September 13, 2025 • 21 mins
We all want to know the secret to true, lasting love so that we can perhaps have a shot at finding it. So in today's episode, we're breaking down perhaps the most famous theory on this very topic, Robert Sternbery's Triangular Theory of Love. In this episode, we talk about:
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The 3 core ingredients of love: intimacy, passion, commitment
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How different combinations form different kinds of relationships
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Why “consummate love” is so rare, and hard to maintain
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What the theory leaves out: culture, trust, respect, asexuality, polyamory
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A look at the newer “quadruple theory” of love
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
Hello everybody, and welcome back to the Psychology of Your Twenties,
the podcast where we talk through some of the big
life changes and transitions of our twenties and what they
mean for our psychology.
Speaker 2 (00:22):
Hello everybody, Welcome back to the show. Welcome back to
the podcast. New listeners, old listeners. Wherever you are in
the world, it is so great to have you here.
Back for another episode as we, of course break down
the psychology of our twenties. Today, I am introducing a
new kind of episode to the show, a shorter episode
(00:46):
than what you are probably used to, where we are
going to cover some core psychology principles, theories, concepts, or
studies that I think are interesting, that I think will
help us understand our twenties better, but which don't necessarily
have enough to say about them to be made into
a full forty five minute to an hour long episode.
(01:08):
And you guys know, I love to yap. I can talk.
I can talk until the sun goes down. But these
episodes are just going to be a little bit more
bite sized, a little bit smaller for your fifteen minute commute,
for your fifteen minute I don't know arm workout for
whatever you're doing. This is just going to be like
(01:28):
a more bite sized taste of our longer episodes, talking
about concepts that I still think deserve to be in
the Psychology of Your Twenties universe, but which just don't
have enough research to them quite yet. For our inaugural
Psychology by Ites bonus episode, I wanted to talk about
one of my favorite favorite theories that I've been trying
(01:50):
to make into a full length episode for years. Finally
she is having her time to shine. We are talking
about the triangular theory of love. Let's start with it's
very basic factual information. This theory was developed by the
psychologist Robert Sternberg, and it's not just about romantic love.
This theory is about how love forms, how it lasts,
(02:13):
how it changes, and it's about platonic intimacy. It's about
familiar intimacy. It's about commitment and the foundational reasons why
we feel drawn or connected to certain people, and what
makes a relationship consummate love, what makes a relationship a
kind of love that lasts. It is one theory in
(02:37):
a long line of theories trying to synthesize, explain, simplify,
categorize the thing that fascinates us more than anything else.
It's just one of many theories trying to get to
the bottom of what does love really mean? What is
this thing that we all experience or hope to experience.
(02:58):
Some other theories of note which you are maybe familiar with,
include things like attachment theory. Basically, that theory states that
how we love and are loved is based on the
love we received as children and how we were raised.
There's also the reward theory of attraction, which basically states
that we are drawn to people who make us feel
(03:19):
good about ourselves, and that reward inherent drivers within us
or inherent desires or needs within us. Another particularly famous
theory around love is John Allen Lee's color wheel theory
of love, which defines three primary, three secondary, and nine
tertiary types of love based on different combinations of feelings.
(03:43):
For example, ludos love, which is primarily driven by desire
to have fun and to tease, Pragma love, which is
a convenient kind of love, kinship love, friendship love. There's
a whole list that you can look up. We're not
talking about that today. It's just another one of many
theories in this kind of space. But the real one
(04:06):
that kind of shines through and that a lot of
people talk about is the triangular theory. This is probably
my favorite of all, which is of course why we
are doing an episode on it. So this theory is
almost forty years old now I think it's over forty
years old, sorry to say. And it suggests that we
can describe nearly all types and forms of love based
(04:28):
on three ingredients and their combination. The three ingredients for
any type of relationship are intimacy, passion, and commitment. Let's
break these down. Intimacy involves feelings of familiarity, closeness, connectedness,
a sense of similarity, shared hobbies, shared values, that kind
(04:49):
of thing. Passion involves deep desire, attraction, romance, feelings of
being swept off our feet. And commitment. Commitment means staying.
