Intimacy, Passion and Commitment - Three Components of Love

According to the well-known psychologist Robert Sternberg’s “triangular theory of love,” love consists of the distinct components of intimacy, passion, and commitment. Intimacy is the experience of warmth toward another person that arises from feelings of closeness and connectedness. It involves the desire to give and receive emotional support and to share one’s innermost thoughts and experiences. Here is how one woman in our study experienced this dimension of love:

I feel that sex can be one of many physical expressions of love, though sex is not always an expression of love. When I make love with my husband, it is an intimacy, trust, and exposure of myself that I share only with him . . . because I love him. Sex can be a way of fulfilling my husband’s needs (physical, emotional, psychological) that can’t be achieved any other way and [it] lets him know that I love him and vice versa. Though I have been physically intimate (kissing, petting, etc.) with other people whom I did not love, I have had sex only with people I loved.—heterosexual woman, age 29

Passion, the second component, refers to intense romantic feelings and sexual desire for another person. Elaine Hatfield, a distinguished psychologist at the University of Hawaii, has spent decades studying passionate love and how it is expressed. She defines passionate love as a “hot intense emotion” characterized by an intense longing for union with another. It is the “lovesick” part of love that Hatfield believes exists in all cultures. In fact, some cultures even have specific diagnostic criteria for the “symptoms” people get when they fall passionately in love. For example, Hatfield reports that in South Indian Tamil families, love-struck persons are said to be suffering from mayakkam, a syndrome characterized by dizziness, confusion, intoxication, and delusion.

When reciprocated, feelings of passion are often associated with feelings of fulfillment and ecstasy:

Honestly speaking, sex has never been just a satisfied action for me. It has always expressed something more. . . . I feel so happy having the most wonderful man. . . . Probably it happened because while living far away, for quite a long period of time, we had a great opportunity to realize what we mean for each other, and what true love is, and when I look into his eyes while making love, it is always something which is so difficult to express by words . . . but it’s like the fullest flowering of the blossom of our love. —heterosexual woman, age 38

For one woman in our study, feelings of romance and passion served an added bonus—they helped her ignore her boyfriend’s less than desirable housekeeping habits:

For [my] twentieth birthday, my boyfriend took me out to an amazing seafood restaurant and we had a really incredible time. He treated me like a princess. I felt so loved, and I was so in love, and all the feelings [from] the romantic atmosphere of the restaurant carried over to his grungy apartment and we made love on his bed. That may have been the best sex we’ve ever had. —heterosexual woman, age 20

Commitment, the third component of love, requires decision making. A short-term decision involves whether or not one actually loves the other person, while the long-term decision involves a willingness to maintain the relationship through thick and thin. Many women in our study talked about how commitment was an essential component of love for them. In fact, some said that they used having sex as a way to try to ensure commitment from a partner they felt they loved:

My first sexual experience with a [man] was because I wanted the relationship to be committed. We were both sixteen-year-old virgins and had been dating for three months. I pushed for us to have sex because I wanted to show him that I loved him. I wanted to give him something that no one else could have. him something that no one else could have. —heterosexual woman, age 25

The reason I had sex with my ex-husband? I was young, I was sixteen years old, and I wanted him to stay with me. I thought by having sex it would ensure a committed relationship. It didn’t, but at the time you could not have made me see that. I equated sex [with] love. And the more that we made love, I thought, the more he must love me. I was a fool.—heterosexual woman, age 41

Some researchers believe that the “amount” of love a person experiences depends on the absolute strength of the three components, and that couples are best matched if they possess similar levels of intimacy, passion, and commitment. Sternberg has identified seven different “love styles” based on the possible combinations of intimacy, passion, and commitment in a relationship. For example, he calls love where there is commitment but no intimacy or passion “empty love.” These are the people you see eating together silently in restaurants, who love each other largely out of a sense of duty or lack of options. Love where there is passion and commitment but no intimacy is “foolish love.” These are the whirlwind courtships that burn brightly at first and then fizzle out when one or both partners come to the sad realization that they do not have anything—other than sex, perhaps—in common. “Liking love” is intimacy without than sex, perhaps—in common. “Liking love” is intimacy without passion or commitment and, as the name implies, it typifies a close friendship. Its opposite, love with passion and intimacy but no commitment, is what Sternberg deems “romantic love.” “Infatuation love” has passion but no intimacy or commitment, while “companionate love” involves intimacy and commitment but is short on passion. Companionate love is quite typical of long-term unions, in which sexual desire can fade with time and familiarity.

Of course the seventh and final love style described by Sternberg is the ultimate, “consummate love,” which is the perfect blend of intimacy, passion, and commitment. Few couples who have been together for a long time consistently experience “consummate love.” In most relationships, levels of intimacy, passion, and commitment wax and wane with time and circumstance. Thus, it is not uncommon for a couple to experience several forms of these love styles throughout the course of their relationship.