cultural norms encourage more physically restrained expressions of affection. Therefore, people tend to use more formalized, less freely expressed, and less diversely expressed affectionate behaviors, even in private and intimate relationships.

What Authors Conclude

The authors of this study finally conclude that various kinds of touching are very common behaviors in romantic relationships. Partners in such relationships experience more need for touch from their romantic partner than they do from other people with whom they communicate and interact.

How Affectionate Touch Influences Our Romantic Relationships

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Men and women express their love for a partner in a relationship in a variety of verbal and nonverbal ways. Affectionate touch of various kinds is among the important nonverbal channels for lovers to express love in the intimate relationships. The previous article explained how affectionate touch in a relationship expresses our love for the loved one. Now we are talking about how interpersonal touch influences our romantic relationships.

What Affectionate Touch Tells Us About Love

Partners in romantic relationships often use touch to express their affection and intimacy. Touching various parts of the body, such as the abdomen and thighs, can evoke pleasurable feelings in both those who touch them and those who are touched.

A recent cross-cultural study found that touching behaviors like embraces, caresses, kisses, and hugs are universally present in various cultures around the world. Cultural differences, however, exist in how and when men and women affectionately touch each other. Even when lovers imagine a partner’s touch, they experience pleasurable and erogenous feelings.

Strangers can’t touch as much of your body as your romantic partner. Most people don’t mind when their partner touches their stomach and thighs, but they don’t like it when other people do. There are also more ways to show affection for a partner than in other social situations. A slow stroke is given to a romantic partner.

What Is Affection Exchange Theory?

Researchers employ the Affection Exchange Theory (AET) to understand the important effects and implications of affectionate touch in a relationship. The theory says that affectionate communication promotes the formation and maintenance of strong human pair bonds.

Expressions of affection are especially common in romantic couples. Such expressions affect the quality of a romantic relationship. Partners who are highly committed in a relationship often express various kinds of affection, including physical affection. Physical affection also positively affects relationships and partner satisfaction. However, partners with attachment insecurity less often use affectionate touch.

Most studies refer to affectionate communication as an array of behaviors and verbal displays of affection. For example, hugging was the only behavior explicitly related to touch among several affection communication domains which Horan and Booth-Butterfield’s study components examined.

How Touch Affects Our Relationships and Well-Being

In the study that specifically examined touch in romantic relationships, researchers found that the desire for touch is positively correlated with relationship quality. However, when partners experience attachment avoidance, they feel less desire for touch.

These promising results and the obvious value of touch in close interpersonal relationships encourage us to better understand the role of affectionate touch in romantic relationships.

Also, there appears to be a paucity of research on the psychological factors that influence the use of affectionate touch between partners. It is logical to assume, for instance, that loving partners would touch each other in their relationships. This would enhance communication and bring the benefits commonly associated with affectionate touch. In accordance with a study indicating that one’s own and one’s partner’s approach motives for touch predict greater daily relationship well-being, touch may also promote love between partners.

In an older study, Dainton, Stafford, and Canary found that physical affection (including touch behaviors) performed by a romantic partner and satisfaction with physical affection displays were positively associated with self-assessed love levels.

Thus, we see that our affectionate touch substantially influences our romantic relationships. How does our partner feel when we touch him or her? The previous article explained how affectionately touching the loved one lets him or her know about our love for them.

Surprisingly, however, little we know about the direct relationship between interpersonal touch and love, one of the most essential components of human romantic relationships, outside of this study.

In their recent study, Agnieszka Sorokowska and her colleagues investigated how affectionate touch influences romantic relationships across various cultures.

How You Feel You Are Loved

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How do you feel you are loved? Do you?

Professor Mengya Xia and her colleagues from the University of Alabama recently conducted an interesting exploratory study on the core elements of love across family, romantic, and friend relationships. This research revealed how people know they are loved.

Their studies have shown the benefits of love across diverse populations. Love and being loved are both valuable feelings. Love is a complex concept with various types and constructs that research studies in various interpersonal relationships.

What Studies Explored?

