Finding your perfect love with the love triangle theory

Love is strange. The moment you feel everything is going in the right direction, realty hits you right in the face and everything seems problematic again. Love of your partner can help you ease the pain and gives you a hope to get success in life. Triangular theory of love by Robert Sternberg’s gives you an altogether different viewpoint to look at your love life. The three different angles of love include intimacy, passion and commitment that actually build the foundation of love life.

Psychology of love

Young hugging couple kissing under a rain, in passion

Out of three main components of the theory, intimacy describes your love and closeness you have for your partner. It helps you strengthen the bond and keeps you together all your life. The sexual aspect of love life is the passion you have for the love of your life. The physical attraction makes you heart skip a beat and keeps your love life fresh as ever. Along with these two factors, something that paves way to make it a successful relationship is your commitment towards him/her. These three factors are the primary ingredients to take your love life on path of happiness.

One-component relationships

perfect love

In such relationships only one component is primarily involved. One such relationship involves intimacy as the primary factor. Such relationships have a feeling of trust and care for each other. The best example of such relationships is friendship. Long-term commitment and passion are often not involved in such relationships. Another type of one component relationship is based on infatuation. The best examples include love at the first sight. Passion is the primary factor in such relationships that Lacks emotional attachment and life-long commitment. Empty love is another form of one component relationship. Such relationships do not involve sexual attraction or emotional closeness but are usually based on commitment. Arrange marriages where passion and intimacy are not primary factors create such relationships.

Two-component relationships

Romantic couple on the seaside

One such relationship involves a combination of emotional involvement and sexual passion. Couples usually go through this phase of relationships when they are in the initial stage and lack long-term commitment especially when they are teenagers. Companionate love is another form of tow-component relationships, which involves both emotional attachment and long-term commitment. Passion usually fades away with time in such relationships. Another form is fatuous love is in which is couples desperately want to fall in love and have passion along with long-term commitment.

Love or infatuation

couple in love

When you get attracted to someone, you do not truly fall in love since infatuated love usually disappears as if it was never there. Intimacy and commitment must develop with time to turn an infatuated love into a romantic love.

Romantic love

young couple in love

To your amazement, romantic love has almost all the ingredients of love except long-term commitment. You may feel the passion and emotional attachment towards your partner but it seems meaningless without a desire to be with him/her all your life.

Predicting Love

Finding your perfect love

You may have heard about fairy tale love that involve complete strangers but the research says that familiarity is one of the most important factors that predicts love. Along with that, proximity and similarity are also important. It minimizes the likelihood of falling in love with a complete stranger. Those people who fanaticize falling in love with someone who is literally opposite have to get disappointed. Common interest and value strengthen your bond and help you take your love life to yet another level. Similarly the close you are to the person the better the chances or falling in love with him/her.

According to Robert Sternberg’s Triangular theory of love, three components intimacy, passion and commitment play a crucial role in our love life. At times, you may find one components primarily dominating the other ones but that makes your relationship unique in its own way.

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