He love It is one of the most complex feelings that a human being can experience. Some people define love as that emotion of being infatuated with a person, but the truth is that loving someone is an incredibly complex phenomenon.
The science has tried to find the answer to be able to refine the concept of love. Obviously, it is impossible due to its subjectivity, since it depends on the point of view of each individual.
However, the anthropologist and biologist Helen Fisher came to some interesting conclusions:
- Love is a source of extraordinary motivationBeing in love allows us to satisfy a series of important needs such as affection and the desire to be connected to another person.
- He sexual desire It is another of the factors that human beings use as motivation in love. Human beings are always looking for the pleasure and the self-satisfaction.
- The third goal from this neurobiological perspective is the attachment. This feeling is seen from the security and calm that being with the person we love provides us. From these qualities that the relationship offers us, we develop a feeling of wanting to be with the person we love. as much time as possible at your side.
From a more psychological point of view, Robert Stenbergprofessor at Yale University offers his opinion in his publication The love triangleIn this book, he points out three components that must exist in relationships:
- Passion: : It is not only about physical and sexual desire. Passion is also expressed in terms of the need to want to be close to that person and to want to understand their emotions.
- Privacy: plays a key role in establishing a bond with the other person. The feeling of trust grows through the intimacy inherent in romantic relationships.
- Commitment: The members of the couple must accept the «rules of the game» and remain faithful to them. Establishing a solid foundation for the relationship will strengthen the bond and will be the first step towards developing a life plan together.
Models of love, according to Stenberg
From these three characteristics, the expert developed seven categories of love that are present in society:
- Dear: It is usually present in friendships and relationships with family members. Logically, these links have a different way of conceiving intimacy and commitment.
- Infatuation: fleeting or casual relationships fall into this category. Passion is present, while intimacy and commitment are in the background.
- Empty: refers to the bonds that are established through an interest. The three characteristics that Stenberg describes do not appear in this model of love.
- Romantic: the presence of passion and intimacy is noticeable, but they do not acquire any type of commitment.
- Fatuous: It is a type of love in which the two people do not have the necessary intimacy to create an affinity that makes them last over time.
- Sociable: It usually occurs in long-term relationships, in which intimacy and commitment are still latent.
- Accomplished: the ideal love where passion, commitment and intimacy bring to the relationship a solidity that will serve to unite their bond.
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Different types of love
Love when it is pure and sincere It is one of the best feelings for anyone. It provides benefits for the mind, heart and body. It is not only conventional love, as a couple, that offers you these advantages. There are various categories of love that will help you achieve this goal:
- Own: Self-love is essential to having stable relationships with the rest of the population. This is where self-esteem comes into play. The outside world will test your self-esteem, through results and comparisons with people around us. Prioritizing our needs and valuing which people bring benefits is the main step to creating high self-love.
- Towards the neighbor: love for our siblings, friends, children and other loved ones. This love usually creates social groups around you and you will be the one to decide which people form part of your family or «group» of friends.
- Couple relationship: This is one of the most recent concepts in the field of love. In the past, marriages were usually established based on strategic interests, such as alliances between royal houses. The essential thing in this type of love is to find a person who complements us and gives us pleasant sensations such as security, affection or attachment.
- Platonic love: This model defines the idealization of a possible romantic relationship that can be established with a person with whom one does not even have close contact. The main characteristics are the imagination of that perfect love, lacking the sexual element and it is usually more present when the unrealization of that love is growing.
This is not love
Taking into account the different points of view on what this feeling means, we must develop what It's not love:
- Emotional dependence: The need for constant affection from the other person can cause unbearable wear and tear on the relationship. Your well-being cannot depend on just one person. Your relationship should be one of the important relationships in your life, not the only reason for your existence.
- Handling: The widespread belief that love must involve jealousy is absolutely false. One of the tools for building a solid relationship is trust. Through jealousy, you only demonstrate an alarming insecurity of your own and generate doubts in the other person.
- Possession: Control mechanisms such as monitoring your partner on social networks are one of the most harmful elements in a relationship. It is a total mistake to try to control the life of the person you supposedly want to be happy, by submitting to that control without any question.
We hope that with this series of explanations you have some more light on what What is love and what is not.
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