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Tuesday 7 June 2005

Love is...

The question has mystified poets, writers and artists down the centuries – but now psychologists believe they have found the answer to defining exactly what love is. And the research by experts from Nottingham Trent University and University College London revealed that there isn’t just one quick and easy explanation, but nine distinct types of partnership love.

Nottingham Trent University’s Dr Simon Watts and Dr Paul Stenner from University College London are engaged in a series of studies looking at people’s subjective experiences of partnership love. The latest, published in the British Journal of Social Psychology, required participants to sort a set of 60 statements, each offering a different view of love.

By analysing these sorting patterns, the research team was able to identify nine distinct experiences of partnership love at work in British culture. The most dominant view expressed was that love should be based upon mutual trust, recognition and support – a continual shared effort where the ‘job’ of each partner is to make the life of the other better and to help them maximise their potential as an individual.

Other ‘love stories’ included a hedonistic love – where love is little more than the pleasant and hedonistic feelings of excitement that can be produced by sex, and a ‘demythologised’ love that directly questioned what it saw as our cultural tendency to view love in overly romantic terms.

Dr Watts, Senior Lecturer in Psychology, said: “People down the ages have always tried to capture and pigeonhole love. The evidence suggests, however, that love is historically and culturally variable. There is no one true or definitive account of love, rather there are a limited and interconnected variety of love stories at work in any particular culture. It’s okay for love to differ across relationships and to change its character with the passage of time – it’s equally acceptable for us to change our views of love as we go along.”

He added: “At a time when about 60% of our marriages fail it is clear that many of our expectations of love and love relationships are not being satisfied. Our study highlights some of those expectations - such as the heavy burden of responsibility we often place on our partners to make our lives better – but it also shows that there really are ‘other’ ways of thinking about love and we hope that these might ultimately help to change some people’s expectations in a manner that is positive for them.”

What’s love like?

Mutual Trust, Recognition and Support – A continual shared effort where the job of each partner is to make the life of the other ‘better’ and to help them maximise their potential as an individual. This is not easy to do but the evidence suggests this is the central story of love in our culture.
Cupid’s Arrow – Love is a passion so intense that one loses sight of who one is and what one needs. It is rooted in processes of physical attraction and is almost impossible for us to control.
Hedonistic Love – Love is little more than the pleasant and hedonistic ‘feelings of excitement’ that can be produced by sex. No attempt is made to establish a long-term commitment and relationships are pursued to maximise personal feelings of pleasure.
Love as Ultimate Connection and Profound Feeling – A belief that love is the most profound of human feelings and the ultimate way of relating to another person. Love is seen as essential to our lives. Past relationship failures can not be allowed to put us off – they simply mean we haven’t yet found ‘the one’.
Demythologised Love – An account which is critical of what it sees as the ‘romantic myth of love’ being propagated in our culture. This myth leads us to have unrealistically high expectations of love relationships in circumstances where large amounts of hard work, patience and compromise will actually be required.
Love as Transformative Adventure – This involves opening oneself up to the new opportunities and life direction that a relationship can bring. Love can become an unpredictable roller coaster ride which can produce great pleasure, but can just as easily go wrong and become unfulfilling.
From Cupid’s Arrow to Role-Bound Relationship – The familiar ‘rite-of-passage’ story where love begins as an uncontrollable passion. Eventually, however, one is forced to ‘settle down’ and accept the traditional relationship roles dictated by society – one literally becomes a husband and father, or wife and mother.
From Cupid’s Arrow to Friendship – Another twist on the ‘rite-of-passage’ story. Initial intense feelings give way over time to a love relationship based on characteristics of everyday friendship. This love may not bring us great opportunities or the promise of personal growth, but it will bring increased feelings of personal wellbeing and security.
Dyadic-Partnership Love – Love involves the merging of two people into a single functional unit in which both decide to place the mutually supportive nature of the love relationship ahead of their own individual needs. This demands much honesty, effective communication and mutual respect, but, if done properly, it can also be the most significant way of connecting with another person.