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Saturday, February 27, 2010

Theories of love - Part 1



Psychologists and researchers have proposed a number of different theories of love. The following are some major theories proposed to explain liking, love, and emotional attachment.

Liking vs. Loving
Psychologist Zick Rubin proposed that romantic love is made up of three elements: attachment, caring, and intimacy. Attachment is the need to receive care, approval, and physical contact with the other person. Caring involves valuing the other persons needs and happiness as much as your own. Intimacy refers to the sharing of thoughts, desires, and feelings with the other person.

Based upon this definition, Rubin devised a questionnaire to assess attitudes about others and found that these scales of liking and loving provided support for his conception of love.

Compassionate vs. Passionate Love
According to psychologist Elaine Hatfield and her colleagues, there are two basic types of love: compassionate love and passionate love. Compassionate love is characterized by mutual respect, attachment, affection, and trust. Compassionate love usually develops out of feelings of mutual understanding and shared respect for each other.

Passionate love is characterized by intense emotions, sexual attraction, anxiety, and affection. When these intense emotions are reciprocated, people feel elated and fulfilled. Unreciprocated love leads to feelings of despondence and despair. Hatfield suggests that passionate love is transitory, usually lasting between 6 and 30 months.

According to Hatfield, passionate love arises when cultural expectations encourage falling in love, when the person meets your preconceived ideas of an ideal lover, and when you experience heightened physiological arousal in the presence of the other person.

Ideally passionate love then leads to compassionate love, which is far more enduring. While most people desire relationships that combine the security and stability of compassionate with the intensity of passionate love, Hatfield suggests that this is rare.

The Color Wheel Model of Love
In his 1973 book The Colors of Love, John Lee compared styles of love to the color wheel. Just as there are three primary colors, Lee suggested that there are three primary styles of love. These three styles of love are: (1) Eros, (2) Ludos, and (3) Storge.

Continuing the color wheel analogy, Lee proposed that just as the primary colors can be combined to create complementary colors, these three primary styles of love could be combined to create nine different secondary love styles. For example, a combination of Eros and Ludos results in Mania, or obsessive love.

Lee’s 6 Styles of Loving

Three primary styles:
1. Eros – Loving an ideal person
2. Ludos – Love as a game
3. Storge – Love as friendship

Three secondary styles:
1. Mania (Eros + Ludos) – Obsessive love
2. Pragma (Ludos + Storge) – Realistic and practical love
3. Agape (Eros + Storge) – Selfless love

So, what's your theory of love?  Feel free to post your comments and don't forget to follow us at http://twitter.com/dailymotiva

Saturday, February 6, 2010

Validation?

Interesting video about the simplest thing in life that we all can DO!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cbk980jV7Ao

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Being trained in psychology, I hope to share some insights through my blog. May it be a source of daily inspiration for all.