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The Wiley Blackwell Encyclopedia of Family Studies states that “Romantic love, based on the model of mutual attraction and on a connection between two people that bonds them as a couple, creates the conditions for overturning the model of family and marriage that it engenders.” This indicates that romantic love can be the founding of attraction between two people. This term was primarily used by the “western countries after the 1800's were socialized into, love is the necessary prerequisite for starting an intimate relationship and represents the foundation on which to build the next steps in a family.”

Alternatively, from Collins Dictionary, it describes Romantic love as “an intensity and idealization of a love relationship, in which the other is imbued with extraordinary virtue, beauty, etc., so that the relationship overrides all other considerations, including material ones.”

3.5 American Views of Romantic Love

Based on a study made by De Munck, Victor C. and David B. Kronenfeld named “Romantic Love in the United States : Applying Cultural Models Theory and Methods.” This study was conducted through an investigation of two cultural model cases. It states that in America “we have a rather novel and dynamic cultural model that is falsifiable and predictive of successful love relationships.” Which supports that is popular for American people to successfully share feelings of romanticism with each other’s partners. It describes American culture by stating: “The model is unique in that it combines passion with comfort and friendship as properties of romantic love.” One of its main contributions is advising the reader that “For successful romantic love relations, a person would feel excited about meeting their beloved; make passionate and intimate love as opposed to only physical love; feel comfortable with the beloved, behaving in a companionable, friendly way with one’s partner; listen to the other’s concerns, offering to help out in various ways if necessary; and, all the while, keeping a mental ledger of the degree to which altruism and passion are mutual.”

5.8 Relationship maintenance:

Daniel Canary from the International Encyclopedia of Marriage describes relationship maintenance as “At the most basic level, relational maintenance refers to a variety of behaviors used by partners in an effort to stay together.” Maintaining stability and quality in a relationship is the key to success in a romantic relationship. He says that: “simply staying together is not sufficient; instead, the quality of the relationship is important. For researchers, this means examining behaviors that are linked to relational satisfaction and other indicators of quality.” Canary suggests using the work of John Gottman, an American physiologist best known for his research on marital stability for over four decades, serves as a guide for predicting outcomes in relationships because “Gottman emphasizes behaviors that determine whether or not a couple gets divorced”.

Furthermore, Canary also uses the source from Stafford and Canary (1991), a journal on Communication Monographs, because they created five great strategies based on maintaining quality in a relationship, the article’s strategies are to provide:

Positivity: being joyful and optimistic, not criticizing each other.

Assurances: proving one's commitment and love.

Openness: to be honest with one another according to what they want in the relationship.

Social networks: efforts into involving friends and family in their activities.

Sharing tasks: complementing each other’s needs based on daily work.

On relational maintenance, Steven McCornack, and Joseph Ortiz, the authors of the book “Choices & Connection” state that relationship maintenance “refers to the use of communication behaviors to keep a relationship strong and to ensure that each party continues to draw satisfaction from the relationship”.