The Triangular Theory Of Love

Love in terms of a relationship can be described as an experience between two people sharing mutual feelings, understandings and the enjoyment of being with one another. What love is varies from person to person; Psychologist Robert Sternberg came up with the triangular theory of love stating there are three main components for any love relationships. Another psychologist Elaine Hatfield suggests that there are two basic types of love for relationships. On the other hand, an anthropologist Helen Fisher explains that love is a primarily a human-mating motivational drive, rather than an emotion (Fisher, H. 2004). With these three theories of love, this essay looks at the different ways of how love can or cannot survive in a love relationship.

We live in a society that has increasingly stomped on love, depicting it as cruel, superficial and full of complications. Nowadays it is easy for people to claim that they are in love, even when their actions say otherwise, and it is just as easy to claim that they are not when they really are. Real love is difficult to find and keeping it alive is even harder, especially when one must overcome their own anxieties and uncertainties. This is the main theme present in Russell Banks’ short story “Sarah Cole: A Type of Love Story,” as well as in “The Fireman’s Wife,” written by Richard Bausch. These narratives, although similar in some aspects, are completely different types of love stories.

In the modern world, there is a difficult word that people are facing and having a hard time to identify it, which is the word “love.” Nonetheless, there is a triangular theory that carried out by Robert Sternberg which helps people to understand love. The three angles are used to represent three dimensions (intimacy, passion, and commitment), and each point represent the extreme of each dimension. This essay mainly discusses about Robert Sternberg and how to improve the current relationship.

Love is a term used daily in one’s life. Many categorize love in many forms. These forms differ from one-another such as the difference between love for food and love for one’s spouse. However, in the play; “A Midsummer Night’s Dream”, love takes different forms than the ones experienced in reality. One can classify the different types of love used in this play into three different categories; true love, love produced by cupid’s flower, and the state of lust.

Laura Kipnis’s “Against Love”, and Raymond Carver’s “What We Talk about When We Talk about Love” ,brings up the issue of what is the definition of love and is love what we think it is. Love has changed in comparison to what it once was, and we now loosely use the term, but what does it truly mean, and why do we buy in to it. Kipnis’s essay develops the idea that this “mature love” is when someone can love and be loved, and she takes the position that this does not happen. Although Kipnis believes mature love is neither a realistic expectation nor a good thing to have, I claim that the idea of mature love is not bogus, because even though it is rare to find, and may even take a few tries, I believe it is possible for people to have this mature love. Unlike Kipnis too, I believe mature love can take on different forms, and doesn’t have to just be so black and white like Kipnis explains it as.

1862 England (Victorian Era) was somewhat of an uptight society, especially compared to today. The majority of people, especially those in the upper class, were expected to be utmostly prim and proper and follow societal norms at all times. This included love, or what love was defined as during the period. George Meredith, in his poem aptly titled “Modern Love”, sets a scene where a husband and wife are sleeping side by side, both reflecting sorrowfully on their melancholy marriage. Meredith argues in this poem that the institution of modern love is inherently flawed, by exposing to the reader that while the husband and wife still care for each other, they want to leave each other because they are both scared of “modern love”. By doing so, Meredith is able to justify his overarching message that applies to all: love is a feeling that cannot be artificially replicated, and attempting to do so is only a detriment.

People are prone to others, to hold onto ideals they cherish the most. We as human beings need some sort of physical form to attach ourselves to no matter what circumstance may be presented in front of us. Love is just one of the many presented circumstances that require such attachments, the purest and most in depth circumstance that anyone could ever be a part of. The characters within the story “What We Talk About When We Talk About Love” are considered to be within the boundaries of an in-love relationship. They show the differences between couples, the good and evil, and even what the betrayal of previous marriages can do to a person’s ability to fall in love again. There is one key to being able to succeed without probable cause to

Love is a special emotion that most individuals strives for. Part of a human’s nature is to love and long for another individual. This feeling has existed since the beginning and will continue to exist until the end. The term “love,” however, is very broad. To understand more easily what the term means, the Ancient Greeks came up with three terms to symbolize the three main types of love. The three classical types of love are very important to understand, as they will continue to exist until the world ends. The selected poems read reflect three classical types of love.

1. According to Robert Sternberg, love goes through 3 stages of love he calls “The three dimension of love; passion, intimacy, and commitment. Sternberg believes when you go through the three dimension of love, there are also seven different type of love. The seven different type of love is liking, infatuation, empty love, romantic love, fatuous love, companionate love, and consummate love. The first dimension of love is passion; it is the process where we first start falling in love with a partner. Passion is what I call the “getting to know each other” stage of a relationship. The second part of the three dimension of love is intimacy. Intimacy is when you feel close to a person whether it’s emotionally or physically. It is also a stage where you share your deepest secret about you to the person who you feel that you’re in love with. Intimacy is where you feel the closest in your relationship. The third and final stage of the three dimension of love is commitment. Commitment is the phase where people decide that being with that one person is enough and they would spend the rest of their life being together that leads to marriage and children. I feel that Sternberg’s dimension of love is associated to Erikson’s intimacy vs. isolation. “Adults seek someone with whom to share their lives in an enduring and self-sacrificing commitment. Without such commitment, they risk profound aloneness and isolation.” (Berger, p.525) I believe

Detached from love, being the “unloved”, and not knowing how to seek or expel love are all problems that are relevant to the lives of many. Through the plot of Ernest Hemingway’s “Soldier’s Home,” Jesse Lee Kercheval’s “Carpathia,” and Susan Minot’s “Lust,” it is evident that love and its psychology plays a major role in one’s self worth and ability to love and accept it in

Throughout history, the media has shown many different sides of love. Weather it be peaceful, violent, dangerous, beautiful, almost all forms of the media have shown love in some way. In the novel The Great Gatsby, love is shown between many different characters in different ways. The reader experiences love at its best and worst. We see relationships flourish, rekindle and end between the different characters. The most controversial relationship is the relationship between Daisy and Tom. Through infidelity, and mistrust, tragedy occurs. Other characters become associated with their marital problems, showing different kinds of love and relationships. In the play Hamlet, the reader also experiences many different kinds of love, ranging from

Love is said to be the greatest human experience in which mankind are privilege to partake in. To love can be a wondrous experience filling life with bliss and other strong emotions. Some people believe to love is to be alive and be able to see the good in the world and others. The purpose of this paper is to examine and find a better understanding of what is love, to explore what people believe love to be, and what lies surround the perception of love and to explore and expose what the meaning true love is or at the very least the authors understanding of the perception of love. In addition to exploring the concept, deception and the truth of love,

In M. Scott Peck’s work, The Road Less Traveled, he says “Love is too large, too deep ever to be truly understood or measured or limited within the framework of words” (81). He also seeks to define love as “The will to extend one's self for the purpose of nurturing one's own or another's personal growth” (81). For Peck, he recognizes that the nature of love is so mysterious that a true satisfactory definition of love has yet to be created and suspects his own definition to be inadequate. He also recognizes that love is categorically vast in that it is divided into eros, philia, agape, and others.

In “The Beginners” by Raymond Carver, the theme of the story is Nature of Love. The author provides a different insight of what love is and what love can be. The author creates four different couples to explain their perspectives on what love is and how love can be shown. In this way, it shows that love cannot be absolute. It is through these relationships, where they support the theme of Nature of Love by their behavior towards their significant other.

In ‘The Art of Loving’, the difference in immature and mature love is discussed. In the former, love is indicated by craziness while in the latter, it is a state of productiveness with elements such as care, respect and responsibility (Formm, 1989).