That means trust. It represents shared goals and unity even
in hard times. I like to explain this theory as
a theory that likes us to think of love like
(05:10):
a recipe for a cake. Depending on how much of
each of these ingredients you put into the cake, you're
going to get a different flavor, a different flavor of
cake that represents something different. It's still a cake. You're
just influencing the recipe so that something different comes out. Basically,
(05:30):
this theory, it describes love as a recipe and you
can make dozens of different things with just a few
variations of ingredients. This is my own kind of metaphor
for this theory. But the way Stoneberg represents this is
as a triangle. Obviously, it's called the triangular theory of
love and intimacy, passion and commitment are all points on
(05:51):
the triangle. Each point represents one type of love, but
so do the lines connecting those points and the center
point of the triangle as well. I know it's quite visual,
but I think giving you some combinations might help you
understand this a little bit easier. On one side of
the triangle, at one point, we have passion, and if
(06:12):
a relationship only has passion, it's a very simple kind
of cake. It's infatuation, it's limerens. It's one side, and
perhaps it's purely sexual in nature. It's driven by feeling
longing and you know the thing that we want the
most in the present, which is this other person. But
it doesn't have intimacy, it doesn't have commitment. It's the
(06:32):
simple cake. It's the passionate cake. If you only have commitment.
On the other side of the triangle, you have empty love. Yes,
you are loyal to one another, but romance and passion
and intimacy have faded. You don't have that organic closeness.
Think you know people who have stayed married for the kids,
even when all else is faded. You know there is
(06:52):
still a kind of love there, but it's not the
same as what they had. We also have purely intimacy.
So intimacy is the other kind of part of the triangle,
and that is like friendship. If you're just intimate with
someone and you just have closeness or familiarity, but you
don't have romance or commitment, you guys are just friends.
(07:13):
So three different kinds of love. Now for our combos.
You guys, ready, If you have intimacy and passion, you
have romantic love. You're dating. It's like the early months
or the early maybe years. You don't know if you're
going to go to the distance, but you're having a
really great time and you feel really close and comfortable
and like in love with this person. If you have
(07:33):
intimacy and commitment, you have companion love. And this can
also be platonic think those like lifelong friends who like
live with each other in their sixties. Think people who
are older and they no longer have the same sexual
feelings for each other, but they're still all in on
their relationship. Their love. These kinds of love is they're
just as real as any other kind of love. It
(07:54):
just doesn't have that other ingredient to the relationship that
Sternberg says creates consummate love. It doesn't mean it's any
less meaningful. Fatuous love is when we have passion and commitment.
It's incredibly rare because it doesn't have intimacy, which you
think would be needed to connect those two things. Think
(08:17):
like whirlwind courtships, people who get married after a few weeks.
They have passion, sorry, and they have commitment. They don't
have intimacy. There's no real bond there yet, but we
would hope it would develop over time. Again, super rare.
Probably the most rare version or combination, and finally, the
one we've been talking about this whole time, consummate love.
(08:38):
This is described by this theory as the complete form
of love, representing the ideal romantic relationship that we are
all striving for. We have intimacy, passion, and commitment combined.
This is the center of the triangle. Now, some things
to dispel about consummate love. It's wonderful, beautiful, it's what
(09:00):
we all strive for. It might not always last. This
theory is not saying that once you have this thing,
you have the perfect relationship. Having it for a certain
period doesn't mean you're entitled to it forever. In fact,
there's actually this urban myth going around that the reason
Sternberg was so obsessed with theorizing about love was because
(09:22):
he kept getting divorced and he wanted to know why
the triangle kept collapsing in for him. But yes, it
is a little bit of an urban myth. But you know,
based on his own personal experience, he does caution in
his papers on this subject that maintaining consummate love maybe
harder than just achieving it. You know, he really does
(09:44):
stress that these are just all these components are important.
