Sternberg’s triangle of love

Many theories have tried to explain what love exactly is and what different kinds of love exist. From Plato and Aristotle to Erich Fromm and John Alan Lee, thinkers have sliced up the complex phenomenon of love in different ways. One of the most prominent approaches outside of academic philosophy is Sternberg’s “triangular” theory of love.

Sternberg thinks that we can best describe love as composed of three “primary” components that combine to produce all the kinds of love that we observe around us: intimacy, passion and decision or commitment. These can be combined to produce the “mixed” forms: companionate love (intimacy and commitment), romantic love (intimacy and passion) and fatuous love (passion and commitment). If all components are balanced, we get consummate or “perfect” love.

Sternberg thinks that we can best describe love as composed of three “primary” components. 

The first component is what he calls “intimacy.” This is a bit misleading because Sternberg uses the word to mean the emotional component of love (“how it feels”), rather than what we would today call “being intimate,” that is, having sexual relations. For Sternberg, intimacy means warmth, closeness, connection and bondedness — all feelings that one would have in a close friendship. A love that is only composed of this kind of intimacy would be pure “liking,” what Aristotle would call “philia,” friendship, and it is printed in black in the picture above.

The second component is “passion”. Now, this is “eros” in the words of Plato: romantic, physical, sexual attraction. Sternberg describes this as a “motivational” component of love, which means that it is that component that motivates us to act, to pursue the object of our love, to call, to send flowers, to invite them to dinner and to a weekend on the beach. But a love that’s only passion, without the other two components, is a purely sexual infatuation — a temporary loss of our sanity. But it won’t be stable and it won’t really be emotionally satisfying if it lacks intimacy and commitment.

The third essential part in Sternberg’s theory of love is the commitment, the decision that we make to be in love with this particular person. It sounds a bit strange to say that a rational decision can be part of …

Read the full article which is published on Daily Philosophy (external link)