Love, they say, is a many-splendored thing. However, love is hard to define, and that’s equally true for researchers as for the lay public. Aside from varying culturally1, psychological theories of romantic love abound, as described by Chen, Xia and Dunne (2024) in their work on how everyday folks define amore.
Some models of love, they note, emphasize aspects of friendship and sexual attraction; other focus on closeness and affection over passion, which tends to fade over time and be supplanted by a mellower “afterglow” for long-term partners. Sternberg’s widely cited model, for instance, highlights the interrelated role of passion, intimacy, and commitment; other models posit four dimensions of love.
The upshot is that current theories, while overlapping, do not achieve consensus. Empirical research is needed to understand how people actually conceptualize romantic love, the theme of art, literature, and music, and the cause of much intrigue, conflict, and even—in the case of the Trojan War—widespread mayhem and destruction.
In order to better define love as it plays out in real life and relationships for real people, Chen and colleagues conducted a qualitative study with a group of university students and a separate group of adults in the community. They asked participants: “What are the essential components of feeling loved in romantic relationships, as perceived by laypeople?” By using two different groups with diverse subjects and checking to see how much their answers overlapped, they explored the question, “How generalizable are the main components of romantic love across different demographics?” This second question is especially important in establishing whether any findings might be relevant beyond the current research.
Using a process of progressive synthesis, they analyzed narratives from over 500 people, first into concepts, then categories, and finally three core categories—positive responsiveness to needs, authentic connection, and a sense of stability. They found a high degree of agreement between undergraduate and community responses and consistency across gender, ethnicity, age and socioeconomic status, suggesting these findings are likely to apply broadly; that is, they are generalizable. Core categories were made up of more specific subcategories, as follows:
Positive responsiveness (to needs). This was the strongest core category, discussed in various ways by 96.8 percent of participants. Receiving affection and support or enhancing sense of worth were characteristic of this core category. Responses consistently covered notions like “caring for me”, “doing nice things”, “random acts of kindness”, and “treating me well” (through actions). The underlying categories here were demonstrating affection, providing support, and enhancing sense of worth.
Demonstrating affection included physical actions such as hugging and caressing, verbal expressions of love, little gestures like sending gifts, and showing positive regard. Support was provided via material resources like paying for meals, providing service such as cooking, and intangibles such as giving guidance, sticking up for one, giving encouragement, and supporting autonomy. Sense of worth was enhanced via highlighting one’s good qualities, complimenting directly, or being proud with others, highlighting loved one’s specialness or importance, making them a priority, or asking them for help.
Authentic connection. The feeling of togetherness was relevant for 71.5 percent of respondents. This included both physical and mental intimacy. Categories comprising authentic connection were mutual affinity and in tune with one another. Mutual affinity was expressed in wanting to be together in different ways, by doing things together, and very often via communication—including texting, calling, having tough conversations, talking about the future, and various other ways of sharing experiences and ideas. Being in tune was about being on the same page, “in sync”, and through being included, having others being receptive or open to oneself, being interested, paying attention, and through engagement and understanding.
A sense of stability. Coming in as third most common, 34.5 percent discussed long-term consistency as a key component of romantic love. Distinct from the prior core categories, this component embodied the persistence of romantic love across longer spans of time and enduring through life’s ups and downs.
The underlying categories here were dependable and unconditional. Dependability was about “always being reliable and trustworthy”, and being present in times of need, for example. through being a good listener, bolstering confidence, and checking in when things are hard. The unconditional regard of stability included doing what was needed without expectations, and acceptance, regardless of flaws, of who a person is without trying to change them.
The three core categories and seven subcategories were 100 percent consistent across gender, ethnicity and household income. The information derived from these interviews and the subsequent analysis was also consistent with many of the psychological frameworks theorized to capture overarching features of romantic love. While further research is needed to look at how love is empirically defined and experienced, given the exploratory nature of this study, the findings support the notion that romantic love may be grounded in highly generalizable factors.
Notably, positive responsiveness, authentic connection and a sense of stability work together to define an interpersonal ecosystem of romantic love, within which short-, middle-, and long-term behaviors and communications build synergistically upon one another.
While the study did not investigate how love grows over time, it’s tempting to speculate that the most frequent core category, positive responsiveness, could be the foundation. Authentic connection could weave the relationship together more firmly, and, over time, a sense of stability would build upon and consolidate those elements of the relationship into one of enduring union.
No doubt there is further nuance, as couples weather challenges with varying degrees of personal, relationship, and sexual satisfaction, and, given that more than 40 percent of married couples ultimately part ways, enduring romantic love may be easier said than done. Nevertheless, the three-fold conception of romantic love derived here is useful for both thinking about how we experience love in our own lives and providing a base camp for future research and clinical practice, and for couples to better understand their own path together.
References
1. Four Key Aspects of Intercultural Relationships
Citation
Yi Chen, Mengya Xia & Shannon Dunne (29 Jan 2024): Romantic Love is Not Only “Romantic”: A Grounded Theory Study on Love in Romantic Relationships, The Journal of Psychology, DOI: 10.1080/00223980.2024.2305442
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