Page 408 - The Social Animal

390 The Social Animal

Although poets and philosophers have been struggling with
these questions for centuries, they have yet to be answered in a fash-
ion that all can agree on. The difficulty in defining love seems to lie,
at least in part, with the fact that love is not a unitary, one-dimen-
sional state but, rather, is a complex, multifaceted phenomenon ex-
perienced in a broad variety of relationships. Indeed, we use the word
love to describe such diverse relationships as those between passion-
ate teenagers (like Romeo and Juliet), new couples in the throes of
excited discovery, couples who have been together for decades, and
close friends.
Elaine Hatfield and Richard Rapson draw an important distinc-
tion between two basic types of love: passionate and companionate. 62
Passionate love is characterized by strong emotions, sexual desire,
and intense preoccupation with the beloved. Its onset is usually rapid
rather than gradual, and, alas, almost inevitably, its fiery intensity
cools over time. In some relationships, passionate love may be a prel-
ude to the eventual development of companionate love—a milder,
more stable experience marked by feelings of mutual trust, depend-
ability, and warmth. Compared with the typically short-lived inten-
sity of romantic passion, companionate love generally lasts longer
and deepens over time.
Robert Sternberg and his colleagues have added a third element
63
in a theory they call the triangle of love. Sternberg suggests that
the three ingredients of love are passion (euphoria and sexual excite-
ment), intimacy (feeling free to talk about anything, feeling close to
and understood by the loved one), and commitment (needing to be
with the other person, feeling loyal). Love can consist of one com-
ponent alone or of any combination of these three parts. For exam-
ple, a person may feel a great deal of passion or physical attraction
for another (mere infatuation) but may not be experiencing anything
approaching true intimacy. Romantic films tend to depict the love re-
lationship as one primarily of passion, and the film usually ends as
the young couple, deeply in the throes of passionate attraction, de-
cides to marry. But this may not be the best moment to make that
decision. As Roy Baumeister put it, passionate love is, in many re-
spects, an altered state of consciousness, like that produced by mari-
juana or alcohol. 64 Although this state is certainly exciting, it does
not qualify as the best state to be in when one is making decisions
with long-range, far-reaching consequences.