Having intimacy, having passion, having commitment are important, but they
are just the beginning. You have to translate those components
of love into action. Without expression, even the greatest of
loves can die. And I think that's a really important message,
not just for people in the twenties, but of any age.
(10:07):
If you have a love that you want to last,
you have to understand that love, especially the triangular theory
of love makes it so that this is also a verb.
This is something that we act on. I think there's
this idea that like, when you meet the right person,
you just know and it should feel easy. And this
theory says that, yes, you may have everything you need
(10:29):
to experience consummate love in the beginning, but it is
not just the sum of its parts. You have to
work for it. And the reason I really love this
theory is because it doesn't think of love as stationary.
It actually allows us to explain how love goes through
many stages. We're going to take a short break, but
when we return, I want to discuss what these stages
(10:49):
actually are. So, like I said before, the triangular theory
of love likes to be explain how love goes through stages.
It likes to kind of suggest that we begin with
either passion or intimacy, then we gain the other, and
(11:11):
then finally we have commitment. So at any given stage
in a relationship, you can kind of place where someone
is in the timeline of love by looking at where
they sit on this triangle. If they're in the beginning stages,
they might just have passion. If they're in the middle
stage of their relationship, they might have passion and intimacy.
(11:32):
If they're in the consummate stage, they have passion, intimacy,
and commitment. But then as you maybe go further along
on your relationship, you might lose the passion and just
have commitment and intimacy, And then you might lose the
intimacy and just have commitment, and then you might lose
the commitment and have nothing. It also describes some of
(11:52):
the relationships that happen in between, like situationships, like affairs.
It describes friendships, It describes people who stay for the kids.
It describes you know, the people that you meet in
those brief moments, maybe only for a couple of hours
or for a week, and you never see them again.
You have this brilliant, beautiful moment. Basically, I like that
(12:17):
it doesn't show love as this static thing or as
this you know, singular kind of thing. I also like that,
for a theory, and a rather dated one at that
it actually has a lot of real world application and
modern day evidence. For example, a twenty twenty study looked
at the application of this theory in twenty five countries
from all inhabited continents. It had over eleven thousand respondents,
(12:41):
and it found that, yes, this theory actually does hold
up under many different contexts and in many different cultures.
This theory of love does represent many of the kinds
of relationships that people will experience and go through. Another
reason I like this theory is because it can kind
of act as a litmus test for whether the relationship
(13:02):
you're in is fulfilling all that you want it to fulfill.
I think in our twenties we encounter a lot of
half baked relationships and we go back and forth on
is this person right? Is this relationship right or not?
Should we stay? Should we go? And this is a
great way of kind of analyzing our relationship and saying, okay,
but do we have intimacy? Do we have passion? Do
(13:24):
we have commitment? If I seriously look at my relationship
and it's missing one of these things, well, I actually
don't have consummate love, as much as I might feel
like I have some kind of love. The thing is,
you probably do have some kind of love, but is
it the kind of love that you expect and that
you want that will fulfill all three of these needs
(13:45):
for you. Now, something you may have noticed is that
whilst the triangular theory of love is definitely a good start,
it is kind of missing some things. It's definitely got
the foundations down pat it's definitely stripped love to its
very bare scientific stumps. But some researchers have remarked that
(14:05):
it doesn't talk about culture. It doesn't really talk about
the context in which a relationship is taking place. It
treats the love between two people as if it's occurring
in a vacuum. It doesn't include things like family expectations.
It doesn't include things like values, religion, money, other circumstances
(14:28):
that are keeping people apart. All these things do impact
whether love lasts, and where we sit on the triangle.
I think favorable or unfavorable circumstances or the practicality of
one's love should also be a factor as to whether
a consummate love will be achieved or will last. But again,
(14:49):
I think this theory doesn't claim to have predictive powers
over whether a love will last, you know, so we
can't ask from it more than it wants to give.
It kind of just gives the ingredient which will cause
it to form. So again, maybe I'm asking a little
bit too much from a scientific theory, but it's still
something to think about. Another criticism is that it doesn't
(15:11):
specify whether multiple consummate loves can occur at the same time.
