Eight Levels of Love
© David Newton
1/25/08

So, what is infatuation? Is it love?

Can having a commitment be the most important thing in a love equation?

Relative to understanding about relationships work, or where your focus needs to be addressed in them, lets firstly get clearer on just what a loving relationship is.


The Love Triangle Theory

In 1986, a psychologist Robert Sternberg proposed a simple way we can look at relationships via triangle. Our experience of love is held together by 3 aspects:

Intimacy - the friendship element of love, sharing and bonding

Passion - the romantic or physical element of love including sexual attraction

Commitment - the basic decision to love another person - and the longer term part of keeping that love going

The "amount" of strength of each of these components in a love determines how that love will be between two people.

Lets look closer at the levels of love...

1. Non-Love - where we have none of the components of love.

2. Liking/Friendship - known as "intimacy" its the caring sharing and friendship part of love that exists between two people. Without friendship and liking, even the best commitment or passion will not last long enough.

3. Infatuated Love - is often what is described as "love at first sight" - factor often sought when couples date via blind dating (e.g. Meeting as a date online) so when the couple meet and there is no 'spark' they think often that they missed the deal. Alternately the couples who did meet as love from across the dance floor may well break up after just one date or two. A summer romance can be often the same thing.

4. Empty Love - Often a stronger love will fold back into this. Its where the commitment side of the triangle still operates, but no passion or intimacy/friendship exists. In some cultures arranged marriages are common, and love will actually start out this way, but later on could grow into one or the other forms of love as time passes.

5. Romantic Love - romantic lovers are bonded with emotion (friendship) and strong passion through arousal between their union.

6. Companionate Love - quite often in marriages where the sexual love has dimmed out after the passage of time. There is still a strong friendship, and commitment, but the passion has long since left the union.

7. Fatuous Love - best explained by the "shotgun wedding" example we see on movies. A Commitment motivated by passion, but lacking in friendship or close connection.

8. Consummate Love - a complete love. Where the friendliness, passion and commitment all go hand in hand with the couple. Couples still continue to have great passion even 15 years after they've met. They can't see themselves happy with anyone else over the longer term. But while consummate love maybe relatively hard to attain, it maybe even harder to keep.

Quite often a Consummate Love will fade into a Companionate Love, and some smaller percentage couples will seek outside lovers (often by arrangement between themselves) to fill the passion gap, whilst holding onto their bedrock primary partner.

Other Love Theories

Sternberg also says that as we grow from birth to maturity, we develop our own theories of love. This is how we relate to the world. Many influences can be a part of this. Our family for one, siblings, cousins aunts and uncles, plus our first forays into love at school or who we admire as our teachers, pop starts, community leaders, and maybe even the person we meet at the local convenience store down the road from us.

Certainly our first lovemaking experience could be a way of understanding too. Experiences positive or negative all layer down over time to develop our pictures and feelings about future and past loves in our lives.

More on this topic soon....

David Newton
Brisbane, Australia