The Components Of Love: What Is Love?

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What is love? This is probably one of the most difficult questions to answer and the thing is there is not definite answer to this question. Love is something not easily understood or grasped, it's a concept not fully known or understood. Love can have various meanings; even the Merriam-Webster Dictionary doesn't have just one definition for it. According to Merriam-Webster, love is a feeling of a strong or constant affection for a person, or a person you love in a romantic way or an attraction that includes sexual desire. But one view of how love can be seen is through social psychology. According to the book Understanding Psychology, Social Psychology is the scientific study of how a person’s behavior, thoughts, and feelings are influenced…show more content…
Furthermore, there are different kinds of love and for a Psychologist named Robert Sternberg there are components of love namely, Intimacy, Passion, and Commitment. The first of these components is Intimacy, which is the feeling of closeness one has for the other person or having close emotional ties. An example of intimacy is friends knowing secrets of each other or knowledge of a person not known to everybody. The second component is Passion, which for Sternberg is the physical part in love. Passion is emotional and sexual arousal one can feel for another. The last component of Sternberg is Commitment; it is the decision a person makes whether or not to be in a relationship. Furthermore, there are two types of commitment a short-term and a long-term. It is here where the different kinds of love enter. Sternberg made a Triangular theory of love; it is when a couple can have just or up to all the components of love. Examples of having just one of the components is liking, which just involves intimacy, another example of this is called empty love, which is just commitment, and the last of which is infatuation, which is just passion. Now looking at combinations of two components, the first is fatuous love or a love that is developed due to passion and commitment. We often perceive that love and marriage is something romantic, but for psychologists like Sternberg romantic love is a type of love, which consists of intimacy and passion. The other kind of love is companionate love, which is the type of love that consists of intimacy and commitment. These last two kinds of love is the kind of love we are more familiar with and involved greater research. The kind of love, which consists of all three of the components is consummate love, which is just simply a love that involves intimacy, passion and

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