Chapter 8: Love

Objectives:

 Provide a brief history of love in Ancient Greece, Ancient Egypt,

Medieval Europe, 18th century England, and contemporary North
America
 Explain the three components of love identified by Sternberg (intimacy,
passion, and commitment) and how these components combine to
form eight different kinds of love.
 Describe the empirical evidence that supports Sternberg’s model.
 Describe the physiological, cognitive, and behavioral experience of
passionate love.
 Discuss the importance of neurotransmitter dopamine in the context of
romantic, passionate love.
 Explain the interplay of love and thoughts including the following:
o The implications of Rubin’s Love and Liking scales for how one
things about friends vs lovers.
o Evidence that one holds rosy views of one’s romantic partners.
o How romantic love makes it easier to put tempting alternatives
to one’s present partners out of one’s mind.
o How love alters one’s thoughts about oneself.
 Describe companionate love and differentiate it from compassionate
love and romantic love.
 Identify Lee’s six different styles of love and discuss how they could be
incorporated into the Sternberg’s model.
 Explain how romantic emotions change with age.
 Mention gender similarities and differences in love.
 Give evidence that love declines over time and specify three influences
on love that may help explain this decline.
 Explain people’s chances for long-lasting love and suggest what they
may do to increase those chances.
Chapter Outline

1. A Brief History of Love

2. Types of Love
3. Individual and Cultural Differences in Love
4. Does Love Last?
A Brief History of Love

Different cultures have held very different views of love:

- Cultural value: Is love desirable or undesirable?

- Sexuality: Should love be sexual or nonsexual?
- Sexual orientation: Should love involve same-sex or heterosexual
partners?
- Marital status: Should we love our spouses, or is love reserved for
others?

Only recently have some cultures come to believe that love and marriage go
together.

Today, the belief that romantic love is a reason to marry is commonplace in

North America

- However, that belief is not widely held in some other regions of the
world.

Types of Love

Three different building blocks are thought to combine to form different types
of love:

- Intimacy: feeling of warmth, understanding, trust, support, and

sharing.
- Passion: sexual desire, excitement, and need.
- Commitment: feelings of permanence, with a decision to work to
maintain the relationship.

Different mixtures of these components create different experiences.

Does love exist when intimacy, passion, and commitment are all absent? NO

- That would be a casual, uncommitted connection between people who

are probably just acquaintances, not friends.

Nonlove: intimacy, passion, and commitment are all absent.

Liking: high intimacy, but little passion or commitment.

Infatuation: high passion, but little intimacy or commitment.

Empty love: commitment without intimacy or passion.

Romantic love: a combination of intimacy and passion.

Companionate love: high intimacy and commitment, but little passion

- Closeness, communication, and sharing are coupled with investment in

the relationship in a deep, long-term friendship.

Fatuous love: passion and commitment in the absence of intimacy.

- Partners don’t know or necessarily like each other very much.

Consummate love: intimacy, passion, and commitment are all present to a

substantial degree.

Evidently, various meaning can underlie the expression “I love you.”

The triangle theory is correct about passion and intimacy are distinct
experiences.

- The regions of the brain that regulate sexual desire differ from those
that manage feelings of attachment and commitment.

Romantic, Passionate Love

Romantic love involves passion and it turns out that any form of strong
arousal, pleasant or unpleasant, can influence our feelings of romantic love.

Remarkably,

- Meeting a women on a spooky, tilting, and swaying suspension bridge

- Running in place for two minutes
- Watching a disgusting movie or
- Listening to a funny stand-up comedian

All increase men’s attraction to physically attractive women.

Arousal of Men Attractiveness of the Attractiveness of the

women is high women low
Low 26.1 15.1
high 32.4 9.4
Here are men’s judgments of the desirability of lovely or plain women who
the men encountered when their pulses were racing or when they were cool
and calm

High arousal exaggerated their reactions to the women.

Adrenaline fuels romantic love. Various events that excite us may increase
the love for our partners.

One aspect of romantic love is the exhilaration and excitement of high

arousal.

Some thoughts that underline romantic love are apparent in a Love Scale
that assesses:

- Intimacy: “I feel that I can confide in my partner about virtually

anything.”
- Dependence: “If I could never be with my partner, I would be
miserable.”
- Caring: “I would do almost anything for my partner.”

