In psychology, a distinction is often made between two types of love:
- Passionate love, also called infatuation, is "a state of intense longing for union with another. Reciprocated love (union with the other) is associated with fulfillment and ecstasy; unrequited love (separation) is associated with emptiness, anxiety, or despair", and "the overwhelming, amorous feeling for one individual that is typically most intense during the early stage of love (i.e., when individuals are not (yet) in a relationship with their beloved or are in a new relationship)".
- Companionate love, also called attachment, is "the affection we feel for those with whom our lives are deeply entwined", and "the comforting feeling of emotional bonding with another individual that takes some time to develop, often in the context of a romantic relationship".
Evolutionary theories suggest these two types of love exist for different purposes, and research from psychology and biology suggests they follow somewhat different mechanics. Both passionate and companionate love can contribute to relationship satisfaction. Passionate and companionate love can also be further distinguished from a third important type of love, compassionate love, which is love focused on caring about others.
Passionate love is also commonly called "romantic love" in some literature, especially fields of biology, but the term "passionate love" is most common in psychology. Academic literature on love has never adopted a universal terminology. Other terms compared to passionate love are "being in love", having a crush, obsessive love, limerence and eros.
Companionate love is commonly called "attachment" or compared to strong liking, friendship love or storge. This is usually considered the same as the "attachment system" from attachment theory, but not all authors agree.
Passionate love
Passionate love is linked to passion, as in intense emotion, for example, joy and fulfillment, but also anguish and agony. Hatfield notes that the original meaning of passion " was agony—as in Christ's passion." Rather than being an emotion itself, passionate love is said to be a Motivation state which produces different emotions depending on the situation (e.g. joy when requited, and sadness when Unrequited love). A 2014 study of Iranian young adults found that the early stage of romantic love was associated with the brighter side of hypomania (elation, mental and physical activity, and positive social interaction) and better sleep quality, but also stronger symptoms of depression and anxiety. The authors conclude that romantic love is "not entirely a joyful and happy period of life".
Passionate love is said to usually only be present (or the most intense) in the early stage of love, when a relationship is new or before a relationship has started. However, in a rare phenomenon called long-term intense romantic love, intense attraction can remain for much longer than is typical, even for 10 years or more.
In contemporary literature, the original characteristics of passionate love are seen to some degree as being a mixture of things. For example, it's been determined that the PLS has questions which measure companionate love, which led Sandra Langeslag and colleagues to develop the Infatuation and Attachment Scales (IAS) as a newer measure of passionate and companionate love. The PLS also measures an obsessional element which is distinguishable in that it's possible to experience love feelings (and even intense attraction) with lower levels of obsession. Finally, while Elaine Hatfield originally described passionate love as having a component of sexual attraction, contemporary authors generally agree that sexual attraction and romantic attraction are distinct. People are motivated to initiate and maintain a pair bond in a way that's different from the sex drive, and in some rare cases it's even possible to fall in love in the absence of sexual desire.
Infatuation
- Staring into the distance while thinking of the beloved.
- Getting shaky knees while in the presence of the beloved.
- Feelings for the beloved reducing one's appetite.
- Thoughts about the beloved making it difficult to concentrate.
- Being afraid that one will say something wrong while talking to the beloved.
- Getting clammy hands while near the beloved.
- Becoming tense while close to the beloved.
- Having a hard time sleeping because of thinking about the beloved.
- Searching for alternate meanings in the beloved's words.
- Being shy in the presence of the beloved.
The word "infatuation" is also sometimes used colloquially in contrast with "love", but Elaine Hatfield has argued that the only difference between infatuation (in this sense) and passionate love is semantic. Albert Ellis and Robert Harper conducted interviews and concluded that the only difference is that people use the word "infatuation" in hindsight to refer to a relationship after it ends and "love" to refer to a relationship still in progress. Hatfield suggests that when parents and friends say somebody is "just infatuated" they're just saying they don't approve of the relationship.
Obsession
Studies by Bianca Acevedo & Arthur Aron found that the obsessional component of the PLS can be separated from the non-obsessional component. Items on the PLS measuring obsession are, for example, "Sometimes I feel I can’t control my thoughts; they are obsessively on my partner", "I sometimes find it difficult to concentrate on work because thoughts of my partner occupy my mind" and "I get extremely depressed when things don’t go right in my relationship with my partner." Items on the PLS measuring non-obsessional romantic love are, for example, "I want my partner—physically, emotionally, and mentally", "For me, my partner is the perfect romantic partner", "I would rather be with my partner than anyone else" and "I possess a powerful attraction for my partner".
In Acevedo & Aron's analysis, passionate love with obsession was associated with increased relationship satisfaction only in short-term relationships. Romantic obsession was associated with slightly decreased satisfaction in the long-term. Another meta-analysis by James Graham found a strong association between romantic obsession (using the mania love attitude—similar in concept to the PLS obsession factor described by Acevedo & Aron) and decreased satisfaction over time.
These authors (Acevedo & Aron, Graham) have speculated that continued romantic obsession within a relationship could be connected to attachment style. Attachment style refers to differences in attachment-related thoughts and behaviors, especially relating to the concept of security vs. insecurity. This can be split into components of anxiety (worrying the partner is available, attentive and responsive) and avoidance (preference not to rely on others or open up emotionally). It has been suggested that attachment style forms during childhood and adolescence, but twin studies have also suggested a Heredity component, and attachment anxiety is correlated with the personality trait neuroticism. People can also have different attachment styles with different partners, for example an avoidant partner can cause a secure partner to feel and act anxious.
Positive illusions
While Elaine Hatfield and others have traditionally associated idealization with passionate love, studies on positive illusions have looked at couples in varied stages of their relationships, including long-term couples.
