Psychology Of Love Essay Research Paper Theories

Psychology Of Love Essay, Research Paper

Theories of LoveWhat exactly does the word love mean. Webster s dictionary defines love as : A deep, tender, ineffable feeling of affection and solicitude toward a person, such as that arising from kinship, recognition of attractive qualities, or a sense of underlying oneness. This is a very basic thought of the word love. Love does not have an finite meaning. You can love in many different ways. For example I might say I love my brother, and I also might say I love my car. But do I really love my car like I love my brother. Of course I don t. There are many different types of love and many ways to love.Sternberg s Theory of LoveIn the last two decades, Robert Sternberg, a psychologist at Yale University, has done a great deal of work in describing love and determining what makes a love relationship successful. Sternberg suggests three components of love and various combinations of these components form the different types of love. The three components of love are intimacy, passion, and commitment. Intimacy: Intimacy is the emotional component in Sternberg’s love triangle. The emotional intimacy dimension of love is best characterized by feeling love for someone rather than being “in love” with them. The emotional intimacy dimension focuses on liking, friendship, trust and feelings of emotional closeness that result from being able to share one’s innermost thoughts and feelings with a partner. Intimacy is the emotional sense of bondedness, connectedness, closeness. Passion: Passion is the motivational component of Sternberg’s love theory. The passionate dimension of love can best be characterized by those intense feelings of arousal that arise from physical attraction and sexual attraction. Passion may also arise from increasing levels of self disclosure as intimacy develops in a relationship. Passion is that intense euphoric “high” that you may experience when you are in love–you feel euphoric–on top of the world–your heart races, and you get butterflies in your stomach. You yearn to be physically close to and to join with the person–You often can’t stop thinking about the person. At first, passion is often based on the more external qualities of how the person looks and acts. A good description of passion would be animal instincts.Commitment: The commitment dimension of love is often viewed as the decision to stay with one’s partner for life. Commitments may range from simple verbal agreements (agreements not to become emotionally and/or sexually involved with other people) to publicly formalized legal contracts (marriage). Commitment without one or both of the other elements, constitutes an empty marriage. However, commitment is more than simply agreeing to stay with your partner through bad times. Commitment means being devoted to doing things to nurture the relationship and protect it from harm and to fix it if damaged. Both partners care about each other’s needs and must be willing to put each other’s needs first–including being willing to make personal sacrifices for the good of the relationship. The partners should be willing to depend on each other and feel secure that each will be loyal to each other and to the relationship. Sternberg suggest that the three components of love can be arranged in a variety of ways to create seven different types of loveLiking: Liking is a form of love with intimacies there but you don’t have passion and you don’t have commitment. You know, when you really like somebody. You feel a bondedness to them, a connectedness, you feel a sense of repoire. But you are not passionate with that person, there’s no physical goings on. You enjoy being around them when you are around them and there’s no commitment. There is not a long term commitment to making the relationship last.Infatuated love: Infatuation defined by Sternberg is passion without intimacy or commitment. So once again, when you are infatuated, “Hey, they really turn me on. In other words, passion, intense emotional desire, intense physical desire but no intimacy, no sense of bondedness or connectedness and no sense of commitment or a sense of needing to maintain the durability of the relationship.Empty love: Empty love is commitment without passion or intimacy. Empty love is when you are in a relationship, you are committed to making it work, you are going to stay together, you are going to raise the kids, you are going to do the thing but there’s just no passion anymore. There’s just no intimacy there. You become room mates living in separate ends of the house. Romantic love: Romantic love is intimacy and passion without commitment. In this type of love, the lover thinks constantly about the loved one, is jealous, unrealistic, will tolerate anything, is sexually attracted by physical appearance and needs repeated reassurance that he/she is loved in return. This is usually characterized by “love at first sight.” Fatuous love: Fatuous love. Fatuous love is passion and commitment without intimacy. You are committed to the relationship, it is intensely physical, intensely passionate, but there is really no bondedness there. You don’t link up, you don’t have a sense of closeness mentally, you don’t have a real repoire. The only time there’s a sense of closeness is when you are having sex. The only time you feel that you are one is when you are literally in the middle of love making. But the rest of the time there’s really no intimacy there. Some of you ma