Love is an extremely loaded word that is very misunderstood and overused. At its best, it brings immense happiness and joy to people. At its worst, a world of pain, emotional suffering, and irreparable scars. We love our parents, we love our children and as people grow and develop, they eventually seek to find romantic love. It is the stuff all people dream about, is an idea sensationalized by Hollywood and has even been commercialized thanks to Valentine’s Day. Love is not something that can be easily defined, “so psychologists and sociologist tend to use an operational definition to define the concept of love by the way it is measured” (Hyde, 2014). Nevertheless, Webster’s dictionary defines it as “a feeling of strong or consistent affection for a person” or “an attraction that includes sexual desire”. Its meaning is often discounted because most people use it so carelessly.
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The Triangle Theory of Love, by R.J. Sternberg, proposes several different types and levels of love that encompass various components, however for the purposes of this paper, we will only focus on infatuation, consummate, and empty love. The first type of love to be examined is called infatuation. Sternberg says “infatuated love is often what is felt as "love at first sight." This is the type of love is considered new love. When the chemical receptors of the brain that are responsible for happiness are firing on all cylinders. This is when most people report their chemistry being perfect. The passion they feel for each other is at its highest. People in this phase typically report a constant thinking of the other person, an intense feeling of attraction, and find an extreme physical attraction to one another. These relationships tend to move extremely fast and fizzle even quicker. The majority of people if polled would report having experienced infatuation at least once in their lives. For these types of relationships, that move too quickly towards permanency from infatuation unfortunately fail most of the time. They fail because these relationships lack the critical foundation necessary to sustain them in the long term. Granted, a rare few do survive. If they do, the reason they survive will depend on the direction they have taken to that point. The next type of love we will examine is that of empty love. The reason I want to examine this next is because in this type of relationship the all intimacy and passion have died, but people tend remain together because of a commitment. In these relationships people simply exist, they do not live and also tend to report a poor quality of life. There is also a correlation between what the relationship is lacking and infidelity. This is most common in relationships where children are involved or when financial matters make it more difficult for one partner to leave the relationship. People who have a strong sense of obligation to another tend to stick it out, rather than leave to seek true happiness. Believe it or not, an empty love relationship is not just an end product, it can also be how a relationship begins. A good example of this would be an arranged marriage. This practice is something that is still taking places in many countries around the world. Some
The Triangle Theory of Love, by R.J. Sternberg, proposes several different types and levels of love that encompass various components, however for the purposes of this paper, we will only focus on infatuation, consummate, and empty love. The first type of love to be examined is called infatuation. Sternberg says “infatuated love is often what is felt as "love at first sight." This is the type of love is considered new love. When the chemical receptors of the brain that are responsible for happiness are firing on all cylinders. This is when most people report their chemistry being perfect. The passion they feel for each other is at its highest. People in this phase typically report a constant thinking of the other person, an intense feeling of attraction, and find an extreme physical attraction to one another. These relationships tend to move extremely fast and fizzle even quicker. The majority of people if polled would report having experienced infatuation at least once in their lives. For these types of relationships, that move too quickly towards permanency from infatuation unfortunately fail most of the time. They fail because these relationships lack the critical foundation necessary to sustain them in the long term. Granted, a rare few do survive. If they do, the reason they survive will depend on the direction they have taken to that point. The next type of love we will examine is that of empty love. The reason I want to examine this next is because in this type of relationship the all intimacy and passion have died, but people tend remain together because of a commitment. In these relationships people simply exist, they do not live and also tend to report a poor quality of life. There is also a correlation between what the relationship is lacking and infidelity. This is most common in relationships where children are involved or when financial matters make it more difficult for one partner to leave the relationship. People who have a strong sense of obligation to another tend to stick it out, rather than leave to seek true happiness. Believe it or not, an empty love relationship is not just an end product, it can also be how a relationship begins. A good example of this would be an arranged marriage. This practice is something that is still taking places in many countries around the world. Some