Love Styles!

So I came across a little something lately that was pretty interesting and I was unaware of. Maybe you already know about it but never the less, worth sharing for those like me :)

“Love stories” are often associated – at least in the popular imagination – with fairy tales, adolescent day dreams, Disney movies etc.  

Beginning in the early 1970s with the groundbreaking contributions of John Alan Lee, researchers have developed classifications that they believe better characterize our romantic predispositions.

The patterns unknowingly expressed by respondents culminated in a taxonomy of six distinct love “styles” that continue to inform research in the area forty years later.

The first of these styles – EROS – is closely tied in with images of romantic love that are promulgated in Western popular culture. Characteristic of this style is a passionate emotional intensity, a strong physical magnetism – as if the two partners were literally being “pulled” together – and a sense of inevitability about the relationship. 

A related but more frantic style of love called MANIA involves an obsessive, compulsive attitude toward one’s partner. Vast swings in mood from ecstasy to agony – dependent on the level of attention a person is receiving from his or her partner – are typical of manic love. 

Two styles were much more subdued, however. STORGE is a quiet, companionate type of loving – “love by evolution” rather than “love by revolution”, according to some theorists.

When care is extended to a sacrificial level of doting, however, it becomes another style – AGAPE. In an agape relationship one partner becomes a “caretaker”, exalting the welfare of the other above his or her own needs. 

The final two styles of love seem to lack aspects of emotion and reciprocity altogether. The LUDUS style envisions relationships primarily as a game in which it is best to “play the field” or experience a diverse set of partners over time. Mutually gratifying outcomes in relationships are not considered necessary, and deception of a partner and lack of disclosure about one’s activities are also typical.

PRAGMA lovers also downplayed emotive aspects of relationships but favoured practical, sensible connections. Successful arranged marriages are a great example of pragma, in that the couple decide to make the relationship work; but anyone who seeks an ideal partner with a shopping list of necessary attributes (high salary, same religion, etc.) fits the classification. 

Good day folks!