Exercises — Chapter 18: Romantic Relationships and Intimacy

These exercises are designed for honest self-examination. Some involve reflection on current relationships; others are applicable whether you are in a relationship or not. Work at whatever depth feels useful and appropriate to your circumstances.

Part 1: Understanding Love's Components

Exercise 18.1 — The Sternberg Inventory

Sternberg's triangular theory proposes three components of love: intimacy, passion, and commitment. Think about your most significant current or recent romantic relationship (or, if you have not had one, a relationship you have observed closely).

Rate each component on a scale of 1–10 (1 = very low; 10 = very high):

Intimacy (warmth, closeness, sense of being known): ___
Passion (desire, longing, physical attraction): ___
Commitment (intention to maintain the relationship over time): ___

(a) What type of love does your configuration most resemble in Sternberg's typology? (See the table in Section 18.1.)

(b) Has the balance among the three components changed significantly over the relationship's duration? If so, describe the shift. Is the shift consistent with what the chapter describes as normal development, or does it reflect something specific to your situation?

Exercise 18.2 — Love Styles Self-Assessment

Review Lee's six love styles (eros, ludus, storge, pragma, mania, agape) in Section 18.1.

(a) Which two or three love styles most closely describe your characteristic orientation toward romantic relationships — how you tend to fall in love, what you want from love, and how you behave in relationships?

(b) Which love style is most absent from your natural repertoire? What would it look like if you developed more access to it?

(c) Looking back at a significant relationship that ended: are there love style incompatibilities that, in hindsight, contributed to the difficulty? What would you have needed to understand about love styles at the time that you didn't?

Part 2: Attraction and Partner Selection

Exercise 18.3 — Mapping Your Attraction Patterns

The chapter identifies four major predictors of attraction: proximity, similarity, physical attractiveness, and reciprocal liking.

Think about the two or three most significant romantic connections of your life.

(a) Proximity effect: How did proximity (physical, digital, social) play a role in each connection forming? If you had been in different circumstances, would the connection have happened?

(b) Similarity: In each connection, what were the most significant similarities? The most significant differences? Which differences caused friction over time?

(c) Initial vs. acquaintance attraction: Did your attraction level change significantly as you got to know each person better — either increasing or decreasing? What drove the change?

(d) What patterns do you notice across these connections? Is there a characteristic that appears consistently in who attracts you?

Exercise 18.4 — The Matching Hypothesis and Self-Assessment

The matching hypothesis suggests that people tend to pair with others of similar perceived desirability.

This exercise requires a degree of honest self-assessment that can be uncomfortable. Proceed with curiosity rather than judgment.

(a) How do you currently evaluate your own desirability as a partner — not just physical attractiveness but the full package: personality, values, capacity for connection, practical life situation? On a rough scale of 1–10, what is your estimate?

(b) How does this compare to your assessment of the people you've been most drawn to? Have you consistently pursued people you perceived as significantly more or less desirable than yourself? What has that produced?

(c) The research finds that accurate self-assessment (not inflated or deflated) is associated with better relationship outcomes. What might it mean for your relationship choices if your self-assessment were more accurate in one direction?

Part 3: Relationship Development

Altman and Taylor's social penetration theory describes relationships deepening as disclosure moves from surface to interior layers.

(a) In your current most significant relationship (romantic or close friendship), draw a rough map of your disclosure: What topics or aspects of yourself are at the surface (easily shared)? What is in the middle layers (shared with some comfort, but not automatically)? What is at the interior (difficult to share, rarely disclosed)?

(b) Has the relationship been moving inward over time — going deeper — or has it stalled at a particular depth? If it has stalled, where and why?

(c) Is there something specific in your interior layer that, if disclosed, you believe would produce more intimacy — but that you have been reluctant to share? What is your fear about sharing it? Is that fear accurate?

Exercise 18.6 — The Investment Model in Practice

Rusbult's investment model: Commitment = Satisfaction + Investment − Quality of Alternatives.

Reflect on a relationship you are currently in or one you have exited:

(a) Rate each variable (1–10): - Satisfaction: ___ - Investment (time, emotional vulnerability, shared history, shared resources): ___ - Quality of alternatives (attractiveness of other options, including being alone): ___

(b) How does the resulting calculation match your actual commitment level? If there is a discrepancy — you feel more or less committed than the model would predict — what explains it?

(c) Have you ever remained in a relationship primarily because of high investment rather than high satisfaction? What was the outcome? What would you do differently now?

Part 4: Passionate and Companionate Love

Exercise 18.7 — Recognizing the Transition

The chapter describes the normal transition from passionate to companionate love in long-term relationships.

(a) Have you experienced this transition — either in your own relationship or observed it closely in someone else's? What did it feel like? How was it interpreted at the time?

(b) Was it interpreted as a problem? Did the interpretation affect decisions made?

(c) The chapter argues that companionate love is actually more conducive to long-term satisfaction than passionate love. Does this match your intuition, or does it feel like a rationalization? What would it mean for how you evaluate your current or future relationships if you accepted this finding?

Exercise 18.8 — Self-Expansion and Shared Novelty

Self-expansion theory suggests that passion is sustained in long-term relationships by shared experiences of growth, novelty, and challenge.