In this study, researchers used a grounded theory analysis of 468 individuals. They revealed that love is an interpersonal process involving positive responsiveness and authentic connection. All participants in the study shared three core elements across family, romantic, and friendship relationships. This integrated theoretical conceptualization of love as a shared feeling and asset offers insights for love conceptualization, assessment, study design, intervention, and therapy.

This study explores love literature by identifying central features and examining core elements in various relationship types using qualitative, data-driven approaches.

  • What are the core elements of love, as perceived by lay people?
  • Are the core elements of love shared across family, romantic, and friend relationships?
  • Whether the weights of each element are the same or different across three relationships?

This study analyzed open-ended responses on love in family, romantic, and friend relationships, revealing three core elements: positive responsiveness, authentic connection, and stability. This theory contributes to understanding love as a feeling and asset in interpersonal processes. The theory informs strengths-based research, and sets the foundation for developing an assessment tool. The varying frequencies of love elements across relationships suggest that love in different relationships may have different distributions of the same components.

Grounded Theory on Core Elements of Love

The study reveals that love is an accumulative interpersonal process. In such love relationships, people consistently perceive positive responsiveness from others. They experience authentic connection with them, resulting in a positive sense of oneness. This grounded theory aligns with Reis and Shaver’s interpersonal process model of intimacy, which emphasizes mutual validation and understanding. The core elements of love include positive responsiveness, authentic connection, and a sense of stability. Positive responsiveness describes positive ways of responding to others’ needs, while authentic connection describes the process of forming a pleasurable, desired, and heart-to-heart connection. Mutual affinity emphasizes the enjoyable and mutually desired experience of togetherness, while being in tune with one another focuses on approaching and merging with someone to form a heart-to-heart connection.

A sense of stability describes the feeling that the interaction between two parties is durable, stable, and reliable, as echoed in attachment theory, unconditional love, and the commitment component. The study highlights the importance of considering the temporal history of interpersonal relationships and the need to incorporate the timing and dynamic components of love into the study design.

Comparison of Love Across Family, Romantic, and Friendship Relationships

The study reveals that love is a general feeling experienced in various interpersonal contexts, with core elements of feeling loved being more similar across interpersonal contexts than distinct between relationship types. The specific actions that elicit the feeling of love may vary depending on the type of relationship, but the message they convey is generalizable across relationship contexts. The frequency of each element across relationship types corresponds to how people typically conceptualize love in the respective relationship. In family and romantic relationships, “positive responsiveness” is most frequently mentioned, while “demonstrating affection” is more often mentioned in romantic relationships. In friend relationships, “authentic connection” and “a sense of stability” are most often mentioned, with spiritual union being the key to love in friend relationships.

The higher weight of “a sense of stability” in friend relationships is consistent with companionate love and friendship literature, where trust is viewed as an important component. While many categories weigh differently across three relationships, some similarities provide insights into the key aspects of love as a feeling shared across relationships. Support, mutual affinity, and being in tune with one another are at the core of several conceptualizations of love, emphasizing the importance of providing support, having quality time together, and truly understanding someone’s feeling of love. Additionally, “enhancing sense of worth” was mentioned by 23–30% of individuals in different relationships and did not differ significantly by relationship type.

Reference

Xia, M., Chen, Y., & Dunne, S. (2023). What makes people feel loved? An exploratory study on core elements of love across family, romantic, and friend relationships. Family Process, 00, 1-15. https://doi.org/10.1111/famp.12873

No Time for Love and Compassion? Really?

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We used to talk about big love and true love, yet we frequently forget that situational, compassionate, and caring love is also love, something like “small love” or a small action of love. This kind of love seems to be omnipotent in our lives, but it isn’t. However, it seems that we have no time for love and compassion.

The compassionate and caring thoughts and actions of small love help the well-being of another person. This kind of small love puts the other person’s well-being first, even in small, everyday situations.

“Small love” even means occasional actions of care and help to our neighbor or another person we encounter in everyday situations. “Small love” also means not being a “bystander” when another person is in need.

There Is No Time for Anything, even for Compassion

With life moving faster than ever, we have a lack of time for many things, sometimes even for love.