You know, people in polyamorous relationships, for example, would claim
that that can occur. But this is an old model
and it doesn't kind of include or represent some of
the newer forms of love that we are experiencing or
(15:36):
seeing in the modern day, especially since it was first
created founded in the eighties when there was definitely a
lot of love that wasn't socially acceptable or talked about,
but was still valid. Finally, and this is the biggest
issue I find with this theory. It doesn't cover whether
(15:56):
one person can be in consummate love and another person
just being passionate love or fatuous love or empty love
at the same time. It doesn't explain or provide an
explanation as to whether two people in the same relationship
can actually be at different spots on the triangle. What
(16:17):
kind of love is occurring then, do both people have
to be experiencing the same combination for the love to
be that thing, or could you have consummate love on
one end fatuous love on the other and does that
still count as a kind of love? You know, this
theory is very one dimensional, right, It is literally a
two D triangle. Look it up you'll see what I'm
(16:37):
talking about. But the feelings we feel towards someone at
any given moment are multidirectional, and they are four D,
five D, six D, and they are complex. You can
have all three ingredients and still not be able to
be together because you know it won't work, or because
keeps distance keeps you apart, or because there's another factor
(16:59):
here isn't being explained by this model. And you know
what about people with relationship anxiety? Where do everyday doubts
about our relationship fit into this? Does having doubts mean
you can never be in consummate love? I don't think so.
I think it's a very natural part of a relationship.
And this is just another reminder that a theory is
(17:20):
not a full It's not going to provide the full picture.
It's not going to explain everything. It's just a theory.
This is where the quadruple theory of love comes in,
which has expanded on the triangular theory of love to
kind of give it some more texture. The quadruple theory
was first introduced in twenty twenty, so a long time
(17:41):
after the triangular theory. It's much newer, and it proposes
that love is built on attraction, connection slash, resonance, trust,
and respect. This model, I think, describes how love develops
over time much better. It also allows for more types
of love to be analyzed since it has that fourth factor.
(18:04):
I think it allows for parental love, love between friends,
polyamorous love to fit into this model. And I like
that it also includes resonance and trust rather than just commitment,
because you can be committed in a very basic way
and still not trust the person you're with or have
respect for them. So I think that this does go
(18:25):
deeper into the complex factors and the human emotion of
it all. It also describes the love cycle in a
more I think, a less stagnant way. If you want
to look up the quadruple theory of love, it actually
has a model and a visual representation for the love
(18:45):
cycle it describes, which I think is a lot more
comprehensive and beautiful. I think it's less of a black
and white model as well, which I love. But yes,
this is a very new theory. It doesn't have as
much evidence, but I do. I think a combination of
the triangular and the quadruple theory would give us a
much more complete version of what love looks like as humans.
(19:11):
But I want to know, do you think that with
all this conversation about theories, love could ever actually ever
be fully explained by a model or by a theory
like these ones. Our researchers and psychologists just trying too
hard to categorize something that can't be categorized. That's the
(19:34):
big question I keep coming back to. At least, if
we know every and any theory will be an oversimplification
in some way or exclude some kind of love in
another way, why do we keep attempting to create these models?
And is love something that really needs to be studied
or graphed or can it only ever just be experienced
(19:55):
and that unique experience is as comprehensive as we may
ever make of it. I don't know. I go back
and forth. I really love looking into these theories, but
sometimes I'm like, You're just never gonna It's never gonna
be the full picture, so why even try? But I
guess they would say that trying is what gets us
as close as we can be. I also know that
(20:17):
when I was in my previous relationships, this model did
help me understand what was missing. So it does really
help in those ways, and it does give words to
a feeling. But I want to know what you think.
