The Psychology of Partnership and Love – A Consonance (Gleichklang) Perspective
Partnership and Love from a Psychological Perspective
Consonance (Gleichklang), as an alternative dating platform, optimizes your chances of partner search success through a psychologically sound system of matchmaking. By matching preferences, needs, central lifestyle aspects, and personality traits, our dating system ensures that you will actually find the person who truly fits you for a genuine love relationship. Because only when two people match can a lasting and happy partnership develop. Unlike typical dating sites or singles platforms, Consonance as a professional matchmaking agency on the internet places special emphasis on data quality by only accepting those individuals as members who are truly serious about partner search. In addition to the comprehensive questionnaires, the obligatory membership fee also guarantees that at Consonance, as a prerequisite for a serious matchmaking service, there are no fake profiles, weirdos, or internet stalkers. Become a member of Consonance now, so you won’t be single for much longer.
But what exactly are partnership and love from a psychological perspective?
Love and partnership are two closely intertwined concepts, yet they are not identical:
Love refers primarily to a feeling in the sense of an intense emotional experience of affection and attraction. Love is a particularly complex feeling that depends on numerous cognitive, i.e., thought-based, processing and evaluation processes.
Partnership, in the sense to be discussed here, by contrast, is the bonding of people in the sense of a kind of contract to go through life together. The fact that the term partnership is also applicable in the business context is no coincidence; it points to the functionality of bonding, which is only entered into when it is perceived as an advantage by those involved, whereby an advantage may also lie in avoiding disadvantages.
However, love and partnership are not something entirely independent either: for the ideal of a partnership between people is that of a genuine love relationship. In this sense, partnership is the connection of the complex feeling of love with the decision for bonding. Attraction, affection, and sympathy directed toward the other person thus combine in a partnership with the functional aspects of bonding. The advantage of a partnership consists of numerous individual aspects, which, in addition to ensuring closeness to the beloved person, can also include many other things, such as the reduction of anxiety, the assurance of economic security, and the shared experience of positive experiences. The main motive for the universal striving for partnership is particularly poignantly expressed by the proverb:
“Shared sorrow is half sorrow, shared joy is double joy”
In psychological terms, the counterpart in a love relationship is a so-called generalized reinforcer. A reinforcer is anything that is colloquially experienced as pleasant and thus triggers attraction. In a love relationship as a partnership between loving people, the partner functions both as a positive reinforcer and as a negative reinforcer. Positively reinforcing is everything that, through its addition, triggers attraction and pleasant feelings. Negatively reinforcing is everything that, through its addition, ends repulsion and unpleasant feelings. A partner is both a positive and a negative reinforcer because he or she appears attractive and pleasant (positive reinforcement) and at the same time his or her presence reduces unpleasant things, such as the experience of anxiety (negative reinforcement). The partner is a generalized reinforcer because he or she is associated with the most diverse positive experiences and feelings, just as he or she reduces the most diverse negative feelings.
Thus, partnership as a love relationship has, from a psychological perspective, an enormous function for subjective well-being as well as objective life stability. For the entire striving of the human being as an individual is directed toward maximizing positive and negative reinforcement in order to thereby experience pleasant, joyful, and pleasurable things, as well as to minimize anxiety, fear, pain, but also feelings of helplessness, despair, and depression. A partnership in the sense of a genuine love relationship is an extremely effective strategy to achieve this goal and gain life satisfaction.
But why do relationship conflicts, separations, and divorces occur so often?
From a psychological perspective, relationship conflicts and separations always occur when a partnership does not have sufficient reinforcement effectiveness. In other words, a relationship becomes unsatisfying when not enough pleasant things are experienced within the framework of this relationship, when the relationship does not have a protective effect against negative experiences, or even when direct negative experiences occur – in the best case in the form of boredom, in the worst case in the form of conflict and violence. But even when a partnership is fundamentally reinforcing, but its reinforcer value is low compared to possible alternatives, dissatisfaction and intentions to separate arise.
Is there a connection between relationship satisfaction and sexuality?
Sexuality is a fundamental, biologically-based primary reinforcer that is sought by the vast majority of individuals, even though there is a small number of people who, as so-called asexuals, perceive no sexual desire in themselves. For most people, however, sexuality as a primary reinforcer plays a significant role, whereby various sexual orientations may exist. A partnership is a good basis for enjoying the primary reinforcer of sexuality while avoiding risks (e.g., diseases, acts that are not desired by one party). However, partnership and love are by no means identical with sexuality. There are partnerships in the sense of love relationships without sexuality (platonic relationships), and conversely, it is also possible to experience and enjoy sexuality outside of romantic partnerships. With these limitations in mind, however, positive sexuality can still represent a significant stabilizer for a romantic relationship, even if various other pleasant experiences can promote relationship quality and unpleasant experiences can endanger it.
