Page 409 - The Social Animal

Liking, Loving, and Interpersonal Sensitivity 391

According to Sternberg, as the relationship develops, it often
moves from pure passion and blossoms into a combination of pas-
sion and intimacy that Sternberg calls romantic love. As the rela-
tionship matures further, it becomes companionate; Sternberg uses
this term to describe love characterized by the combination of inti-
macy and commitment—without a lot of passion. In Sternberg’s sys-
tem, the ultimate goal is consummate love—the blending of all
three components. But this is achieved only rarely. The implication
of this triangle is that, as a loving couple becomes increasingly accus-
tomed to one another, there is the strong possibility that passion is
likely to become the victim of routine and they may get stuck in a
companionate state. It’s not a terrible place to be stuck, but it falls
short of the ideal—consummate love.

Gain-Loss Theory: Implications for Close Relation-
ships Compared with the ups and downs of a passionate love af-
fair, the steadier, predictable rhythm of a companionate relationship
offers its own special rewards. The benefits of a thriving, long-term
relationship include emotional security and the priceless comfort of
being accepted by someone who knows your shortcomings, as well as
your strengths.
In addition to these enormous benefits, however, there is a po-
tential dark side to being in a long-term, close, communal relation-
65
ship. The fundamental irony is aptly expressed in the words of the
classic ballad “You Always Hurt the One You Love.” Why might this
be so? Recall from our earlier discussion of gain-loss theory the
rather surprising fact that we find it more rewarding when someone’s
initially negative feelings toward us gradually become positive than
if that person’s feelings for us were entirely positive all along. Con-
versely, we tend to find it more noxious when a person who once
evaluated us positively slowly comes to view us in a negative light
than if he or she expressed uniformly negative feelings toward us. Al-
though research testing the gain-loss theory has been limited to
short-term liking relationships, it would be interesting to explore the
possible implications of these findings for long-term relationships.
One possibility is that, once we have grown certain of the reward-
ing behavior of our long-term partner, that person may become less
powerful as a source of reward than a stranger. We know that gains
are important; but a long-term lover or spouse is probably behaving