REAL LOVE

Categorizing Love

A Study Report By: Arun Kesavan.K

Some years ago I was an Engineering student in a famous university college campus, in India. At that time I found some people around me, were in love with somebody, most of them hadn't had any commitment to their leman. I was totally confused on their actions and their concept on love. Then I began to think about love. By this action, my mind began to scan for the meaning of LOVE .Most of the time this question began to follow me; I saw lot of lovers in the public library, college veranda, park, beach, restaurants finally in bus-stops. They had chosen compatible meeting places, depends upon their own interest; however I found a similar trend among youth. They prefer their colleges as the safest place to develop their love. Finally I got an answer for my question. That might be a bit funny; on the other hand this answer will help lovers, for a self-analysis.

I found that: "Real love is unconditional. All other “forms” of love are not really love. Most parents and kids don’t love each other, most people in relationships don’t love each other, most people on the planet never experience unconditional love in their entire lives… or at least it sure looks that way."

After I got this answer, I shared this with my close friend. Then he asked a question to me: "What's love NOT?" I felt that this question has more importance than my findings on love .At that time I didn't get any answer for that question. But at the very next day I got an answer, I think this answer is the very good tool to ASSESS our love on others. I had given a different definition to LOVE NOT, "Possessiveness is not love, Jealousy is not love, Lust is not love, Fear is not love, Keeping people all to yourself is not love, Expecting something from someone is not love." All people know these things

Unfortunately I found lot of love not elements in most of the relationship between partners. Majority of them are acting in front of the society, that they are happy with their life and life partner, however we can see some exceptional cases, most of them won't care about their own wants and needs, more than their partner's. Then I began to collect some articles and speeches on this topic, by the famous psychologists.

Although many people would no doubt think it impossible, social psychologists over the past several decades have been attempted to categorize and quantify the notion of love. And while there may never be agreement on how this is best done, much of the research to date is quite thought-provoking.

Sternberg (1986) sees love in term of the interplay between three independently quantifiable aspects: passion, intimacy and decision or commitment. Sternberg defines passion as the romantic and sexual components of the relationship. Intimacy is the degree of closeness a person feels for another.Decision/commitment concerns both one's decision about being in love with a person and, once in an established relationship with that person, how committed one is to loving one's partner.

Now I would like to give a small out look on his point-of-view.

The intensity of each of the three aspects tells us how a love relationship can be characterized. If decision/commitment is strong, for example, but intimacy and passion are low, then the result is empty love, according to Sternberg. He defines liking, meanwhile, as the type of the love resulting from high degree of intimacy but low decision/commitment and passion. When passion is the only component that strongly felt, this means that infatuation best describes the relationship.Romantic love occurs when there is a balance of passion and intimacy at relatively high levels but there is little decision/commitment. When all three aspects are more or less equally balanced, however, the relationship can be called one of consummate love, and this, says Sternberg, is probably the healthiest in terms of the longevity of relationship and the happiness of the partners.

In yet another categorization of love, Lee (1973) divides the emotion into six different styles, each with its own name:

Here I would like to discus about the love styles and its characteristics. According to Mr. Lee, he found six love styles among people, they are:

Love Style	Characteristics
Eros	Romantic, passionate love; Based on ideal images of one's partner
Ludus	Game-playing love; Playful and teasing
Storge	Friendship love
Pragma	Practical, logical love; A 'shopping-list' approach to seeking a partner
Mania	Possessive, dependent love
Agepe	Selfless, altruistic love; Puts partner's interests above own

Mr. Lee believes most people feel or experience love as a combination of two or more of the above styles, and that both partners may approach their relationship with styles that are sometimes compatible and sometimes not. Hendrick and Hendrick (1986) investigated how men and women categorize their feelings and experiences of love using scales developed to measure Lee's six styles. They found that women scored higher onSTORGE, PRAGMA and MAINIA styles, while men scored higher on LUDUS.

In a subsequent study, Hendick and Adler (1988) looked at how men's and women's scores for six love types correlated with satisfaction in their love relationships. The findings were that a relationship was more likely to be satisfactory if EROS and AGAPE scores for both partners were high, while high score of LUDUS was more common in relationships marked by dissatisfaction.

The question of why different types or styles of love exist may best addressed by attachment theory. The theory is based on observations of infants developing attachments to adults interpreted by Bowlby (1980) as a natural, evolutionary behavior that promotes survival of the infant by staying close to adults when there is danger. Anisworth et al. (1978) divide attachment behavior in to three types: SECURE, ANXIOUS-AMBIVALENT andAVOIDANT. A SECURE attachment style forms ahen the infant and the care-giving adult interact with consistent caring and regular physical contact, giving the infant confidence to explore the world with little fear. When the adult gives care inconsistently or tries to interfere too much in the infant's activities, the attachment style is more likely to be anxious-ambivalent. An avoidant style results from regular refusal by the care-giving adult to give attention or physical contact to the infant.

Hazan and Shaver (1987), believing love to be a form of attachment, speculate that early attachment styles extend into adulthood and characterize a person's style of showing love for another person. They base their suppositions on the reported histories of over 1200 people, who wrote of both their adult romantic experience and their relationship with their partner. Adults with secure attachment styles reported that they found it fairly easy to get close to other people and enjoy a relationship characterized by mutual dependence. Moreover, there was little fear of being rejected by others. Those with avoidant attachment style said they were not comfortable getting close to others, found it difficult to trust others completely and did not like having to rely on others. People in the anxious-ambivalent category felt their partners did not wish to become as intimate with them as they them-selves would have liked. They also worried that they were not loved by their partners and constantly fretted about their romantic relation ship.

Now I would like to remind one thing to all. In this article I wrote some yard stick to measure your love with your partner. However, I suggest, "don't use this tricks to measure your love with your partner", because it'll lead a lover as a pessimist, and this pessimism will destroy his / her confidence level. A man can't live without confidence. So LOVE each other without conditions, without expectation.

Thank You,

An article by: Arun Kesavan. K