yes, therapy helps!
The 4 types of love: what different kinds of love are there?

The 4 types of love: what different kinds of love are there?

February 29, 2024

The phenomenon of love is undoubtedly the most studied, complex, misunderstood and multidimensional that exists. It is a phenomenon that has generated an infinity of artistic works: painting, sculpture, literature, poetry ... But it is also very complex. So much so that many times instead of talking about the concept of love itself, people talk about the types of love different that exist.

The idea is that in our culture love does not have a complete definition, but rather It has many different meanings , and it is a concept that is used in very variable contexts and relationships. Love has nuances, and these make that, if we want to understand this phenomenon well, we should classify it according to a series of criteria. That makes us renounce the possibility of understanding love as something unique, very well defined and easy to understand, but in return it allows us to better understand their manifestations from a practical point of view.


  • Recommended article: "6 signs that show physical attraction towards another person"

Love: a complex feeling

The psychological study has made constant efforts with the aim of limiting the meaning and implications of the concept love (why we love, who we love, how we love), although the truth is that this task has always been involved in difficulties because there are thousands of conceptions, opinions and ways of approaching this topic. In addition, the opinions that people have about what love is also influences the way in which they experience it, so that a "pure" analysis of what different types of love make up can not be done.


Canadian psychologists Beverly Fehr and James A. Russell [1] they spent many years of their lives investigating the concept of love. They jointly produced a study in 1991, where they asked a series of participants to write a list with as many different kinds of love as they could think of at that moment. This experiment served to create a large list with 93 different kinds of love . Subsequently, other participants were asked about how typical each of the love prototypes described in the list seemed to them, that is, to what degree they thought it best represented the essence of love.

The results of this survey revealed that the love considered to be the most prototypical was maternal love . Correlatively, the following types of love more prototypical and known were parental love, friendship, sisterly love, romantic love and brotherly love. Other types of love, such as passionate, sexual or platonic love, were thought of as less prototypical loves according to the results of the study.


Elements of love

The investigations of Fehr and Russell are not, by far, the only ones that inquire about how we perceive the different types of love. Psychologists P. Shaver and J. Schwartz [2] conducted a series of studies in 1992 using a similar procedure. They analyzed carefully the judgments of similarity or similarity between different words related to emotions, d concealing that love, affection, affection, attraction and care constituted a fairly uniform block . Consequently, the studies of Shaver and Schwartz concluded that the conception we have of love is very complex, and there is no clear delimitation between love and similar feelings or emotions.

The most important classification and that brings together a greater number of experts about what are the types of love is the Triangular Theory of Sternberg [3]. This categorization is based on three dimensions or essential elements in love, which are:

1. Passion

Passion is the state of physical and mental excitement described for centuries by writers, poets and philosophers, but also by scientists. The attraction between two bodies and sexual desire are its basic parts. Some researchers, like Bratslavsky and Baumeister , they defined passion in love as an aggregate of intense feelings focused on the attraction towards another person , characterized by the biophysiological activation and the aspiration to join it at all levels (sexual, sentimental ...).

However, it should be noted that, in case the person is desirable as a sexual partner, the passion incorporates two elements: attraction and the sexual appetite . On the other hand, feelings of passion may be lacking in these two elements, such as the passion towards a child. In short, the erotic connotations of passion are not used here as if one thing led to the other and vice versa.

2. Privacy

This constitutive element of love is expressed as a feeling of union, proximity and affection towards the other person , as well as the concern to increase their well-being, to provide and receive sentimental support and to communicate personal opinions and emotions, as well as to listen and attend to those of the other.

If we think about it carefully, it makes a lot of sense that this is one of the fundamental ingredients of love. This emotional link is characterized, among other things, by allowing us to create a context in which we can expose our vulnerabilities to another person, share concerns and manage insecurities in a shared way, something that can have a much higher cost or risk if we do it in another type of social relations.

The researchers reported that this element of love encompasses a conception of mutual empathy, kind and benevolent attitudes towards the other person, and the permanent communication of shared affection.

3. Commitment

The commitment can be expressed in the short term as the explicit decision to want to share time and space, or in the long term as the commitment to care for and nurture that love . These two components do not have to always occur together. Commitment is an element that can manifest itself despite the fact that intimacy and passion have disappeared.