Nowadays, a lack of time is one of the biggest problems for our interpersonal connections, friendship, and love. We often experience a “time famine” because we often have too much to do and not enough time to do it.

We can’t connect because we don’t have time or because we think we don’t have time.

We strive to prioritize time when deciding what to do—one task or another. We try to select the value of a job, personal life, and relationships. Another dilemma is whether to accomplish a task well or spend time helping others. Hunger, fatigue, and injury are some of the other factors that influence how compassionate we are willing to be, but time is the most valuable resource today.

This is a particularly difficult problem in medicine: healthcare clinics are so understaffed that employees believe they cannot adequately care for even one patient, let alone all of them.

Compassion for a Patient

Modern medical doctors often complain that they do not have the time to interact compassionately with patients. In one study, 56% said that they lack the time to treat patients with compassion.

It’s important to note that our subjective experience of a “time famine” rather than an objective scarcity of time often motivates this mentality. If you want to establish a fast connection, you need to overcome that perception.

Teaching Medical Doctors “Small Love”

Can we teach physicians how to show compassion even with a shortage of time? A study conducted at the Johns Hopkins University School of Hygiene and Public Health showed that it is possible.

Here is a script that cancer doctors can use to bookend their patient encounters.

“At the start of the appointment, the oncologists say, “I know this is a tough experience to go through and I want you to know that I am here with you. Some of the things that I say to you today may be difficult to understand, so I want you to feel comfortable stopping me if I say something that is confusing or doesn’t make sense. We are here together, and we will go through this together.”

Then, at the end of the appointment, the doctors said: “I know this is a tough time for you, and I want to emphasize again that we are in this together. I will be with you each step along the way.”

Patients whose doctors shared these words with them perceived their doctors as more friendly, compassionate, and caring. Perhaps more importantly, these patients have significantly lower anxiety levels than patients whose doctors did not say these words.

Does Compassion Matter?

The point of this study was not to show that kindness and compassion matter. It was to show how quickly you can show compassion and care for a patient. The average time it took to read the script was only forty seconds. However, each patient felt a lot less anxious after reading just 99 words.

Our Posture Shapes Interpersonal Feelings

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We are wondering how our body posture expresses and affects our feelings towards other people. Many studies show that our body language, facial expressions, and posture say more about how we feel than what we say (Karandashev, 2021).

Both what we say and how we act show how we feel about each other and how much we love them. What we show with our faces and bodies is just as important as what we say. Even if we say, “I love you,” our body language can say something different. Sometimes the way we stand says more about us than what we say. Studies show that our body language, facial expressions, and posture say more about how we feel than what we say.

What a New Study Revealed

Recent research by Patty Van Cappellen at Duke University suggests that others can read our emotions from our body language. It might come as a surprise, but our body posture also conveys our emotions in addition to the way our faces do.

Researchers found that open postures with the arms held high showed positive feelings like warmth and extraversion. When people stood with their arms outstretched, it was a sign of power and anger. This backs up the idea that people use body language to figure out how other people feel.

Our Posture Affects Our Feelings

These findings raise an intriguing question: Do postures only communicate our feelings, or can adopting a specific posture change how we feel?

Van Cappellen and her colleagues conducted another study to find out whether expansive and upward posture facilitates the experience of positive affect.

Participants in the study were asked to adopt one of three poses:

  • hands raised and head lifted;
  • hands folded in front, head looking down; or
  • arms at sides and looking straight ahead.

During the study, participants wore sensors to measure their nervous system and cardiac function. Researchers told them that the experiment was about the physiological and emotional reactions people had to music. They listened to emotionally ambiguous music (by Enya) while holding their pose for two minutes to ensure that they didn’t know that the researchers were interested in posture.

The participants were then asked to describe their feelings after listening to the music, and their feelings were compared to the physiological markers being monitored. The findings demonstrated that participants in a posture with raised arms and heads tilted upward had a more positive overall feeling than participants in other poses.

What the Study Found

“This study shows that assuming particular postures can create or construct an emotion experience. A typical joy posture elicits more positive emotions than other postures.”

as Van Cappellen said.

