On Love

"...Surely there must be this thing called love and surely there must be this binding force that compells us to die and live and sing and kill, all in its name, and in a way that accounts for all of us..."

I guess I would first like to begin by saying that I believe love can be discussed in a much more specific way than how it is conventionally brought about. Consider what it means to love someone. Is it essentially the same as liking someone? What's the difference between loving your mother and loving your wife?

Is it an emotion? A state? Does it mean attachment? Is it in our brain, our heart, the soul? What does being in love mean?

People have so many different ways of describing love that talking about it present a problem. We simply don't have the same experiences or relationships to talk about love without defining it first. It seems intuitive that some people can be more in love than others, but is that true? And how can we know?

When we say we love someone, we have to have some idea of what love is. What makes a relationship special to where we can say it is love and when can we distinguish between love and romantic love? It is easy to judge love when we see it. If we can identify someone in a bad relationship, an odd couple that we don't understand what keeps them together, or a couple we suspect won't last another month-- we must know something about love.

But experience and thought can only go so far in knowing any one thing. What does research say about love? If you know me, and as you read I'm sure you will begin to, I personally place my faith in things I can trust. In things that can be seen to occur no matter how many times we observe it. I begin abstractly talking about things like love, and the soul, and God because I think it's important to try and define them. Because really, until we join the search, we really have only a superficial knowledge of these concepts. We are told about these things without ever really understanding them. And then the feeling of not knowing becomes comfortable, the mystery all but forgotten in our confident responses and the advice we give others. We turn the ear infront of spoken truths at every turn because we forgot we should be listening. This seems particularly evident with love when we're asked to explain it.

Try to explain what love means to you.

If you relied soley on your life experiences and knowledge to explain what love means to you, all you can explain is what love has come to mean to you based on what has happened to you. If you're very first experience was of abuse, then any relationship thereafter will seem like heaven, even if it is a particularly uninspiring relationship. Your ability to predict what will happen to others with different experiences and different ways of thinking about love has diminshed to practically zero. If it differs, and it probably does, we might explain love differently. You might say love is patient, love is kind; I might say love is spontaneous, love is sex. But surely there must be this thing called love and surely there must be this binding force that compells us to die and live and sing and kill, all in its name, and in a way that accounts for all of us...

From one theory, romantic love comes as an emotion that involves many areas of experience: emotional, cognitive, and motivational. From this perspective, love has different styles as well. The triangular theory of love by Robert Sternberg has become very influential in the modern conception of love. He names three components of love, ways in which we piece together our relation to people based on their status in our relationship, which arises when components are absent or present. These components are Intimacy, Passion, and Commitment.

Intimacy is the emotional component of love. It is the sharing of deeply personal information about each other and mutual acceptance. For some people, this is extremely hard to accomplish. If they have been hurt in their life before, are defensive or apprehensive because of it, or feel like they don't connect well with others; this can pose a real challenge to forming connections with other people.

Passion is the motivational force (drive) behind love. Sexual attraction, desire, sexual intimacy, all that stuff. Passion is shown to give rise to preoccupation and fascination with loved ones. It has been shown (which should be no surprise) to cause rapid arousal but shown to quickly fade.

Commitment is the cognitive component of love. This is actually very difficult to conceptualize. Once a person decides if he or she is in love, a certain amount of time passes. This initial decision eventually becomes a lasting sense of commitment (kinda like... classical conditioning). I believe there are also other things that can create this sense of commitment, such as a protective nature or a sense of attachment (the kind of attachment that an infant has for their mother) but... that's just my opinion.

A really interesting thing about the 3 components of love is that Sternberg takes them and creates a model of love that can account for all the differences between people! He calls it.. The Triangular Model of Love... or The Love Triangle ;)

Which, as you can see, lays out all the different kinds of love based on the components of love (intimacy, passion, commitment). We can see that "liking" someone is simply just being intimate with someone, which can be a frequent event in our lives as we meet and talk with strangers-- and because it is without passion (or attraction), it is essentially a friendship. So we love our friends.

But maybe you are having relationship problems and you're not sure why. I think it would be helpful to research this particular thing and figure out what's missing. If you click this link, The Triangular Theory of Love , Wikipedia will give you a little more details. For example, Companionate Love, which consists of Intimacy and Commitment, is said to be a long-term committed friendship (like a marriage) in which the passion has faded. Without identifying the problem and placing goals, it's not likely relationship problems will ever correct themselves. "Oh look, we need to talk more about what our feelings and what bothers us (intimacy) in order to prevent these feelings of anger" is an example of what might be said to repair relational intimacy.
In this triangle, Consummate Love is suppose to be the complete form of love. It is quite rare according to the researcher and it is difficult to obtain. It might be hard to even imagine what Consummate Love would look like. Luckily, we have great demonstrations of Consummate Love throughout history. Consummate Love has been around long before Sternberg invented the term. It is the beauty in Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, the crux of spirituality, the hype around Twilight. We often describe Consummate relationships with terms like soulmates or "the one".