Drop a comment below, tell me how you feel, tell
me whether you think this is a good theory a
bad theory, and also give me some suggestions for some
(20:40):
other theories you think I should cover. I really want
to do an episode another Psychology by its bonus episode
on personality tests, whether they're a myth or not. I
really want to talk about narcissism, sociopathy, all of those
things concepts that I think are talked about a lot,
but which you know we may not have the depth
of knowledge on them that we should have. So I
(21:01):
would love to hear your ideas. And I want to
thank you for listening to this smaller episode. Tell me
what you think, tell me if you like it, make
sure to share it with a friend if you think
they would enjoy it as well, and yeah, follow us
along whatever you are listening. So you get more content
like this in your feed. Give us a five star
review only if you feel cold to do so, and
I always forget to say this, but follow me on
(21:23):
Instagram at that Psychology podcast if you want to see
some behind the scenes stuff, some like simplified breakdowns of
these topics. If you want to be able to chat
more with me about these episodes, I'd love to hear
from you. Until next time, thanks for tuning in. Stay safe,
be kind, be gentle with yourself. We will talk very
very soon.
Hello everybody, and welcome back to the Psychology of Your Twenties,
the podcast where we talk through some of the big
life changes and transitions of our twenties and what they
mean for our psychology.
Speaker 2 (00:22):
Hello everybody, Welcome back to the show. Welcome back to
the podcast. New listeners, old listeners. Wherever you are in
the world, it is so great to have you here.
Back for another episode as we, of course break down
the psychology of our twenties. Today, I am introducing a
new kind of episode to the show, a shorter episode
(00:46):
than what you are probably used to, where we are
going to cover some core psychology principles, theories, concepts, or
studies that I think are interesting, that I think will
help us understand our twenties better, but which don't necessarily
have enough to say about them to be made into
a full forty five minute to an hour long episode.
(01:08):
And you guys know, I love to yap. I can talk.
I can talk until the sun goes down. But these
episodes are just going to be a little bit more
bite sized, a little bit smaller for your fifteen minute commute,
for your fifteen minute I don't know arm workout for
whatever you're doing. This is just going to be like
(01:28):
a more bite sized taste of our longer episodes, talking
about concepts that I still think deserve to be in
the Psychology of Your Twenties universe, but which just don't
have enough research to them quite yet. For our inaugural
Psychology by Ites bonus episode, I wanted to talk about
one of my favorite favorite theories that I've been trying
(01:50):
to make into a full length episode for years. Finally
she is having her time to shine. We are talking
about the triangular theory of love. Let's start with it's
very basic factual information. This theory was developed by the
psychologist Robert Sternberg, and it's not just about romantic love.
This theory is about how love forms, how it lasts,
(02:13):
how it changes, and it's about platonic intimacy. It's about
familiar intimacy. It's about commitment and the foundational reasons why
we feel drawn or connected to certain people, and what
makes a relationship consummate love, what makes a relationship a
kind of love that lasts. It is one theory in
(02:37):
a long line of theories trying to synthesize, explain, simplify,
categorize the thing that fascinates us more than anything else.
It's just one of many theories trying to get to
the bottom of what does love really mean? What is
this thing that we all experience or hope to experience.
(02:58):
Some other theories of note which you are maybe familiar with,
include things like attachment theory. Basically, that theory states that
how we love and are loved is based on the
love we received as children and how we were raised.
There's also the reward theory of attraction, which basically states
that we are drawn to people who make us feel
(03:19):
good about ourselves, and that reward inherent drivers within us
or inherent desires or needs within us. Another particularly famous
theory around love is John Allen Lee's color wheel theory
of love, which defines three primary, three secondary, and nine
tertiary types of love based on different combinations of feelings.
(03:43):
For example, ludos love, which is primarily driven by desire
to have fun and to tease, Pragma love, which is
a convenient kind of love, kinship love, friendship love. There's
a whole list that you can look up. We're not
talking about that today. It's just another one of many
theories in this kind of space. But the real one
(04:06):
that kind of shines through and that a lot of
people talk about is the triangular theory. This is probably
my favorite of all, which is of course why we
are doing an episode on it. So this theory is
almost forty years old now I think it's over forty
years old, sorry to say. And it suggests that we
can describe nearly all types and forms of love based
(04:28):
on three ingredients and their combination. The three ingredients for
any type of relationship are intimacy, passion, and commitment. Let's
break these down. Intimacy involves feelings of familiarity, closeness, connectedness,
a sense of similarity, shared hobbies, shared values, that kind
(04:49):
of thing. Passion involves deep desire, attraction, romance, feelings of
being swept off our feet. And commitment. Commitment means staying.
