5 types of love. Classification of psychologists

5 types of love. Classification of psychologists

1. Love as a disease

The American psychologist Dorothy Tennov, the book “Love and Love” described passionate romantic love as a blind biological mechanism, providing our ancestors with the ability not only to breed, but also to educate common children.
Tennov does not consider love to be true, but describes it more like a painful state that has the following symptoms.

1. Constant obsessive thoughts about the object of love.
2. Acute, painful need for the return feelings of the object.
3. Feeling of euphoria in case of reciprocity.
4. Focus on the object of love to such an extent that a person can ignore important duties and not solve pressing problems.
5. Distorted perception of the object of love, often bordering on delirium. At the same time, the positive qualities of the object are exaggerated, and negative or ignored, or are considered attractive.
6. Strong sexual attraction to the object of love.

Tennov emphasized that although love and simple desire to have sex is not the same thing, there is no love without sexual attraction, since it is based on it. In her opinion, it is almost impossible to heal from the “disease of love”. There are only two possible medicines for love. The first is to stop any contacts with the object. This method is very painful and will almost inevitably lead to depression, but in a normal person, love will fade away.

Another way is to start a relationship. The peculiarity of “painful” love is that it disappears, usually after 1-4 years. It is no coincidence that they say that after four years people are most often divorced.

However, Tennov does not consider forecasts for steam by necessarily pessimistic. In addition to falling in love, she also highlighted faithful love, which is characteristic of rare examples of happy monogamous couples who remain together for a long time. Such love is much “calmer”: she is not characterized by an obsession with another person, and she does not look like insanity.

2. Love is like chemistry

A large number of scientific works encroachedarous love from a trivial physiological point of view – scientists were interested in what biochemical processes contribute to romantic feelings. For example, in one experiment, the interviewer girl approached young people and left her phone after interviews. It turned out that men more often called her, if before that they crossed the mountain river – excitement from physical activity contributed to romantic interest. Some hormones and other substances associate with love, in particular the following.

1. Phoeniletylamine is a substance that is in small quantities (very few!) produced in the brain. It is it that is largely responsible for “crazy” love. In action, it is very similar to cocaine or another drug from a class of stimulants, so it makes you feel excitement, euphoria and sexual desire during love. Unfortunately, the action of phenyleneineine is temporary, a person gets used to him and the beloved no longer causes the same “chemical reaction”.
2. Oxytocin. Fortunately, it is not necessary to rely on the euphoria of phenyleneine: there is also an oxytocin – a hormone that is produced in the brain and acts on the genitals (both men and women), and also helps to produce milk in nursing mothers. In addition to the above, oxytocin is responsible for sensitivity to touch. It is he who causes us the desire to “hug”, and also helps to resist stress. Its blood level increases when communicating with loved ones, especially if there is a tactile contact. Oxytocin is able to tie us to a person and maintain a relationship when Phoeniletylamine ceased to act.

What is interesting: the better a person relates to himself, the better he has the balance of these two substances, the more success his choice of a partner.

3. Love is like a triangle

Psychologist Zik Rubin proposed to consider romantic love as a set of three elements – affection, care and intimacy:

1. Attachment – the need for care, approval and physical contact with another person. For example, attachment indicates the desire to urgently complain to your loved one if you are bad or lonely.
2. Caring is an concern about other people’s needs and happiness more than their own. A sense of care makes us put in the first place the interests of another person, worry about him, strive to help and console.
3. Intimacy means common thoughts, desires and feelings that unite two people. The greater intimacy, the greater the trust between people, the greater the desire to share ideas and emotions.

Based on these three components, Rubin even developed a scale by which in the literal sense one can appreciate the “power of love”.

4. Love is like a palette

All the book “Color of Love” by psychologist John Lee considered not the essence of romantic love, but its varieties. He compares love with a color circle. There are three primary colors on it, and Lee believed that there are three main styles of love. He called them beautifully and in Greek-Eros, Ludos and Storge:

1. Eros – Love for an ideal person.
2. Ludos – Love as a game.
3. Storge – Love as friendship.

Continuing an analogy with a palette, Lee suggested that the three primary colors can be combined and create additional colors. The result will turn nine varieties of love. For example, if you mix Eros and Ludos on the palette of love, then you get a mania – obsessive love. In the same way, if you mix Ludos and Storge, you will get pragma – realistic and practical love. If you mix Eros and Storge, you will get Agapa – compassionate and disinterested love.

5. Love is like friendship

One of the classics of the “psychology of love” Elaine Hutfield with colleagues identified two types of love: compassionate and passionate.

1. Passionate love is associated with strong and uncontrollable emotions. According to the Hathfield, it depends on our upbringing and random circumstances-the situation or some personality characteristics of a person signal us that it is “romantic”-and the brain receives a signal to fall in love.
2. Compassionate love is qualitatively different, ideally passionate love should go into a compassionate. Such love is based on common values, and it can be called love-friend, when people like to just communicate, spend time together.

Ideal love, perhaps, could unite passionate love and stable love, but, according to Hathfield, this is a huge rarity. That is why the extinction of passion is best experienced by those couples who have common cultural and moral values and a common view of the world.