It’s unclear why this effect is happening. In any case, this research suggests that our body posture aids in expressing our emotions and may also aid us in experiencing certain emotions. This could have a significant effect. It is obviously useful to know how we and others feel in a given situation.

“Emotion expression is what enables social relationships, and we’re showing that you could potentially rewire yourself using different postures. It’s critical that we get more information about what these postures look like and what they express. Otherwise, we can get this wrong.”

as Van Cappellen concluded.

Religious Kindness Leads to More Giving

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Love is one of the most valuable human attitudes and emotions. It is present in all religious teaching across many religions.

Religious Teachings of Love

God encourages people to love and be kind to others. Here are, for example, some examples of Christian teachings on love:

“Love must be sincere. Hate what is evil; cling to what is good. Be devoted to one another in love. Honor one another above yourselves.”

Romans 12:9-10

Islam teaches people to love each other for the sake of Allah. Allah will ask on the Day of Judgment:

“Where are those who loved each other for the sake of My glory? Today, on a day when there is no shade but Mine, I shall shade them with My shade.”

Abu Hurairah, (Muslim)

Religious Kindness and Love for Others

Do religious people love only others who are of the same faith? Or can they be kind to others of any religion? Do their religious kindness and love cross religious borders?

According to the results of some studies, religious people can be prejudiced, and intergroup bias can decrease prosocial behavior and love for others of different religions.

A recent study, however, has shown that thinking about God encourages prosociality toward religious outgroups. This tendency spreads across cultures.

Researchers from the University of Illinois at Chicago investigated

  • whether members of specific religions engage in altruistic behavior that only benefits members of their religion, or
  • whether they are willing to treat members of other religions in the same manner.

It turns out that religious people, regardless of how they practice their faith, are more likely to be kind to others.

As Michael Pasek, an assistant professor of social psychology at the University of Illinois at Chicago, states:

“Religion is often thought to promote intergroup conflict and fuel hostility between people who hold different beliefs. Quite to the contrary — our findings suggest that belief in God, which is an important aspect of most world religions, may sometimes promote more positive intergroup relations.”

The leading author of the study, Michael Pasek, and his team have conducted field and online studies in which more than 4,700 people participated. They were from different cultural and religious backgrounds: Muslims, Christians, Hindus, and Middle Eastern, Fijian, and American Jewish people.

Participants had the opportunity to share money with anonymous people of various religions. The participants played multiple rounds of a real-world economic game. They needed to divide a sum of money among themselves and people from different backgrounds. During the first round, participants had to carefully consider their choices. Then, in the later rounds of this economic game, the researchers asked them to think about God before making a decision.

By the way, we should keep in mind that “Americans unsure about God are a fast-growing force in politics.“

Thinking of God Makes People More Generous

Nevertheless, when we think about God, we feel more kind and generous and give more to others.

The results of the study showed that thinking about God has a significant impact on decision-making. In the experimental situation, it resulted in an 11% increase in giving compared to the first rounds of the study.

As Jeremy Ginges, professor of psychology at The New School of Social Research, explains,

“Belief in gods may encourage cooperative norms that help us trade goods and ideas across group boundaries, which is essential to human flourishing. Of course, we are also a parochial species. Our team is now investigating how moral and supernatural beliefs help people balance their parochialism with their need for intergroup cooperation.”

Ginges then adds that there is a trend indicating that religion may prompt people to lend a helping hand more frequently. However, this is not always the case. Some members of a religion may believe that their faith requires them to support their own group more frequently than others.

Anyway, the results of this study demonstrate that religious faith is not responsible for as much intergroup violence, suffering, and distress. Contrary to this, religious faith actually helps strengthen interfaith connections.

How to Avoid Date Night Boredom and Passion Decline

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The article describes how a date night, and a romantic relationship can become boring and what partners can do to make them more passionate.

Many love scholars consider passion to be a key feature of romantic love and the beginning of romantic relationships. The boost of passion appears so high that it seems like its intensity will never fade. However, keeping the spark of passionate love alive is challenging.

