Fantasy world

Love is an emotion that nearly everyone has experienced at some time in their life. One would think that with such a familiar concept, researchers would agree on what constitutes love and how to measure it. That has not been the case. Most research on love is based on a priori theoretical conceptualizations. It's quite possible that if a researcher starts out by defining love and then develops a measure to quantify that conceptualization, the results would tend to reflect this process.

Some theories of Love

Attachment styles - We develop styles of love that are based on expectancies developed from childhood experiences with caregivers: Secure; Anxious/ambivalent; and Avoidant (Ainsworth, Blehar, Waters, & Wall, 1978; Hazan & Shaver, 1987; Shaver, Hazan and Bradshaw,1988).

Attachment Styles

Bowlby (1969) believed that infants should have an innate tendency to form attachments to their caregiver because physical proxemity to a caregiver increases the infant's chances for survival. Bowlby also proposed that infants and children build mental models of themselves and of their relationships with significant people in their lives and that these mental models are based on their interactions with their caregiver(s) over time. Does the mother pay attention to infant's signals about what it needs and act accordingly? or does she fail to behave in ways that show the infant that she cares about it's needs? When an individual is confident that the attachment figure will be available when needed, that individual will experience less fear than the individual who feels that the caregiver won't be available when needed. According to Bowlby, beliefs about the availability of the caregiver develop during infancy, childhood and adolescence and persist relatively unchanged throughout life. Bowlby also believes that expectations about accessibility and responsiveness of the caregiver are acceptably accurate representations of the individual's experiences.

If the caregiver is close enough physically, attentive, and responsive the infant feels secure, is self confident and feels loved. However if the caregiver is not close enough physically, not attentive, and/or not responsive the infant may

1. feel fear and anxiety and may emit attachment seeking behaviors such as looking for or at the caregiver, and atempting to reestablish contact; or
2. feel defensive and avoid the attachment figure.

This translates into three attachment styles:

* Secure - Feels that the partner is responsive and accessible.
* Anxious/Ambivalent - not sure whether the partner will be responsive and accessible. Results in anxiety about whether the partner will be there for them and intense reactions to separation.
* Avoidant - The person has learned that people tend to reject and rebuff them, so they become defensive and avoidant.

Hazan and Shaver used the following forced choice options to classify people into the three attachment style categories:

* Secure I find it relatively easy to get close to others and am comfortable depending on them and having them depend on me. I don't often worry about being abandoned or about someone getting too close to me.
* Avoidant I am somewhat uncomfortable being close to others; I find it difficult to trust them completely, difficult to allow myself to depend on them. I am nervous when anyone gets too close, and often love partners want me to be more intimate than I feel comfortable being.
* Anxious/Ambivalent I find that others are reluctant to get as close as I would like. I often worry that my partner doesn't really love me or won't want to stay with me. I want to merge completely with another person, and this desire sometimes scares people away.


Love Acts Behaviors are classified in terms of the functions they serve in facilitating reproduction. Four love tasks: 1) to attract a mate; 2) to retain the mate; 3) to reproduce; and 4) parental investment. (Buss, 1988; Swenson, 1972).

Love Styles Primary love styles: Eros - Love at first sight, based on physical attributes and is mostly physical arousal; Storge - loving affection that develops over time, is primarily affection and commitment; Ludos - a rover and collector of loves, very pluralistic. Secondary love styles: Mania - intense preoccupation with the loved one, intensly jealous and possessive, in need of constant reassurance of partner's love. Projects desired qualities on partner. Pragma - looking for a compatible partner; Agape - Selfless, caring without self interest. Lee, 1977; Hendrick & Hendrick, 1986;

Three dimensional view The experience of love is a function of levels of intimacy, commitment and passion (Sternberg, 1988). In the Table below, for each type of love, a plus sign indicates the presense of each dimension of love, and a minus sign indicates that the dimension is not present. Descriptions of what these combinations of the various love dimensions should tend to be like can be found here.

Emotional Intimacy

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 achieved through a process by which one comes to know one's partner through increasing levels of self disclosure of one's thoughts and feelings. During the early stages of a relationship when the participants are still getting to know one another, strong passionate emotions may result from increasingly intimate levels of disclosure. Later, after the partners have gotten to know each other well, feelings of closeness, friendship, warmth, and caring will tend to predominate. For emotional intimacy to flourish, both partners must be understanding, open, supportive, and must feel like they can talk about anything without fear of being rejected. As intimacy progresses, the partners will find that they share some degree of overlap in their values and beliefs about life; however, there will be differences in opinion to some degree as well. For intimacy to develop to its fullest, it is essential that both partners be able to forgive and to show compassion and kindness toward each other, especially when they disagree or make mistakes. Mutual respect and trust are essential to this process.

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 publically formalized legal contracts (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.

Passion

The passionate dimension of love can best be characterized by feelings of being in love . The passion dimension focuses on 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 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, rather than on whether they share one's values, beliefs, interests or attitudes. Depending on the level of intimacy and commitment, the passionate aspect of love may include anxiety and uncertainty because one might not be sure that the feelings are mutual. Idealization of the person (seeing only their good qualities and projecting on them the qualities that you want them to possess) is also quite common when the passionate aspects of love are intense. Passion is typically most intense at the beginning of romantic relationships when you don't know much about the person and continues to be at high levels as self disclosure increases. Over time, as the relationship progresses (as you get to know your partner better and the physical arousal aspects habituate), the experience of passion diminishes.

Passionate and companionate love Passionate love is an intense state of longing for union with another. It has three components: 1) cognitive - intrusive preoccupation with the person, idealization of that person, and desire to know the person; 2) Emotional - Attraction/Sexual attraction, positive and negative feelings, longing for reciprocity, desire for union, physiological arousal; and 3) Behavioral - Actions to determine the other's feelings, studying the person, service to the person, maintaining physical closeness. Companionate love is the affection that we feel for those with whom our lives are deeply intertwined. (Hatfield; Berscheid and Walster, 1974).