Romantic love is evidently a multifaceted experience that involves both

giving and taking.

In addition, “love is blind.”

- When people feel romantic attraction to others, they tend to

underestimate or ignore their lovers’ faults.

When men expected to date a

woman, they thought her lousy
work was better than it really
was.

Companionate Love

As a combination of intimacy and commitment, companionate love is a

comfortable, affectionate, trusting love based on friendship and
companionship.

After they have been married for many years. Happy couples tend to say:
 - “My spouse is my best friend.”
- “I like my spouse as a person.”

Long-lasting, satisfying marriages evidently include a lot of companionate

love.

The neuropeptide oxytocin appears to be involved in companionate love.

- Oxytocin promotes a soothing sense of well-being, and it may promote

enduring attachments to those who become associated with its
presence in the bloodstream.

Thus, there appear to be two major types of love that occur frequently in
American romance:

- A love that’s full of passion that leads a couple to marry.

- A love that’s full of friendship that underlies marriages that last.

Compassionate Love

A third type of love often found in successful romances combines the trust
and understanding of intimacy with compassion and caring that involves
selflessness and sacrifice on behalf of the beloved.

People who are high in compassionate love are empathic and generous,
and they take pleasure in providing their partner’s support.

Styles of Loving

Another scheme identifies six more themes of love experiences:

- Euros has a strong physical component.

- Ludus treats love as an uncommitted game.
o Men score higher on Ludus
- Storge emphasizes friendship.
o Women score high.
- Mania is demanding and possessive.
- Agape is altruistic, selfless, and dutiful.
- Pragma is practical and logical.
o Women score high.

Love styles remind us of intriguing scores of individuality in love experiences

that are sometimes overlooked.

Individual and Cultural Differences in Love

Culture

- Love is much the same around the world, but cultural nuances exist.
- Romantic fantasies are prominent in America, whereas the belief that
love is a mixed blessing is more common in China.
- the choice of a spouse is often a family decision in China, whereas
young adults in America typically expect that their choice will be
entirely up to them.

Certain people may be more likely than others to experience certain types of
love.

Attachment Styles

- Anxiety about abandonment and avoidance of intimacy are associated

with all the elements of love:
o Intimacy: secure people are more open and self-disclosing with
their partners than insecure people are.
o Passion: secure people are more satisfied with their sexual
interactions with their partners than insecure people are.
o Commitment: day by day, secure people are more satisfied with,
and are more committed to, their relationships than insecure
people are.
o Caring and caregiving: secure people provide more effective help
and support to their partners than insecure people do.
- Importantly, the quality of our attachments can vary from partner to
partner.
- We may be fairly secure in some of our relationships but relatively
insecure in others.

Age

- Most people are mellow with age.

- Emotions are less intense and generally more positive.
- The burning, urgent, intense emotions that lead young people to marry
seem to dwindle with time, being replaced by a more genial outlook on
love.

Men and Women

- Men and women are more similar than different when it comes to love.
- Men are more likely to believe in “love at first sight,” and they want
their loves to be passionate.
- Women are cautious and selective, and they feel passion more slowly.
Does love last?

The key question!

No… it doesn’t go unchanged. Romantic love decreases after people marry.

After two years of marriage, average spouses’ express affection for each
other only half as often as they did when they were newlyweds.

Divorces occur more frequently in the fourth year of marriage than at any
other time.

Why Doesn’t Romantic Love Last?

Perhaps we should expect romantic love to decline over time:

- Fantasy enhances romance, but it erodes with time.

- Novelty causes sexual arousal and adds excitement to new love, but it
fades with familiarity.
- Arousal fuels romance, but it, too, fades as time goes by.

Consider the frequency of

couples’ sexual intercourse which
is one measure of passion.

Passion clearly fades with time

and experience.

Passion seems to be the least

stable, least reliable component
of loving relationships, and
declines over decades (or
sooner).

So, What Does the Future Hold?

Often, the love that encourages people to marry is not the love that keeps
them together decades later.

Even those who remain very much in love have feelings that are less intense
than they used to be.

But companionate love is more stable than romantic love is.

 - So, you should commit yourself only to a lover who is also a good
friend.

Keep seeking new and engaging ways to have fun together.

And don’t be disappointed if your urgent desires gradually resolve into placid
by deep affection for your beloved.

- The happy result is likely to make you a lucky lover.