Love Rain
I've been thinking about love lately.
I am watching the people around me in their various stages of love, and researching the different theories about the combinations of qualities that will yield the different types of love.
For example, there is Rubin's theory of liking vs. loving, where love is made up of three components: attachment, caring, and intimacy. He even created a set of questionnaires that can differentiate between like and love.
Then I found a Jewish pdf online that talks about the Six Different Types of Love: Love of God, Love of Fellow Humans, Love between a Man and Woman, Love of Your Nation ("all Jews are responsible to one another"), and Narcissism. This outline also came with some study questions pondering the nature of love: what is love and what isn't.
Then there's Hatfield's model of passionate vs. compassionate love, where compassionate love springs from respect, where passionate love is transitory.
Then this guy John Lee, he's got an idea of love that's set up like a color wheel. You know how your three primaries can be combined with each other and then there are secondaries? It's kinda like that.
Three primary styles:
1. Eros - Loving an ideal person
2. Ludos - Love as a game
3. Storge - Love as friendship
Three secondary styles:
1. Mania (Eros + Ludos) - Obsessive love
2. Pragma (Ludos + Storge) - Realistic and practical love
3. Agape (Eros + Storge) - Selfless love
Get it?
But wait, there's more...
Sternberg has this theory called Triangular Theory which says that love has three components: intimacy, passion, and commitment. He says that different combinations of these yield different types of love, but that the strongest type is the one that holds all three. However, this love is difficult to attain and difficult to maintain. If two people can successfully change in a manner that facilitates a different type of love with two of the components, they may be able to move on from that higher love to something else, thus maintaining their relationship. The fade of love is natural.
So, I'm watching people fall head over heels and wondering which components are there. I am wondering if all those people have the smarts to work it out logically and take the right steps so they aren't just infatuated and heartbroken later on.
I'm listening to one of my girlfriends talk about wanting to marry her boyfriend because they have a baby and she loves him, and I want to tell her that you can't make him love you, that's not how it goes. She pines for how they used to feel and I have to remind her about Sternberg.
And my bestie? I've watched her love grow into something truly strong. I remember when it was a fledgling relationship in high school, and when they took the plunge into marriage. I remember worrying for the tenuous strands that were stretched great distances, and then seeing the results of their time away together when they nurtured the little tendrils of love into a great tree of hope and strength.
It reminds me of this movie I saw recently that opened with a couple getting married. The preacher was tying a braided cord around the two of them, saying that there was one cord for him, one cord for her, and one cord for God. Later in the movie, they grow away from their faith and then each other. I'm not one to tell my friends to pray it out when something goes wrong, but I am becoming one to be very thankful for what I have, and keep my eyes open to recognize when I am blessed.
However, my beliefs are an entirely different blog...unless I tell you that I feel God is love, and God is within all of us, because it's not "someone upstairs" watching from above. It's a force, not an entity.
That might bring some controversy. Sorry to rock anyone's boat, but that's why it's my blog.
Disclaimers and beliefs aside, I just wanted to get out some of these things I've been thinking and see if anyone else has thoughts on all this.
I am watching the people around me in their various stages of love, and researching the different theories about the combinations of qualities that will yield the different types of love.
For example, there is Rubin's theory of liking vs. loving, where love is made up of three components: attachment, caring, and intimacy. He even created a set of questionnaires that can differentiate between like and love.
Then I found a Jewish pdf online that talks about the Six Different Types of Love: Love of God, Love of Fellow Humans, Love between a Man and Woman, Love of Your Nation ("all Jews are responsible to one another"), and Narcissism. This outline also came with some study questions pondering the nature of love: what is love and what isn't.
Then there's Hatfield's model of passionate vs. compassionate love, where compassionate love springs from respect, where passionate love is transitory.
Then this guy John Lee, he's got an idea of love that's set up like a color wheel. You know how your three primaries can be combined with each other and then there are secondaries? It's kinda like that.
Three primary styles:
1. Eros - Loving an ideal person
2. Ludos - Love as a game
3. Storge - Love as friendship
Three secondary styles:
1. Mania (Eros + Ludos) - Obsessive love
2. Pragma (Ludos + Storge) - Realistic and practical love
3. Agape (Eros + Storge) - Selfless love
Get it?
But wait, there's more...
Sternberg has this theory called Triangular Theory which says that love has three components: intimacy, passion, and commitment. He says that different combinations of these yield different types of love, but that the strongest type is the one that holds all three. However, this love is difficult to attain and difficult to maintain. If two people can successfully change in a manner that facilitates a different type of love with two of the components, they may be able to move on from that higher love to something else, thus maintaining their relationship. The fade of love is natural.
So, I'm watching people fall head over heels and wondering which components are there. I am wondering if all those people have the smarts to work it out logically and take the right steps so they aren't just infatuated and heartbroken later on.
I'm listening to one of my girlfriends talk about wanting to marry her boyfriend because they have a baby and she loves him, and I want to tell her that you can't make him love you, that's not how it goes. She pines for how they used to feel and I have to remind her about Sternberg.
And my bestie? I've watched her love grow into something truly strong. I remember when it was a fledgling relationship in high school, and when they took the plunge into marriage. I remember worrying for the tenuous strands that were stretched great distances, and then seeing the results of their time away together when they nurtured the little tendrils of love into a great tree of hope and strength.
It reminds me of this movie I saw recently that opened with a couple getting married. The preacher was tying a braided cord around the two of them, saying that there was one cord for him, one cord for her, and one cord for God. Later in the movie, they grow away from their faith and then each other. I'm not one to tell my friends to pray it out when something goes wrong, but I am becoming one to be very thankful for what I have, and keep my eyes open to recognize when I am blessed.
However, my beliefs are an entirely different blog...unless I tell you that I feel God is love, and God is within all of us, because it's not "someone upstairs" watching from above. It's a force, not an entity.
That might bring some controversy. Sorry to rock anyone's boat, but that's why it's my blog.
Disclaimers and beliefs aside, I just wanted to get out some of these things I've been thinking and see if anyone else has thoughts on all this.