Sunday, February 10, 2008
Interpersonal love refers to love between human beings.
It is a more potent sentiment than a simple liking for another.
Unrequited love refers to those feelings of love which are not reciprocated.
Such love might exist between family members, friends, and couples.
There are also a number of psychological disorders related to love, such as
erotomania.(Erotomania is a rare
disorder in which a person holds a
delusional belief that another person, usually of a higher
social status, is in
love with him or her.)
Some feelings that are often associated with interpersonal love:
Affection: feelings of tenderness and/or wanting physical closeness
Attachment: satisfying basic emotional needs
Altruism: selfless or unselfish concern for another
Reciprocation: if love is mutual
Commitment: a desire to maintain love
Emotional intimacy: sharing emotions and feelings
Friendship: the spirit between friends
Kinship: family bonds
Passion: whole-hearted desire
Physical intimacy: sharing of intimate personal space
Self-interest: desiring rewards
Service: desire to help
love has three different components:
intimacy, commitment, and passion.
Intimacy is a form by which two people can share secrets and various details of their personal lives.
Intimacy is usually shown in friendships and romantic love affairs.
Commitment, on the other hand, is the expectation that the relationship is going to last forever. The last and most common form of love is sexual attraction and passion.
Passionate love is shown in infatuation as well as romantic love.
Following developments in electrical theories, such as
Coulomb's law, which showed that positive and negative charges attract, analogs in human life were developed, such as "opposites attract". Over the last century, research on the nature of human mating has generally found this not to be true when it comes to character and personality;
people tend to like people like themselves. However, in a few unusual and specific domains, such as immune systems, it seems that humans prefer others who are unlike themselves (e.g. with an orthogonal immune system), since this will lead to a baby which has the best of both worlds.
Liking or
friendship (intimacy)
Infatuation or limerence (passion)
Empty love (commitment)
Romantic love (intimacy+passion)
Companionate love (intimacy+commitment)
Fatuous love (passion+commitment)
Consummate love (intimacy+passion+commitment)
six Love stylesEros (love) — a passionate physical love based on physical appearance
Ludus — love is played as a game; love is playful
Storge — an affectionate love that slowly develops, based on
similarityPragma — pragmatic love
Mania — highly emotional love; unstable; the stereotype of
romantic loveAgape — selfless altruistic love; spiritual
Hendrick and Hendrick found
men tend to be more ludic and manic, whereas
women tend to be storgic and pragmatic. Relationships based on similar love styles were found to last longer.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Love
3:57 PM