LOVE, TRIANGULAR THEORY OF LOVE

Love is an emotion of strong affection and personal attachment. In philosophical context, love is a virtue representing all of human kindness, compassion, and affection. Love is central to many religions, as in the Christian phrase, "God is love" or Agape in the Canonical gospels. Love may also be described as actions towards others (or oneself) based on compassion. Or as actions towards others based on affection.

TRIANGULAR THEORY OF LOVE

The triangular theory of love is a theory of love developed by psychologist Robert Sternberg. The theory characterizes love within the context of interpersonal relationships by three different components:

Intimacy: Which encompasses feelings of closeness, connectedness, and bondedness.

Passion: Which encompasses drives that lead to romance, physical attraction, and sexual consummation.

Commitment: Which encompasses, in the short term, the decision to remain with another, and in the long term, the shared achievements and plans made with that other.

The “amount” of love one experiences depends on the absolute strength of these three components; the “type” of love one experiences depends on their strengths relative to each other. Different stages and types of love can be explained as different combinations of these three elements; for example, the relative emphasis of each component changes over time as an adult romantic relationship develops. A relationship based on a single element is less likely to survive than one based on two or three elements.

PASSIONATE LOVE

Passionate love is emotional, exciting, intense. Hatfield (1988) defines it as “a state of intense longing for union with another”. If reciprocated, one feels fulfilled and joyous, if not, one feels empty or despairing. Like other forms of emotional excitement, passionate love involves a mix of elation and gloom, tingling exhilaration and dejected misery.

Passionate love is a complex functional whole including appraisals or appreciations, subjective feelings, expressions, patterned physiological processes, action tendencies, and instrumental behaviors. Reciprocated love (union with the other) is associated with fulfillment and ecstasy. Unrequited love (separation) with emptiness, anxiety, or despair" (Hatfield & Rapson, 1993, p. 5). While research on love has flourished over the past 20 years, Hatfield’s early research on this topic was not without critics. 

During the 1970s, U.S. Senator William Proxmire railed against researchers who were studying love and derided the work as a waste of taxpayer dollars (Hatfield, 2000). Despite the debate, the work created by Hatfield and her colleagues contributed tremendously to our understanding of love and inspired further research on attraction, attachment, and interpersonal relationships. 

Psychologists and researchers have proposed a number of different theories of love. The following are four of the major theories proposed to explain liking, love, and emotional attachment.

LIKING VS. LOVING: Psychologist Zick Rubin proposed that romantic love is made up of three elements: attachment, caring, and intimacy. Attachment is the need to receive care, approval, and physical contact with the other person. Caring involves valuing the other persons 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.

COMPASSIONATE VS. PASSIONATE LOVE: According to psychologist Elaine Hatfield and her colleagues, there are two basic types of love: compassionate love and 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 each other. Passionate love is characterized by intense emotions, sexual attraction, anxiety, and affection. When these intense emotions are reciprocated, people feel elated and fulfilled. Unreciprocated love leads to feelings of despondence and despair. Hatfield suggests that passionate love is transitory, usually lasting between 6 and 30 months. 

According to Hatfield, passionate love arises when cultural expectations encourage falling in love, when the person meets your preconceived ideas of an ideal lover, 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 the intensity of passionate love, Hatfield suggests that this is rare.

THE COLOR WHEEL MODEL OF LOVE: In his 1973 book The Colors of Love, 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. 

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, a combination of Eros and Ludos results in Mania, or obsessive love.

LEE’S 6 STYLES OF LOVING

Three primary styles:

 Eros – Loving an ideal person

 Ludos – Love as a game

 Storge – Love as friendship

Three secondary styles:

 Mania (Eros + Ludos) – Obsessive love

 Pragma (Ludos + Storge) – Realistic and practical love

 Agape (Eros + Storge) – Selfless love 

COMPANIONATE LOVE

Companionate love refers to the feelings of intimacy and affection we feel for another person when we care deeply for the person but do not necessarily experience passion or arousal in his or her presence. Companionate love, as in the love between two best friends, grows out of a mutual enjoyment in companionship and the intimacy of a close friendship. This love develops slowly and a significant amount of comfort develops between the partners This love, however, need not be between two people, as it is often felt for animals by their caretakers. Many single adults live with a dog or cat that provides friendship and camaraderie for the owner.

Not all love is physical and not all love is passionate. Love can have many different hues and love can sometimes mean a term of great respect along with a term of companionate endearment as opposed to physical or emotional love. Love can be one of the most difficult things to understand and adding to that confusion can sometimes be the notion of maybe your feelings are companionate and not passionate.

Life is complicated enough without emotions getting involved but part of being a human being is dealing with emotions and the granddaddy of all pain in the neck emotions is love. Love can be a pain in the neck because the emotions and feelings generated by love can be difficult to figure out, they can cause confusion, and they can cause problems when the feelings on both sides of a relationship do not match. Love can sometimes be companionate and sometimes love can be passionate and one of the most difficult things to figure out, and sometimes to also accept, is when you want love to be passionate but it is actually companionate. Companionate love is the love of a friend for another friend and is something that is just as treasured as passionate love but it can sometimes be difficult to understand what your own feelings really are not to mention trying to understand what the other person is feeling as well.

Companionate love has the potential to become passionate but many times there is a long period of evaluation by both sides to see where their emotions truly stand on the issue. Companionate love is just as important in a person’s life as passionate love and companionate love seems to be a little less difficult to evaluate for the average person. Sometimes when you get involved in a new relationship it is wise to enter that relationship with your mind open to any possibility. Companionate love is not a guarantee either and the emotional value of companionate love is just as valuable as passionate love but many times passionate love can be stronger if it develops and grows from companionate love or the feeling that you and your future significant other are good friends before you decide to take the relationship to the next level. There is a lot to be said for that age old notion of good friends making great lovers and it may be in your own emotional interest to follow that adage as you go through life and relationships.

Love at first sight is a difficult thing to justify. It is difficult to say that someone you just met possesses all of the traits you need in a significant other and that you know that right from the very beginning of the relationship. A relationship is a growing experience between two people and it does not matter if that relationship is at the acquaintance level, the friendship level, or escalates to a romantic relationship. People are complex beings and to say that you know everything you need to know about them to consider them proper romantic material after only your first meeting is a very risky proposition. Time can solidify any relationship but more important than just the simple passing of time is the experience of time spent together and it doesn’t matter if you are looking at a friendship or a romantic relationship. Experience is the best teacher and companionate love can certainly develop into romantic love over time but the notion that falling in love on the first meeting is potentially an invitation to disaster.

Younger people rely greatly on companionate love especially at the high school level where many young people begin to learn how to develop relationships for the first time. The enthusiasm of youth can also help cloud the line between companionate love and passionate live as well and some people would also call that cloudy line the chemical imbalance of youth. However you want to refer to it the fact is that many young people can easily confuse companionate love for passionate love and get themselves into a lot of trouble. With age comes experience and it is very difficult for people with very little life experience to be able to accurately distinguish companionate love from passionate love.