4 PSYCHOLOGICAL THEORIES OF LOVE
Why do people fall in love? Why are some forms
of love so lasting and others so fleeting? Psychologists and researchers have
proposed several different theories of love to explain how love forms and
endures.
Love
is a basic human emotion, but understanding how and why it happens is not
necessarily easy. In fact, for a long time, many people suggested that love was
simply something too primal, mysterious, and spiritual for science to ever
fully understand.
The
following are four of the major theories proposed to explain love and other
emotional attachments.
1: Liking vs. Loving
Psychologist
Zick Rubin proposed that romantic love is made
up of three elements:
Attachment
Caring
Intimacy
Rubin
believed that sometimes we experience a great amount of appreciation and
admiration for others. We enjoy spending time with them and want to be around
them, but this doesn't necessarily qualify as love. Instead, Rubin referred to
this as liking.
Love,
on the other hand, is much deeper, more intense, and includes a strong desire
for physical intimacy and contact. People who are "in like" enjoy
each other's company, while those who are "in love" care as much
about the other person's needs as they do their own.
Attachment
is the need to receive care, approval, and physical contact with the other
person. Caring involves valuing the other person needs and happiness as much as
your own. Intimacy refers to the sharing of thoughts, desires, and feelings
with the other person.
Based
upon this definition, Rubin devised a
questionnaire to assess attitudes about others and found that these scales of
liking and loving provided support for his conception of love.
2: Compassionate vs.
Passionate Love
According
to psychologist Elaine Hatfield and her colleagues,
there are two basic types of love:
Compassionate love
Passionate love
Compassionate love
is characterized by mutual respect, attachment, affection, and trust.
Compassionate love usually develops out of feelings of mutual understanding and
shared respect for one another.
Passionate love
is characterized by intense emotions, sexual attraction, anxiety, and
affection. When these intense emotions are reciprocated, people feel elated and
fulfilled. Un-reciprocated love leads to feelings of despondency and despair.
Hatfield suggests that passionate love is transitory, usually lasting between 6
and 30 months.
Hatfield
also suggests that passionate love arises when cultural expectations encourage
falling in love, when the person meets your preconceived ideas of an ideal
love, and when you experience heightened physiological arousal in the presence
of the other person.
Ideally,
passionate love then leads to compassionate
love, which is far more enduring. While most people desire relationships that
combine the security and stability of compassionate with intense passionate
love, Hatfield believes that this is rare.
3: The Color Wheel
Model of Love
In
his 1973 book The Colors of Love,
psychologist John Lee compared styles of love to
the color wheel. Just as there are three primary colors, Lee suggested that
there are three primary styles of love. These three styles of love are:
Eros:
The term eros stems from the Greek word meaning "passionate" or
"erotic." Lee suggested that this type of love involves both physical
and emotional passion.
Ludos:
Ludos comes from the Greek word meaning "game." This form of love is
conceived as playful and fun, but not necessarily serious. Those who exhibit
this form of love are not ready for commitment and are wary of too much intimacy.
Storge:
Storge stems from the Greek term meaning "natural affection." This
form of love is often represented by familial love between parents and
children, siblings, and extended family members. This type of love can also
develop out of friendship where people who share interests and commitments
gradually develop affection for one another.
Continuing
the color wheel analogy, Lee proposed that just
as the primary colors can be combined to create complementary colors, these
three primary styles of love could be combined to create nine different
secondary love styles. For example, combining Eros and
Ludos results in mania or obsessive love.
Lee’s 6 Styles of
Loving
Three
primary styles:
1.
Eros – Loving an ideal person
2.
Ludos – Love as a game
3.
Storge – Love as friendship
Three
secondary styles:
1.
Mania (Eros + Ludos) – Obsessive love
2.
Pragma (Ludos + Storge) – Realistic and
practical love
3.
Agape (Eros + Storge) – Selfless love
4: Triangular Theory
of Love
Psychologist
Robert Sternberg proposed a triangular theory
suggesting that there are three components of love:
Intimacy
Passion
Commitment
Different
combinations of these three components result in different types of love. For
example, combining intimacy and commitment results in companionate love, while
combining passion and intimacy leads to romantic love.
According
to Sternberg, relationships built on two or more
elements are more enduring than those based on a single component. Sternberg
uses the term consummate love to describe combining intimacy,
passion, and commitment. While this type of love is the strongest and
most enduring, Sternberg suggests that this type of love is rare.
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