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A Review of “ ‘I Love You More Today Than Yesterday’: Romantic Partner’s Perceptions of Changes in Love and Related Affect Over Time”



As intimate relationships grow over time, the romantic partners’ feelings toward each other will most likely change. In this four year, five wave, longitudinal study intimate couples provided reports on their perceived changes of their level of love, satisfaction, and commitment along with contemporaneous scales on the same attributes at the end of each stage. All the couples were dating at the beginning of this study which makes this study unique because there have been very few studies made on the “temporal course of love” (Sprecher). The results of this investigation were based upon the contemporaneous, actual, changes and the perceived changes throughout the relationship and the relationship between both the perceived and actual changes.

In the past theories said that love and related phenomena increase early in the relation ship, but then level off and decrease over time. This is backed by Huesmann’s principal of learning theory which states that over time a partner’s behaviors and presence become less important. As time passes the level of love lowers because the relationship prohibits the ability of self-expansion (Aron and Aron, 1986). On the contrast Murstien’s 1987 stage model of relationships says that as relationships progress over time, the love and intimacy should increase also. Most studies show that there is very little change in feeling throughout a dating relationship, and an increase in positive feelings as the couples got married. These longitudinal studies have been short-term studies over relationships and their change in feelings.

This study was conducted to examine three aspects of relationships. The first aspect of the investigation was an examination of the perceived positive change in a romantic relationship. The...