Examples Of Ira Reiss's Theory Of Love In Our Souls At Night

Our Souls at Night (Wheel Theory) What is love? That is the age old question that is almost impossible to define, people have been asking the question for a long time and still have not found a very good answer. Love, depending on the person you ask can be many different things, but there is one thing that we cannot deny, we all experience it at least once in our lives. Professor Ira Reiss from the University of Minnesota came up with her own theory of love that is broken down into four different stages. One could say that her theory could correlate with the novel based on those stages which are: Rapport, self-revelation, mutual dependency, and personality need fulfillment. The first stage that Reiss proposes in her theory is rapport, which basically means two people who have a close relationship and talk about how each other feel. Reiss suggests that a rapport can also mean that both people can have a similar background or a similar past “One or both believe they have so much in common that they feel a degree of mutual understanding.” (Borland, D. (1975). In order for this stage to become relevant the final stage …show more content…
This stage is about offering sympathy, and reinforcing all of the other stages. In order for this stage to be relevant the first, second and third stage would have to be completed. This stage is like a back bone for all the other ones, in that if all of the stages move forward than love between both people continues to develop. In the book one can see that as the book goes on the main characters bond and relationship develops into something that one would not expect. Now, in the beginning when she asked him to sleep with him there was no talk about sex, but as one is reading this book, it gets one to really wonder if they ever did or wanted to have sex and that’s where intimacy needed fulfillment and all of the other stages come in to