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Romantic Love and Sexual Desire in Close Relationships
Gian C. Gonzaga
University of California, Los Angeles
Rebecca A. Turner
Alliant International University and University of California,
San Francisco
Dacher Keltner
University of California, Berkeley
Belinda Campos
University of California, Los Angeles
Margaret Altemus
Weill Medical College, Cornell University
Drawing on recent claims in the study of relationships, attachment, and emotion, the authors hypothe-
sized that romantic love serves a commitment-related function and sexual desire a reproduction-related
function. Consistent with these claims, in Study 1, brief experiences of romantic love and sexual desire
observed in a 3-min interaction between romantic partners were related to distinct feeling states, distinct
nonverbal displays, and commitment- and reproductive-related relationship outcomes, respectively. In
Study 2, the nonverbal display of romantic love was related to the release of oxytocin. Discussion focuses
on the place of romantic love and sexual desire in the literature on emotion.
Keywords: romantic love, sexual desire, emotion, facial expression, relationship functioning
The study of emotions in close relationships has yielded two
complementary insights. First, emotions and their many manifes-
tations are profoundly relational: They occur, in significant part, to
coordinate social interactions within relationships (e.g., Tiedens &
Leach, 2004). Second, emotions expressed by individuals shape
the content and direction of relationships. For example, the occur-
rence of brief emotions such as contempt or amusement reveals a
great deal about the likelihood that a couple will stay together or
dissolve (Gottman & Levenson, 2000).
In this article, we present two studies that examine the forms and
functions of romantic love and sexual desire in romantic relation-
ships. Following Diamond (2003, 2004), we define romantic love
as a motivational state associated with feelings of attachment and
the inclination to seek commitment with one partner, and we
define sexual desire as a motivational state that leads the individual
to seek opportunities for sexual activity. We rely on the methods
of affective science—the study of subjective experience, commu-
nicative display, relational outcomes, and physiological mark-
ers—to test hypotheses about the distinct functions of romantic
love and sexual desire. In the General Discussion, we address the
question of whether romantic love and sexual desire are emotions.
Romantic Love and Sexual Desire as Separate Relational
Processes
Two schools of thought converge on the notion that romantic
love and sexual desire are independent relational processes. Rela-
tionship researchers have long grappled with the question of how
romantic love and sexual desire emerge and evolve over the course
of intimate relationships (Aron & Aron, 1998; Hatfield, 1988;
Gian C. Gonzaga and Belinda Campos, Department of Psychology,
University of California, Los Angeles; Rebecca A. Turner, California
School of Professional Psychology, Alliant International University, and
Department of Psychiatry, University of California, San Francisco; Dacher
Keltner, Department of Psychology, University of California, Berkeley;
Margaret Altemus, Weill Medical College, Cornell University, New York.
Gian C. Gonzaga is now at eHarmony Labs, eHarmony.com, Pasadena, CA.
This work was based, in part, on Gian C. Gonzaga’s dissertation and was
partially supported by National Institute of Mental Health Postdoctoral
Training Grant 5T32MH15750-22 to Gian C. Gonzaga. Study 2 was
carried out in the General Clinical Research Center, Moffitt Hospital,
University of California, San Francisco, with funds provided by National
Center for Research Resources Grant 5 MO1 RR-00079 from the U.S.
Public Health Service. Funds were also provided by an institutional grant
from the California School of Professional Psychology to Rebecca A.
Turner.
We thank Bijan Navidi, Courtney Childress, Nicholas Sobb, Nicole
Buisson, Ember Lee, and Tiffany Fong for their efforts in coding the
videotapes in Studies 1 and 2. We also thank Jennifer Berdahl, Paige
Daniel, Tara Gruenewald, Oliver John, Gerald Mendelsohn, Frances
Northcutt, Anne Peplau, Heather Setrakian, Shelley Taylor, John Upde-
graff, and Leah Walling for comments on versions of this article. We thank
Teresa Enos for acting as project coordinator and interviewer, Julie Gross
for participant recruitment, and Paul Ekman and Sue Carter for valuable
consultation on the procedure of Study 2.
Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Gian C.
Gonzaga, eHarmony Labs, eHarmony.com, 888 East Walnut Street, Suite 200,
Pasadena, CA 91106. E-mail: giangonzaga@eharmony.com. Correspondence
specifically concerning Study 2 should be addressed to Rebecca A. Turner,
California School of Professional Psychology, Alliant International University,
1 Beach Street, Suite 100, San Francisco, CA 94133. E-mail: rturner@
alliant.edu
Emotion Copyright 2006 by the American Psychological Association
2006, Vol. 6, No. 2, 163–179 1528-3542/06/$12.00 DOI: 10.1037/1528-3542.6.2.163
163
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