Theories of Love and Friendship Essay

Love is unique in its striking ability to be a driving force in dictating interpersonal relationships. It patterns behavior and orients individuals towards their distinct, unique attractions. According to Velleman, love penetrates deeper than one’s qualities; it extends to one’s rational will, or the essence of a person. To him, though love appears to have particularity, it is also a moral emotion. Kolodny subscribes to the relationship theory, asserting that an ongoing, interpersonal, and historical relationship with a relative is a part of the reason for love. In Kolodny’s view, the existence of the true self is irrelevant, as is the morality of love. Both Velleman and Kolodny disprove the quality theory; however, their perceptions of love and its morality differ. I believe that Kolodny is correct in his view that morality is irrelevant to love and that there must be factual reasons for love. Although it is enticing to believe that one is attracted to the essence of another, the essence is not motivation enough for love. The relationship theory takes into account the motivation needed to love a particular person from a historical, interpersonal, and ongoing perspective.

When one looks at romantic love, one would conclude that it is a social dyad that brings about certain responsibilities between two people in a relationship such as honesty, protection, openness and expressions of love. (William, 2008: 76). Contrasting with

One of the most complicated experiences in life, love cannot be precisely defined, but some basic indications help to characterize the feeling. Love is a very deep, passionate affection one person has for another or a relationship of the same nature that implies a unique intensity of emotion. It requires an especially strong connection and compatibility between two people, usually identified by a total understanding and respect for each other and a fundamental similarity in ideology. Love can also be seen in the way it alters people’s normal behavior; when someone is in love, the object of their affection seems like the most important thing in the world, and they do extreme things for that feeling to be requited. Love cannot easily be

The nature of love according to Nozick is the desire to form a “we” with the person you feel romantic love for, the desire to become one with the loved one. When two individuals are mutually in romantic love with one another, they both desire to form a “we” with each other. Once two romantic

In the movie Casablanca, directed by Michael Curtiz, two different kinds of love are exposed. The love relationship between Ilsa Lund and Rick is a more passionate relationship while the one between Ilsa and Victor Laszlo is more intimate. Love is composed of different feelings and because of that it can be expressed, as seen in Casablanca, in different ways. “The Intimate Relationship Mind”, a text by Garth J. O. Fletcher and Megan Stenswick, helps support that claim providing a scientific background on how love is shaped by those different feelings. It says that “love is composed of three distinct and basic components that each represent evolved adaptations; namely, intimacy, commitment,

The human idea of love is quite possibly the most misunderstood in today’s society. Love can be between a man and woman, mother/father and their kids, or even really good friends. However, these relationships of love go through many interactions and stages to start and progress. Many psychological events must occur and be worked through in order to be successful. All relationships must endure the five perspectives of human behavior. These perspectives are biological, learning, social and cultural, cognitive, and psychodynamic influences.

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.

The original study “The nature of love” was focused on gaining more understanding of human development (Hock, 2013). It involved a series of experiments done by Harry Harlow in 1958, in which he

Friendship, on the other hand, is the mutual affection established between two people. It can be called an interpersonal bond established between two individuals. A bond established out of sympathy, care, honesty, altruism, understanding and enjoyment.

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

In Love 2.0, Barbara Fredrickson stands by the belief that her improved definition love does not have to happen in close relationships, and can happen anywhere, between anyone. This essay will seek to explore the extent to which close personal relationships influence positivity resonance - a better measure of love - by analyzing the documented experiments and research found in the selection.

For centuries scholars have tried to define love to a ‘t’. Neuroscientists currently believe that the basic human emotions and motivations arise from distinct circuits or systems of neural activity (Davidson, 1994; Panksepp,

“The second ingredient in Sternberg’s scheme is intimacy. Intimacy, in his view, is the common core of all love relationships.

Imagine your sole confidante, childhood playmate, personal comedian and physiologist disclosing your secrets to a stranger. Unfortunately, this stranger happens to be the person who enforce a form of punishment for the actions that were once a secret. Furthermore, this confidante is considered your friend. Does an instance of this friend disclosing your secret of immoral activities to a person of authority violate the success of the friendship? In fact, this act is not a violation of the laws of friendship. The ideas of friendship are subjective, and thus where you might think your friend’s actions are unjust, your friend is actually looking out for your best interest and security. Also, a good friend would not desire

When discussing love, people generally think about the love between a husband and wife, or the love between a couple in a romantic partnership, and that is one type of love that I will be discussing. In addition to romantic love, there are other types of love also. There is the love we have for our children, our families, and also the love that we have for our friends. All of these types of love share some of the same attributes, however, they have differences also. In reading and researching different types of love, I have found that romantic love and friendship seem to be the most similar in nature, although they have differences, they share a lot of the same attributes. I found that friendship and romantic love tend to have more similarities than differences. In this paper I will examine romantic love and friendship. I will discuss the definitions of the two, and what elements each of these have. I will discuss the different theories of love, and I will compare and contrast the similarities and differences between romantic love and friendship.