The goal of Consonance is to facilitate lasting, happy partnerships. But how can this goal be achieved?
The reinforcer value of events or activities varies greatly from individual to individual, which is related to biological conditions as well as individual learning history. A lasting, happy, and stable romantic relationship can therefore most likely be built and maintained when similar situations and activities have reinforcing effects. When such similarity is given, people in a partnership can experience a great deal of pleasant things together, which strengthens the relationship and increases relationship satisfaction. If, on the other hand, people experience very different things as reinforcing, there is little room for shared positive experiences, and relationship satisfaction as well as relationship stability decrease.
This results in the methodological approach of an optimal matchmaking service: bringing together people who experience similar situations and activities as reinforcing and can thus build a happy and stable relationship with each other.
What is the Consonance Method of Optimal Matchmaking?
Consonance increases your chances of partner search success by suggesting to you people whose wishes and needs, as well as lifestyles and personalities, harmonize with each other. Opposites may be interesting in the short term, but in the long term they lead to dissatisfaction and separation due to insufficient mutual reinforcement opportunities. Similarity, on the other hand, also creates happy romantic relationships in the long term because, when similarity is given, activities and experiences that are experienced as reinforcing together are possible to a particularly high degree. Consonance’s matching algorithm determines and maximizes the compatibility of partner suggestions based on a mathematical-psychological evaluation.
Do desires always have to be aligned for people to be suitable as partners for each other?
No, not at all. The concept of similarity used by Consonance does not mean identity, but compatibility. Compatibility can mean identity, but also complementarity. If two people enjoy watching Verdi operas, then compatibility is identity. Because by attending Verdi operas, they can experience positive things together. But if two people are interested in BDSM, and both are dominant, then this identity does not create compatibility but rather a lack of compatibility. The reason is that both people cannot experience a satisfying sexuality together because the purely dominant role on both sides excludes shared experience.
The concept of similarity underlying Consonance thus means either compatibility in the sense of identity or compatibility in the sense of complementarity, whereby it is determined on an individual and content-specific basis whether an identity or complementarity criterion is to be used as the basis for the matchmaking.
With the help of the complex mathematical-psychological matching algorithm with which Consonance supports your partner search, it is ensured that compatibility in the sense of identity and complementarity is maximized in the partner suggestions to such an extent that the best basic prerequisites for a satisfactory and happy partnership in the long term are given.
Is partnership as a love relationship always a partnership between two people?
As a rule, Consonance members seek one person with whom they want to shape their lives as a couple. But neither historically nor in the present have romantic relationships ever necessarily been limited exclusively to just two people. There have always been other relationship models in which more than two people conduct a partnership with each other. Consonance is completely value-neutral in this regard and strictly aligns its matchmaking with the wishes of individual members. While two-person relationships are usually facilitated, Consonance also supports, for example, the establishment of bisexual partnerships, which can involve more than two people.
Is partnership necessarily monogamous?
Sexual fidelity in the sense of monogamy is expected by many people, at least as a basic requirement, even if in individual cases it is often not truly fulfilled for life, and extramarital affairs are not uncommon. The majority of Consonance members also consider sexual fidelity important and are accordingly suggested only those other members as partners who see it exactly the same way (compatibility through identity). However, a strong minority of Consonance members see this differently and would like to experience sexuality with additional people within the framework of a romantic relationship, possibly together with their partner – for example, by visiting swinger clubs in the heterosexual sphere or in gay saunas or parties in the gay sphere. Consonance is strictly value-neutral here and also considers these wishes and needs of members to be legitimate and worthy of support. Accordingly, people who do not seek a monogamous partnership are suggested those other members as partners who also do not seek a monogamous relationship. This increases the chances that at Consonance you will meet exactly the woman or man with whom you can positively live out your individual relationship-related and sexual needs.
Should partnership always be permanent?
Certainly, various constellations can be imagined where a partnership as a love relationship is also entered into for a limited time. One reason for this might be an impending spatial separation. Likewise, in some cultures there are religious traditions that enable sexuality through a temporary partnership. Usually, however, a love relationship does not begin in order to dissolve it later; rather, there is the expectation, or at least the hope, of staying together permanently. Separations are generally to be evaluated as a failure of this previous intention. Consonance is aware that many romantic relationships fall apart again over time, but has aligned its matching principle so that the probability of such an undesirable development is minimized. Consonance specializes in facilitating permanent, ideally lifelong partnerships. Partnerships that are understood from the outset as merely temporary are not facilitated by Consonance. Consonance’s matchmaking method is also not suitable for such relationships, since it is precisely designed to ensure that couples stay together happily in the long term, so that the need for separation does not arise.
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Are there differences between heterosexual, homosexual (gay, lesbian), and bisexual partnerships?