How to Maintain Passion in a Romantic Relationship

In romantic relationships, passion entails intense feelings of emotional and sexual longing for a partner. In European and European-American cultures, many people believe that they can be happier when their romantic relationships are more passionate. However, the reality of relationships shows that passion, which is usually high when a romantic relationship starts, tends to fade over time as the relationship evolves (Karandashev, 2019; 2022).

You can certainly foster passion in long-term relationships by participating in exciting activities with a partner, such as travel, hiking, or date nights. People can gain new perceptions of a relationship and themselves through these kinds of activities, especially when they are distinctively special.

For instance, you might discover that you enjoy camping, hear various political viewpoints, or encounter various cultural practices and cuisines. Being engaged in these events may lead to greater sexual arousal, passion, and relationship satisfaction. This psychological phenomenon refers to the “excitation transfer.”

The excitation-transfer effect explains the secret of falling in love instantly. It also explains how sexual arousal transfers to other emotions.

The advantages of participating in an exciting activity with a partner are evident. However, many have difficulties doing so. For example, some people may not be very good at setting up exciting dates with their romantic partners. Others may experience difficulties or be stressed by something else. They might be ill. They may have a hard time finding childcare, or they may be strapped for cash.

What Is the Boredom of Date Night and a Relationship?

Another problem is that one of the partners or both can become bored in a relationship rut, also known as boredom.

Boredom is a dissatisfying emotional state that can affect all aspects of a person’s life, including their relationships. At its most extreme, relationship boredom is apathy associated with feeling trapped and not wanting to be around the partner.

Typically, a person feeling bored in a relationship can feel like they have lost something once positive. You may feel as though the spark, fun, and laughter have disappeared. ‘Spice things up’ is a common piece of advice given to individuals who feel stuck in a rut. However, does it work?

Boredom Affects the Frequency and Quality of Date Nights

The feeling of boredom makes it more difficult to add excitement to the relationship. To investigate the problem, Cheryl Harasymchuk, a professor of psychology at Carleton University in Canada, studied how people maintain happy relationships.

In a recent study, the authors tracked the relationships of couples who were already in committed relationships. Researchers monitored their experiences on a daily basis over three weeks, followed by a three-month follow-up.

The authors revealed that on days when partners were more bored in their relationship than usual, they had a lower occurrence of exciting, shared activities (such as date nights).

Furthermore, when men or women who were more bored than usual went on dates, they had dates of lower quality and experienced lower feelings of enjoyment, passion, closeness, and satisfaction. The authors also discovered that men or women who were bored at the start of the study had fewer exciting dates and less relationship passion three months later. Thus, oddly, just when couples need it the most, bored partners are less likely to engage in date nights. Even if they do, the quality of their dates may be lower.

How to Avoid a Boring Date Night and the Decline of Passion

What can couples do, then, to rekindle their passion and break out of a rut?

First of all, you should remember that not every type of date night will be ideal for you. A couple may attend a play as an idea for an exciting date. While it can become another couple’s disappointment. This does not mean that you must go “bungee jumping.”

Talk with your partners about what will fit the level of excitement in your relationship. What fascinates you two? Attempt a novel, exotic restaurant? Or testing your teamwork to see if you can survive a terrifying haunted house? Even discussing potential outcomes can occasionally be exciting.

Partners may also try a variety of activities before settling on one that appeals to both of them in their relationship. For instance, both a man and a woman may not enjoy dancing or rock climbing, but they might enjoy taking a cooking class together.

Partners’ expectations are also important. They may need to adjust their beliefs in order to avoid unrealistic goals, such as recreating the intense feelings from the beginning of the relationship. Instead, partners should concentrate on being present in the moment and being thankful for the time spent with their loved ones.

Finally, there are numerous spices in the “spice things up” cabinet. If you can’t find the right ingredient for your love and relationship, ask around or look it up on the internet.

Lastly, doing fun things together is just one way to make a relationship more passionate. Spending time apart doing hobbies can give couples new things to talk about and give the relationship new energy in terms of how each person feels and how the other person sees them.