(a) Think about the relationship that felt most alive to you. What kinds of shared experiences characterized its best periods? Were those experiences novel and growth-oriented, or comfortable and routine?

(b) In your current relationship (or imagining a future one): what shared activities, learning experiences, or challenges would genuinely expand both partners? What prevents you from pursuing these?

(c) Esther Perel argues that desire is also maintained by a degree of separateness — individual domains that are not fully merged. Do you tend toward merger or separateness in relationships? What are the costs and benefits of your natural tendency?

Part 5: Intimacy and Vulnerability

Exercise 18.9 — The Vulnerability Paradox

Brown's research and the chapter's discussion describe the vulnerability paradox: the experiences most dangerous to share are those that, when shared, produce deepest intimacy.

(a) Describe one thing about yourself — a fear, a wound, a desire, an insecurity — that you have not shared with your closest relationships but that, if shared and received well, you believe would produce genuine intimacy. (This is for your private reflection only; you are not required to share it in this exercise.)

(b) What specifically prevents you from sharing it? Name the fear as precisely as you can.

(c) Have you ever taken a significant risk of disclosure and had it received well? What was the effect on the relationship and on you?

Exercise 18.10 — Mapping Your Intimacy Ceiling

Think about the closest relationship in your life currently. Estimate the depth of mutual intimacy on a scale of 1–10.

(a) What is the current ceiling — the depth beyond which you and this person don't seem to go? What is that depth in content terms (what topics, what experiences, what aspects of self are at the edge)?

(b) Is the ceiling primarily yours, primarily theirs, or mutual? What produced it?

Part 6: Commitment and Maintenance

Exercise 18.11 — Bids for Connection Audit

Gottman's research on bids for connection found that turning toward bids 86% of the time (vs. 33%) distinguished couples who stayed together from those who divorced.

For one week, maintain awareness of bids for connection — both the bids you make and the ones your significant partner (or close friend) makes.

Track: - How many bids you made - How often they were received (turning toward), missed (turning away), or rejected (turning against) - How many bids came your way - How often you turned toward vs. away vs. against

(a) What patterns emerged? What surprised you?

(b) What specific changes to your bidding or receiving behavior would most improve the quality of connection in this relationship?

Exercise 18.12 — Love Map Update

Gottman's Love Maps require regular updating — partners change, and the map must change with them.

In your closest current relationship, test your Love Map:

(a) Name your partner's (or close friend's or family member's) three biggest current stressors.

(b) What is something they are currently excited or hopeful about?

(d) What have they been thinking about lately that they haven't fully told you?

(e) After considering your answers: how current is your map? When did you last have a conversation that would have updated it? When is the next opportunity?

Exercise 18.13 — Positive Sentiment Override Assessment

Positive sentiment override describes the tendency to interpret ambiguous partner behavior charitably; negative sentiment override describes the tendency to interpret it negatively.

(a) What is your current default interpretive stance in your most significant relationship? When your partner does something ambiguous — is quiet, seems preoccupied, declines an invitation — what do you automatically assume?

(b) Can you identify a recent example of interpreting ambiguous behavior negatively that turned out to be incorrect? What was the actual explanation?

(c) What specific practice — a pause, a question, a reframe — would help you catch negative interpretations before acting on them?

Part 7: Long-Distance and Diverse Relationship Structures

Exercise 18.14 — Long-Distance Preparation

If you are in or approaching a long-distance period in a relationship (romantic or otherwise):

(a) What are your current plans for maintaining communication quality during the distance? Are conversations planned and intentional, or left to happen organically?

(b) Is there a clear timeline for closing the distance, or is the duration indefinite? If indefinite: what is the effect of the indefiniteness on your commitment and investment?

(c) What are the three most likely specific challenges of this particular long-distance arrangement — not generic challenges but ones specific to your relationship's particular circumstances?

Part 8: Integration

Exercise 18.15 — The Relationship You Want

This exercise asks you to describe, with as much specificity as possible, the romantic relationship you are working toward — not the perfect idealized partner, but the qualities and dynamics you most want.

(a) What do you most need from a partner in terms of the three components of Sternberg's triangle?

(b) What is the intimacy depth you are seeking — how much does mutual vulnerability and interior access matter to you?

(c) What would relationship maintenance look like in your ideal — how often would you connect, in what ways, with what quality of attention?

(d) Compare your answers to your most significant past or current relationship. What is the gap between what you described and what you have had? Is the gap a function of partner choice, your own patterns, or both?

Exercise 18.16 — The Thursday Evening Question

The chapter opens with Jordan on a Thursday evening — one of his and Dev's newly protected times — reflecting on whether he is "getting better at this." The specific quality he is working on is presence: the capacity to actually arrive in the relationship, rather than managing his anxiety from a slight remove.

(a) What is the quality you most need to develop to be a better partner — or to be ready for the partnership you want? Name it as specifically as Jordan names his (presence, not "being a good boyfriend").

(b) What specific practice, this week, would develop that quality by even 5%? Not a transformation — just a 5% movement in the right direction.

The next chapter examines the family systems that produced the patterns explored here — and what it means to understand those systems clearly enough to choose something different.