Samuel Taylor Coleridge once said, “love is flower like; Friendship is like a sheltering tree.”
A good friendship is essential when it comes to staying committed and sexually satisfied in a relationship.
Love is not all about fulfilling one’s personal needs and desires. Love isn’t about frequent dates or flirting. True love isn’t about how often you are having sex with your partner. True love requires at its core true friendship. Friendship is the most important ingredient in the recipe of love.
Research conducted at Purdue University has concluded that friendship, not sex, is the secret to a long-lasting romantic relationship.
Researchers found out that couples who value their friendship with their partner create relationships with more commitment, more love and greater sexual satisfaction than couples who lack friendship with their significant others. The study was conducted to find out how friendship affects romantic relationships. The team, conducted two studies on different couples.
For the first study, 190 students who had been in a relationship for an average of 18 months were brought in and were asked to fill out certain surveys to measure the amount of dedication and involvement they had invested into their relationship, and also to find out what they hoped for in the future. After a period of four months the 190 students were contacted for a follow-up. It turns out that 27% were no longer with the same partner. After analyzing the results of the survey, it was found that students who scored high in friendship aspects scored highly on romantic commitment, love, and sexual satisfaction. More importantly, they were still together with their partner.
After analyzing the results of the survey, it was found that students who scored high in friendship aspects scored highly on romantic commitment, love, and sexual satisfaction. More importantly, they were still together with their partner.
In the second study, 184 students who were in a relationship for at least 16 months were brought in and were asked to rate how much they value relationship aspects such as companionship, security, sex, self-improvement and experiencing new things on a scale of one to nine.
Students who rated the need for friendship has scored higher for romantic commitment and sexual fulfillment, comparing the ones who rated more on personal needs. Students who rated the need for friendship has scored higher for romantic commitment and sexual fulfillment, comparing the ones who rated more on personal needs.
These results have brought to light that valuing the friendship aspect of a romance is a strong positive predictor of concurrent romantic relationship qualities and if very essential to determine how stable a relationship is.
The results have proven that high commitment and sexual fulfillment is possible only when the friendship and companionship are high. They further added that friendship is a ‘defining characteristic of love’ proving that the quality of a relationship and other components like sex etc is based on how the couples value the friendship. While couples who try and satisfy their own selfish desires are less likely to sustain the bond in the longer term relationship.