Maybe you never really thought you loved anyone if these 3 components are all that love is. I'm sure we've all had a "boyfriend" or "girlfriend" by now-- so maybe you don't even think all this applies to you.

Well, there is clearly more to the picture. Psychologists speak of different kinds of love (or styles). This shouldn't be too surprising, but as an example, work in the field done by a couple of psychologists (Clyde and Susan Hendrick) suggested 6 styles of love among college students based on questions that students answered about themselves:

Romantic love--This is what most people refer to when they fall in love. This kind of love is basically characterized by passionate desire, lots of great sex, and associated with powerful physical attraction.
Game-playing love-- Characterized by lack or fear of commitment and getting over love affairs pretty easily
Friendship-love-- Loving attachment, deep friendship, and nonsexual affections. Thought to be the same emotion that binds friends and parents to children. Key word is basically attachment similar to the attachment infants have with their mothers.
Logical love-- Considers the costs and benefits of a partnership, also called pragmatic love.
Mania love (possessive/excited love)-- This is basically neurotic feelings about the lover. They get excited to where they can't sleep, when the lover ignores them they feel sick, ect ect. Very... very... unhealthy. Obviously.
Selfless love-- This is selfless giving and concern for the significant other. They list themselves as willing to do anything to simply help their lover, and view their lover's wishes and needs as far greater than their own. There may be a certain type of dependency here (although I'm not sure that's really in the research, just my lovely opinion once again).

Chances are you've had one of these 6 styles of love yourself. The point being that interpersonal styles like the 6 stated above are different from what Sternberg says love consists of (intimacy, passion, and commitment). Styles more have to do with personality than love as a concept.

So I think it would be pretty wise to assess Sternberg's model of love and see how this applies to you. And just because you see yourself in Consummate Love doesn't mean you are. That is a subject assessment and a big problem with studies like this. It would be better to examine the components intimacy, passion, and commitment and see if these things are qualities your relationship really possesses. Be realistic. What are some examples you can think of that characterize passion in the relationship? The hardest thing I have ever tried to do in my life so far is understanding myself. There are so many reasons why we don't really want to know everything about ourselves, and many more psychological structures in place to make sure we'll never find out.

But it can be done, to some extent, for the willing and the brave. Mostly so by asking questions. Do you keep things from your partner? Do you feel like there are some things you just can't tell him/her? What about passion-- is there a strong physical attraction? Sex? And if there is no commitment (That is, there is no offical title like boyfriend/girlfriend or husband/wife) then do you wish there was? Why? It is possible to change things for the better, to live in healthier relationships, love many people, and be self reliant and content.

There is this ignorance about love, which exists primarily in you girls, which holds that you will find your perfect match, fall in love, get married, have babies, live happily ever after. Even girls who disagree when questioned specifically about these things all tend to have these very expectations. I have seen some of the greatest suffering among people my age because of the framework this type of love fallacy creates within relationships. It is unyielding in its need to propagate security, from which should only be established by the self; unforgiving in its selfish quest to find "the one," disregarding relationships and burning bridges; unknowing of motivation; uncaring in matters of fulfillment. The goal of this kind of love is simply security rather than human compatibility. There is a romantic notion of "true love" and "soul mates". These words often have a prejudice against all other forms of love. If we want to have better relationships and experience higher forms of human connections, love must be a clear concept.

Someone once said to me in desperation, "love is so hard." And I thought... No it really isn't. My dog practically loves me unconditionally. We make love hard. We don't see people as they are, we see people as we are. We see people through a lens. A filter of experience and baggage. We can fantasize about someone and in doing so make them more desirable, overlooking their vices. Exaggerate their virtues. Experience is an endlessly thick filter which can bias the eyes.

We all yearn for better relationships and happiness. Where you fall in this triangle has it's own set of problems and obstacles... unless you're in the middle of the triangle of course. In which case, you probably thought all this was boring.

For the rest of us, a strong sense of self and identity is needed. Self reliance. I have not lived long enough or had enough experience to say this for sure, but I know of no couple who have tried to work on each other and succeeded. I know of no circumstance whereas a person "changed" the other. The only change I've seen in people come when they are alone. But I have heard rumors...

I hope my next blog will be on self reliance, because it was that concept alone which showed me a higher truth and convinced me of self actualization. Hopefully I'll explain more later.

"Your vision will become clear only when you look into your heart. Who looks outside, dreams. Who looks inside, awakens."
-- C.G. Jung (One of my favorite Psychologists)