People engage in relationships due to a need of sense of belonging, security, friendship and many other beneficial factors. When people become romantically attracted to each other, one needs to understand the elements necessary for such an attraction to take place. In this essay the Attachment theory and the cross-cultural theory will be the perspectives in which one will explain romantic attraction.
Romantic attraction is to desire the next person physically and emotionally (Pastorino & Doyle-Portillo, 2012). Love involves the integration of cognitions, emotions and behaviours that play an important role in intimate relationships (Coon & Mitterer, 2012). Love consists of three components; intimacy, passion and decision/commitment (Sternberg, 1986).
The Attachment Theory illustrates how the kind of relationship one had with their parents in early childhood affects adult romantic attachment, this assumption is based on the fact that all children are emotionally and physically attached to the people who take care of them. The differences in the way certain individuals become
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In individualistic societies emphasis is placed on self realization, importance of rights rather than duties, self importance, initiatives that affect one personally and identity of one’s self based on ones attributes (Dion & Dion, 1996). In individualistic societies love would be persued on the basis of personal fulfilment, and in doing so by personal choice which disregards what the individual’s family believes. I n the event of marriage one judges based on their emotions towards the preferred partner in order to determine eligibility, that determinant being whether love exists between the two, one ultimately puts their needs before everything in order to come to a conclusion (Dion & Dion,