Douglas Winslow Cooper,
PhD
9 April 2019
"What the world needs now is love, sweet love. It's the only thing that there's just too little of...." Dionne Warwick and Diana Ross helped make famous this 1965 song by Hal David and Burt Bacharach. True enough, we need more love, but what goes into
making a successful romantic relationship?
In
her excellent textbook, Psychology,
Rose M. Spielman (2017) cites the work of Robert Sternberg (1986), who
identified three key elements to romantic attraction:
Passion - intense physical
attraction
Intimacy - sharing of very
personal matters
Commitment – promise to maintain
support
The
highest form of love combines all three,
Consummate love = passion + intimacy +
commitment.
Those
who share consummate love are indeed fortunate.
Other
forms have only two of these elements,
Romantic love = passion + intimacy,
without commitment
Companionate love = intimacy +
commitment, without passion
Fatuous love = passion + commitment,
without intimacy
Whether
such loves can long endure, considering their missing elements, is open to question,
but companionate love often seems to.
Finally,
three forms of “love” are even more limited:
Infatuation = passion
Liking = intimacy
Empty love = commitment
As
we age, different forms of love prevail, and we try to make the best of our
situation.
###
Spielman,
R. M. (2017) Psychology, OpenStax,
Rice University, Houston, TX 77005.
Sternberg,
R. J. (1986) “A triangular theory of love.” Psychological
Review, 93, 119-135.
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