By Dr. Brand Doubell
As a small boy I remember the comics in the Sunday newspaper; Tarzan, the Phantom and Andy Cap. Among the cartoons there were always two drawings; a boy and a girl with the words ?Love is....? at the top and a definition at the bottom. I remember that I read hundreds of definitions for love in the cartoon strips but I don?t think I can remember one of them. Love is after all highly indefinable. As a relationship counselor it is my job to define love to a certain extent; somehow you have to know what a successful relationship looks like if you want to help people to have one. Unfortunately the different subjects in the humanities are just as clueless as the comic strips when it comes to defining love.
One of my favorite movies is As Good as it Gets the 1997 romantic comedy written by James L. Brooks and Mark Andrus with Jack Nicholson as Melvin. Melvin is a obsessive compulsive novelist that lives next to a gay artist played by Greg Kinnear. In one scene Melvin is writing one of his love novels and he reads back the words to himself: ?...at last she was able to define love. Love was......? and then the gay artist knocks on his door just when he almost had it. I enjoy that part especially because he almost defined love in that moment before he is interrupted. Then Melvin utters his feelings towards the gay neighbor as well as his irritation for being interrupted: ?Son-of-a-bitch-pansy-assed-stool-pusher? and he goes on to open the door. Definitely a must see comedy; especially if you're gay.
Alas, this is not a movie review. With decades of reading psychology and trying to understand love I still have the same problem as Melvin had in the movie. What is love? I still don?t have a clue but I do enjoy Sternberg?s triangular theory of love. According to Sternberg love can be conceptualized as consisting of three primary components namely passion, intimacy and commitment. He defines passion as the drives that lead to romance, physical attraction and sexual consummation. Intimacy is the feelings of closeness or bonding in a loving relationship and commitment is the decision tat you love someone and you are going to maintain that love.
Your love for someone can be one of the three, a combination of two of them or all three combined. That brings Sternberg to the notion that you can get 8 kinds of love for someone and he tabularize it as follows:
1. Non-love is if you do not have a single component in your relationship.
2. Liking is if there is only intimacy.
3. Infatuation is if there is only passion.
4. Empty love (the majority of marriages...lol.) is when there is no passion or intimacy but there is a commitment.
5. Romantic love is when you have passion and intimacy but there is no commitment.
6. Companionate love is if there is intimacy and commitment but no passion.
7. Fatuous love is if there is passion and commitment but no intimacy.
8. You have consummate love when all three are present.
As a relationship develops every component might develop or diminish as the emphasis shifts within our relationships. Passion tends to take of with a bang but in time it will stabilize while commitment will have a slow start and goes stronger in time. Intimacy might start off slower than passion but with greater speed than commitment.
At Cobrastone we developed a questionnaire... ( click here )...that tests the relative components of your relationship at a specific time. It is interesting to measure it from time to time to see where your relationship is going.
In my view Sternberg?s theory isn?t the best available but it is certainly the easiest to understand and it is fun to play with. Ultimately we do not have enough information to define love theoretically but luckily we all know exactly what it feels like; after all love is not there to understand but to enjoy.
Source: http://www.queerlife.co.za/test/iqueer-columns/cobra-bites/6752-defining-love.html
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