Companionate love
Companionate love is linked to intimacy and Hatfield suggests that intimate relationships have these characteristics:
Companionate love is usually considered the same as storge, although James Graham has argued on the basis of a meta-analytic factor analysis that the storge love attitude most corresponds to practical friendship which lacks qualities of companionate love (such as intimacy and commitment).
Attachment
- Feeling that one can count on the beloved.
- Being prepared to share one's possessions with the beloved.
- Feeling lonely without the beloved.
- Feeling that the beloved is the one for them.
- The beloved knowing everything about them.
- Hoping one's feelings for the beloved never end.
- Feeling emotionally connected to the beloved.
- The beloved being able to reassure them when they are upset.
- The beloved being the person who can make them feel the happiest.
- The beloved being part of their plans for the future.
Relation to attachment theory
However, companionate love has also been characterized as being more like strong friendship, and Ellen Berscheid suggests that it's unproven whether all adult relationships are attachments in the sense meant by attachment theory. Berscheid writes that the assumption that romantic partners are each other's attachment figures is "in dire need of empirical scrutiny."
Timeline
A popular hypothesis suggests that passionate love turns into companionate love over time in a relationship, but other accounts suggest that while companionate love takes longer to develop, it is important at the beginning of a relationship as well. Companionate love might also precede passionate love sometimes. There is some reason to think attachment takes about two years to develop, for example one study found that participants who had been in a relationship for about this long named their romantic partner as an attachment figure, while other participants named a parent.
One estimate for the duration of passionate love is 18 months to 3 years, which comes from survey data collected by Dorothy Tennov, for her 1979 book Love and Limerence. Another estimate comes from a 1999 experiment performed by Donatelli Marazziti and colleagues which found a difference in blood serotonin levels between newly in love people and controls, and found these levels had returned to normal after 12 to 18 months. Intense attraction can also last much longer in rarer cases, as in the phenomenon of long-term intense romantic love. These lovers tend to show lower levels of obsession than in the early stage, however.
Companionate love is thought to build over time as a relationship progresses, but then decrease very slowly over the course of several decades. In the past, some have thought companionate love to be stable after it develops, but for example one study of new marriages found a decline after a 1-year period.
Causal conditions
Companionate love generally increases with liking and familiarity, but the circumstances surrounding passionate love are more complicated. Studies show that love and conflict can sit side-by-side in a relationship, and passionate love in particular is even said to be amplified by negative emotions.
Liking
Sexual desire
Passionate love is often associated with sexual desire, for example Ellen Berscheid suggests that one possible account of passionate love is "a felicitous combination of companionate love and sexual desire." However, Lisa Diamond has suggested that while sexual desire is often a causal component, passionate love can occur outside the context of sexual desire. Diamond's argument rests on various reports and historical accounts, as well as an evolutionary argument that the brain systems underlying romantic love evolved independent of sexual orientation. Diamond thinks that time spent together and physical touch can act as a "stand-in" for sexual desire and facilitate romantic love between partners regardless of their sexual orientation.
Helen Fisher has argued that passionate love is related to the phenomenon of mammalian courtship attraction, or mate choice, and that people have certain preferences for choosing a preferred mating partner that determines who they fall in love with. However, Fisher argues this type of attraction is distinct from the sex drive, although they are interrelated.
Emotional arousal
Helen Fisher recommends doing novel and exciting things together to ignite passion. In an experiment by Arthur Aron & Christina Norman, couples doing an exciting task (as opposed to a boring one) experienced increased feelings of relationship satisfaction and romantic love.
Elaine Hatfield has even suggested that negative or mixed emotions can amplify feelings of passionate love. In A New Look at Love, she writes "Passion demands physical arousal and unpleasant experiences are just as arousing as pleasant ones." Hatfield cites animal studies, such as one study in which puppies that were inconsistently either rewarded or maltreated were the most attracted to and dependent on their trainer. People who behave consistently generate little emotion, she says, and "What would generate a spark of interest, however, is if our admiring friend suddenly started treating us with contempt—or if our arch enemy started inundating us with kindness."
Intimacy
Love regulation
For example, looking at pictures of the beloved has been shown to increase feelings of infatuation (i.e. passionate love) and attachment (i.e. companionate love).
In another technique called cognitive reappraisal, one focuses on positive or negative aspects of the beloved, the relationship, or imagined future scenarios:
- In negative reappraisal, one focuses on negative qualities of the beloved ("he's lazy", "she's always late"), the relationship ("we fight a lot") or imagined future scenarios ("he'll cheat on me"). Negative reappraisal decreases feelings of infatuation and attachment, but decreases mood in the short term. Langeslag has recommended distraction as an antidote to the short-term decrease in mood. Negative reappraisal can be useful, for example, to those who want to ameliorate Broken heart or put an end to an abusive relationship.
- In positive reappraisal, one focuses on positive qualities of the beloved ("he's kind", "she's spontaneous"), the relationship ("we have so much fun together") or imagined future scenarios ("we'll live happily ever after"). Positive reappraisal increases attachment and can increase relationship satisfaction, which could, for example, help stabilize a long-term relationship.
Biology
Passionate love is often associated with the neurotransmitter dopamine. Companionate love is often associated with the neuropeptide oxytocin, and sometimes vasopressin or endogenous opioids.
Passionate love is sometimes compared to addiction, although there are differences. People in the early stages of romantic love share similar traits with addicts (for example, feeling rushes of euphoria, or craving for their beloved), but this tends to wear off over time, while the condition of a drug addiction tends to worsen. Helen Fisher has suggested romantic love is a "positive addiction" (i.e. not harmful) when reciprocated and a "negative addiction" when unrequited or inappropriate.
See also
Bibliography
External links
- The Passionate Love Scale at Helen Fisher and Lucy Brown's website.
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