Contents
Every relationship has important ingredients. Knowing what exactly your feeling is made of will help you build a deeper relationship.
“I dated Max for a month when I witnessed a terrible car accident,” says Olga, 30, a marketing manager. “I tried to calm one of the drivers and at the same time I clearly understood that the only person who could help in this situation was my new acquaintance.” This realization was very important to her. “I realized that with Max I feel safe. Despite the fact that we still did not know each other well enough, he had already become my main support and protection. That day I realized that I loved him.”
Pass the tests
- What do you unconsciously expect from life together?
- Are you prone to failure in love?
- How strong is your need for love?
Scientists are trying to explain the emergence of feelings of love by chemical reactions that occur in our brain. Studies show that falling in love lowers serotonin levels, leading to feelings of “lovesickness,” while levels of the stress-causing hormone cortisol rise, leaving us constantly feeling restless and aroused. It also suppresses our ability to be guided by the opinions of others, which leads to unpredictable consequences.
However, outside of scientific laboratories, understanding the true nature of love does not seem so obvious. Psychologist Robert Sternberg, one of those who study this area, believes that “love plays such a huge role in our lives that not studying it is like not noticing the obvious”1. Psychologist John Van Epp agrees with him. According to him, “people usually perceive love as something irrational, but studying it from the position of psychology helps to perceive this feeling as something that can be controlled.”2.
Read more:
- What keeps a couple together?
Nice couple?
When it comes to relationships between people, we must take into account two nuances: how we see our relationship and what is our ideal. According to Robert Sternberg, the situation is most complicated by the fact that we very often do not understand how what we actually have looks like. In doing his research, he asked people to talk about it, and most answered incorrectly. “Many insisted, for example, that they wanted intimacy, but in their relationship they showed completely different priorities,” he says. “In order to be better suited to each other, you first need to understand your relationship.”
Robert Sternberg identified eight types of love, each of which is determined by the relationship between the three components of love.
Very often, partners have incompatible types of love, and they don’t even know about it, because when we meet for the first time, we usually pay attention to what brings us together, and not to existing differences. Later, couples notice problems that arise that never seem to be resolved, despite the relationship’s continued strengths.
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- Five myths about love
When 42-year-old Eugene and 37-year-old Karina met, their relationship was filled with passion. They experienced a strong physical attraction to each other and therefore considered themselves kindred spirits. The fact that they see the continuation of the relationship in different ways came as a surprise to them. They went on vacation to the islands, where Eugene proposed to Karina, and she took it as the highest manifestation of love – this was what she dreamed of. But for Zhenya, it was just a romantic gesture. “He did not perceive marriage as a manifestation of true affection – now Karina is well aware of this. – When we returned home, the question of the marriage ceremony did not come up. Zhenya just acted on the spur of the moment.”
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- Learn to love like an adult
What is your love like?
Robert Sternberg identifies several types of love.
- Dislike. Lack of love.
- Sympathy is love based on intimacy without passion or attachment.
- Insane Passion: Love at first sight, which can fade if not reinforced by intimacy or affection, is more commonly experienced by men.
- Void: When intimacy and passion die, love becomes empty. Conversely, a marriage of convenience may begin with empty love, but eventually take on a different form.
- Romantic relationships: emotional and physical connection. This feeling is typical of a honeymoon. Your partner seems perfect to you, and you still have to form a sense of affection in yourself for a long time.
- Companionship: they are usually experienced in marriage when the passion has passed, but tenderness and affection remain, this is the love that we experience in relation to our family members.
- Senseless Love: It is mostly based on passion, we can see examples of it in the lives of celebrities whose tumultuous romances lead to hasty marriages that end after a few months.
- Perfect love: the highest form of love according to Robert Sternberg, which is not very common. In order to achieve and maintain it, great efforts are required.
Read more:
- How to choose a partner for life?
Three sides of the same feeling
“When I was younger, I was looking for an uncontrolled and stormy relationship,” says 38-year-old Nastya. “But everything completely changed when I met my future husband. We talked a lot about our plans for the future, about what we both expected from life and from each other. Love has become a reality for me, not a romantic fantasy.”
If we can love with head and heart, we are more likely to have that relationship last. “When a couple gets into trouble, they can rekindle the ‘feeling of love’ if they understand what it’s all about,” explains Van Epp. “Awareness of the components that form love, makes it possible to understand what connects us with another person, and make this connection more significant.”
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Sternberg triangle
Robert Sternberg’s theory makes it possible to describe and classify the way in which we love and are loved. He identified three main components of love: intimacy, passion and affection – the three vertices of the triangle of feelings. Intimacy means a feeling of understanding between two people, passion is a feeling generated by physical attraction and sex, and attachment is the desire to make the relationship long-term. If you can evaluate your love in terms of these objective criteria, you will be able to understand what is holding back your relationship and what you need to do to deepen it. In overcoming all the obstacles to the development of relationships and the achievement of perfect love, the most important thing is not feelings, but actions. You can, for example, claim that you are passionate, but what does this prove? He says, “I have a friend whose wife was seriously ill. He talks incessantly about how much he loves her, but is almost never with her. You have to show your feelings, not just express them.”
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Van Epp advises meeting regularly with your partner to discuss existing relationships and quickly identify potential problems. He also suggests setting aside time for a quiet meeting – for example, one hour a month – to discuss important issues – are there any negative things in your relationship? How do you treat each other? How well do you fit together? Such a meeting becomes a test of feeling in real conditions, gives you both the opportunity to fit your triangles to each other and make the relationship more viable.
“Couples I know who have such regular meetings, as far as I know, have almost no problems,” explains Van Epp, “as they quickly correct any potential difficulties.” They learned to love with their head and heart. Eugene and Karina visited a family therapist, trying to sort out their differences. “It doesn’t seem to be what you want to do when you’re engaged,” Karina says. “But when the day of our wedding came, it was especially important for us, as we carefully considered every word we said. Our relationship is still full of passion. And now I also know that this is for a long time.
Read more:
- It is more harmful to hide negative emotions than to depict positive ones.
draw your triangle
Rate each question on a scale from 1 (strongly disagree) to 5 (strongly agree) and count the results. It will mean the length of each side of your triangle.
1. Proximity
- I tell my partner all the details of my life
- I receive significant emotional support from him.
- I find it easy to communicate with my partner
- I feel like I can really trust him
- I feel like he really understands me
2. Passion
- I often think about him during the day
- Our relationship is very romantic
- I can’t imagine that someone could make me happier
- Our relationship is filled with passion
- I don’t want to be with anyone else
3. Attachment
- I am confident in the strength of my relationship
- I’m so attached to him that no one can stand between us
- I hope that I will love him for the rest of my life
- I will always feel a great responsibility for him.
- I’m going to continue our relationship
What does your triangle say about you?
The size of your triangle shows the amount of your love, and its shape shows the balance of feeling. An equilateral triangle speaks of perfect love, different sides of the predominance of one or another component in our feelings. If your partner’s love triangle doesn’t exactly match yours, it doesn’t matter. The main thing is to determine which component is needed to improve the relationship.
1 Author of The New Psychology of Love (Yale University Press, 2008).
2 Author of How to Avoid Falling in Love with a Jerk (McGraw-Hill, 2008).