What does it mean to love someone? Is it always the same or does it differ? What makes love last or disappear quickly into thin air?
At some point in life, we have all asked these questions. While romance and love are a part of everyone’s life, we have seldom been able to understand them in their entirety. Whether it is in the personal tandem or in the vicinity, romantic love nearly affects all of us. In fact in our younger years, we may have been obsessed with it, watched movies about it, read books and listened to songs and poems explaining its existence. And the field of psychology has been deeply immersed in the topic of love and romance, making an attempt to explain the beauty of it. While neurotransmitters are fired in the brain’s reward system when we are attracted to someone and falling in love, there are other components required to keep the love blooming. Let’s have a look at what they are!
The Triangular Theory of Love
The triangular theory of love outlines 3 components that can help understand love.
- Intimacy: Intimacy refers to feelings of closeness, connectedness, and bondedness that give rise to warmth in loving relationships.
- Passion: Passion refers to drives that lead to romance, physical attraction, sexual consummation, and related phenomena in loving relationships.
- Commitment: In the short-term, commitment refers to the decision to love someone. In the longer run, it refers to the commitment to maintain the love.
In conclusion, the intimacy component involves emotional investment, the passion component involves motivational involvement and the commitment component involves cognitive decision making.
Types of Love
Love is an emotion of strong affection, tenderness, or devotion towards someone. Based on the interrelationships between the above components, different kinds of love can be understood.
Liking
Liking emerges when one only experiences intimacy in a relationship. This usually involves our friendships. One feels closeness, bondedness, and warmth toward the other, without feelings of intense passion or long-term commitment.
Infatuated Love
“Love at first sight” is what we call infatuated love. Simply put as infatuation, this kind of love results from the experience of passionate arousal in the absence of intimacy and commitment. Infatuation is usually easy to spot, mostly by others and can dissipate as instantly as it emerges. However, in certain circumstances, infatuation can be quite lasting.
Empty Love
This kind of love emanates from the decision that one loves another and has commitment to that love in the absence of both intimacy and passion. It is usually seen in stagnant relationships that have been going on for years but the individuals have lost the emotional involvement as well as physical attraction. Empty love can either occur towards the end of long-term relationships or marriages or it can occur in the beginning, as in the case of arranged marriages where partners commit to loving each other without being emotionally invested or physically attracted to each other.
Romantic Love
When intimacy and passion combine, romantic love takes birth. In essence, it involves liking with an added side of passion. According to this view, romantic lovers are not only drawn physically to each other but are also bonded emotionally.
Companionate Love
This kind of love evolves from a combination of intimacy and commitment. We see companionate love in long-term friendships where connectedness and the decision to stay together take precedence.
Fatuous Love
Fatuous love emanates from the combination of passion and commitment. It is fatuous in the sense that a commitment is made on the basis of passion without the stabilizing element of intimate involvement. We often see this kind of love in whirlwind romances where a couple meets one day and gets engaged 2 weeks later, followed by a wedding a month later. While passion can develop in a split second, intimacy cannot and therefore, such relationships are prone to termination and in some cases, divorce.
Consummate Love
Also known as complete love, consummate love results from the full combination of emotions, motivations and cognitive decisions. It is a kind of love toward which many of us strive, especially in romantic relationships. However, attaining consummate love does not guarantee that it will last. We often also see this type of love between a parent and a child where there is deep love for the child (intimacy), motivation to provide for them (passion) and the decision to take care of them (commitment). This is relatively easier to maintain perhaps because of their bonding that starts from birth or because of evolutionary forces. Therefore, consummate love can be easier or more difficult to form and maintain, depending on the relationship and the situation in which it is developed and maintained.
Love, in all its forms, is an intricate blend of emotion, passion, and commitment. The psychology behind love and romance reminds us that while attraction may spark connection, it is intimacy and understanding that sustain it. True love is not merely found but cultivated through effort, vulnerability, and the conscious choice to keep showing up for one another every day.
Photo Credits:
First image: Arelix
Second image: kieferpix
References
Sternberg, R. J. (1986). A triangular theory of love. Psychological review, 93(2), 119.
Whiting-Madison, C. (2022). The psychology behind romance. Bartlesville Examiner-Enterprise. https://www.examiner-enterprise.com/story/lifestyle/2022/02/12/psychology-behinthe-psychology-behind-romance-romance/6710204001/
Sakshi
About the author
Sakshi is a clinical psychologist with a deep passion for understanding human behavior, a strong drive for research, and a keen eye for psychological intricacies. Committed to continuous learning, she seeks to explore every facet of psychology, from theory to practice, to better support and empower individuals. With a curiosity that fuels her pursuit of knowledge, she strives to bridge the gap between research and real-world applications, making psychology more accessible and impactful.
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