Sometimes, the relationship between two people can progress over time, and passion and intimacy can deteriorate. In this case, only the commitment would remain, understood as the will to continue in the relationship. In the case of cultures in which arranged marriages of convenience are held between two families, the commitment component manifests itself at the beginning of the relationship, and time will tell if passion and intimacy will also appear.

  • Maybe you're interested: "10 tricks to be more sociable and fun"

Types of love

In Sternberg's Triangular Theory, love is represented with each of these elements in its genuine form, forming the three vertices of an equilateral triangle . However, real love relationships different types of love intertwine and combine with each other, giving rise to different kinds of love (or ways of loving). These types of love would be the following:

1. Romantic love

It is constituted from the combination between intimacy and passion . This type of love arises when lovers have a physical as well as emotional attraction, even though this feeling of bonding does not come from the hand of commitment. That is, it is one of the most emotional types of love, but it is not based on a relational dynamic that gives it stability, which means that its risk of triggering conflicting or problematic experiences is relatively high.

The recurring example of this type of love can be found in many archetypes that emerged from literature, such as Romeo and Juliet , by the British author William Shakespeare. The reason that it is so attractive and interesting when it comes to being artistically portrayed is its tragic nature, being very emotionally intense experiences but at the same time vulnerable to instability.

2. Love mate

It is based on the combination of the elements of intimacy and commitment . In this case, it is a love whose ambition is concern for the happiness and well-being of the other. It is a cluster of needs such as social support, emotional support, mutual understanding and communication.

People who live this kind of love feel intimately united and share their emotions, their knowledge or their possessions. On the other hand, it is one of the types of love that cause more confusion, since it can get confused with other forms of emotional bond, such as pity.

3. Fatuous love

It is based on the mixture of commitment and passion , without having been able to spend the necessary time for intimacy to emerge. This type of love is expressed when, for example, two people get married shortly after falling in love, and the intimacy component has not yet emerged. Therefore, in these cases, a lot of effort continues to be devoted to offer the best self image in the eyes of the other person, something that can keep idealization alive.

Is there "perfect love," according to Sternberg's theory?

This combination of intimacy, passion and commitment unleashes what Sternberg defined as complete love or perfect love . According to the author, it is the kind of love that almost all people aspire to live. It is no exaggeration to say that perfect love is difficult to achieve, and much more to maintain. But, after all, we do not always look for this kind of love in all the intimate relationships we have throughout life; in fact, this unique and unique kind of love is reserved for a few relationships that fulfill our expectations emotionally and sexually, and we try to prioritize them. Are those relationships that, finish well or not so well, leave an indelible mark on our memory .

Each of the three axial elements of love that we have described tends to have a different progression throughout the time of the relationship. It is notorious that privacy it progressively develops as the relationship progresses, and may increase over time, but this growth tends to be more abrupt in the early stages of courtship.

In what refers to the passion , this is expressed in a very intense way at the beginning, and it grows in an accelerated way, but later decays slowly as the relationship goes through stages more advanced in time, until it stabilizes. On the other hand, commitment increases slowly at the beginning (even more slowly than intimacy), to reach a point of equilibrium and stability at the precise moment when the rewards and costs of the relationship are clearly perceptible.

Our brain and love

A few weeks ago we published an interesting article about what happens in our mind when we experience love. In addition, we also propose a reading about some curious facts that science has brought about love and infatuation, that focus on the most psychobiological component of this phenomenon. The links are these:

  • "The chemistry of love: a very powerful drug"
  • "Love and falling in love: 7 surprising investigations"

Bibliographic references:

  • [1] Fehr, B., Russell, J. (1991). The Concept of Love Viewed From a Prototype Perspective. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.
  • [2] Shaver, P.R., Wu, S., & Schwartz, J.C. (1992). Cross-cultural similarities and differences in emotion and its representation: A prototype approach.
  • [3] Sternberg, R. (2004). A Triangular Theory of Love. In Reis, H. T .; Rusbult, C. E. Close Relationships. New York: Psychology Press.

The Four Loves ('Storge' or 'Affection') by C.S. Lewis Doodle (February 2024).


Similar Articles