Some Evidence Bearing on the Aim-Inhibition Hypothesis of Love

Abstract

ONE OF THE more tenacious but, curiously, not very provacative issues centering around premarital sexuality concerns the consequences of coitus on established love relationships. Although sexual involvement between meaningful pair members is sometimes advocated in the folk culture, it is usually with the intent of precipitating a commitment for marriage; the generation of feelings of obligation and guilt, not love, become paramount. With respect to enhancing love, we find little encouragement for sexual activity. Quite to the contrary, our culture abounds with expressions admonishing the young, especially the female, of the unhappy consequences of premarital intercourse. Premarital concessions, she is warned, bring rejection and vitiates the love relationship. Generations of daughters have been cautioned that he won't love (respect) you anymore. This avenue of thought is by no means unique to the layman. Significant figures in sociology and psychology have also invested belief in the hypothesis that sexual intercourse corrupts love. Contemporary family writers, influenced by the works of Freud (1960) and Waller (1938), perpetuate with varying degrees of commitment the aim-inhibition hypothesis: romantic love is the consequence of sexual inaccessibility of the love object. Although a wide variety of explanations are offered concerning the psychological mechanics underlying this hypothesis, the central idea is essentially that romantic love is a subliminal phenomenon emerging from the social frustration of biological impulses. For our purposes, aim-inhibition is synonymous with the idea that romantic love and sex are incompatible, the dynamics accounting for that incompatibility being ignored. There has been a paucity of research on the consequences of sex on love in American society. The existent studies, however, do not support the aim-inhibition hypothesis (Burgess and Wallin, 1953:239-242; Kirkendall, 1961:chapter 8). For some of the more devout proponents of the hypothesis, the coup de grace has simply been the observation that romantic love tends not to survive long into marriage.' Efforts have also been exerted to bring anthropological materials to bear on this issue. These investigations have, at best, produced mixed evidence (Blood, 1952; Stephens, 1963:207; Chard, 1961). It is possible, moreover, that these cross-cultural studies have been aimed at a conceptually alien question, i.e., not whether the introduction of sexual intercourse vitiates love but rather do the two elements tend to co-exist on a societal level at any given time. The