That means trust. It represents shared goals and unity even
in hard times. I like to explain this theory as
a theory that likes us to think of love like
(05:10):
a recipe for a cake. Depending on how much of
each of these ingredients you put into the cake, you're
going to get a different flavor, a different flavor of
cake that represents something different. It's still a cake. You're
just influencing the recipe so that something different comes out. Basically,
(05:30):
this theory, it describes love as a recipe and you
can make dozens of different things with just a few
variations of ingredients. This is my own kind of metaphor
for this theory. But the way Stoneberg represents this is
as a triangle. Obviously, it's called the triangular theory of
love and intimacy, passion and commitment are all points on
(05:51):
the triangle. Each point represents one type of love, but
so do the lines connecting those points and the center
point of the triangle as well. I know it's quite visual,
but I think giving you some combinations might help you
understand this a little bit easier. On one side of
the triangle, at one point, we have passion, and if
(06:12):
a relationship only has passion, it's a very simple kind
of cake. It's infatuation, it's limerens. It's one side, and
perhaps it's purely sexual in nature. It's driven by feeling
longing and you know the thing that we want the
most in the present, which is this other person. But
it doesn't have intimacy, it doesn't have commitment. It's the
(06:32):
simple cake. It's the passionate cake. If you only have commitment.
On the other side of the triangle, you have empty love. Yes,
you are loyal to one another, but romance and passion
and intimacy have faded. You don't have that organic closeness.
Think you know people who have stayed married for the kids,
even when all else is faded. You know there is
(06:52):
still a kind of love there, but it's not the
same as what they had. We also have purely intimacy.
So intimacy is the other kind of part of the triangle,
and that is like friendship. If you're just intimate with
someone and you just have closeness or familiarity, but you
don't have romance or commitment, you guys are just friends.
(07:13):
So three different kinds of love. Now for our combos.
You guys, ready, If you have intimacy and passion, you
have romantic love. You're dating. It's like the early months
or the early maybe years. You don't know if you're
going to go to the distance, but you're having a
really great time and you feel really close and comfortable
and like in love with this person. If you have
(07:33):
intimacy and commitment, you have companion love. And this can
also be platonic think those like lifelong friends who like
live with each other in their sixties. Think people who
are older and they no longer have the same sexual
feelings for each other, but they're still all in on
their relationship. Their love. These kinds of love is they're
just as real as any other kind of love. It
(07:54):
just doesn't have that other ingredient to the relationship that
Sternberg says creates consummate love. It doesn't mean it's any
less meaningful. Fatuous love is when we have passion and commitment.
It's incredibly rare because it doesn't have intimacy, which you
think would be needed to connect those two things. Think
(08:17):
like whirlwind courtships, people who get married after a few weeks.
They have passion, sorry, and they have commitment. They don't
have intimacy. There's no real bond there yet, but we
would hope it would develop over time. Again, super rare.
Probably the most rare version or combination, and finally, the
one we've been talking about this whole time, consummate love.
(08:38):
This is described by this theory as the complete form
of love, representing the ideal romantic relationship that we are
all striving for. We have intimacy, passion, and commitment combined.
This is the center of the triangle. Now, some things
to dispel about consummate love. It's wonderful, beautiful, it's what
(09:00):
we all strive for. It might not always last. This
theory is not saying that once you have this thing,
you have the perfect relationship. Having it for a certain
period doesn't mean you're entitled to it forever. In fact,
there's actually this urban myth going around that the reason
Sternberg was so obsessed with theorizing about love was because
(09:22):
he kept getting divorced and he wanted to know why
the triangle kept collapsing in for him. But yes, it
is a little bit of an urban myth. But you know,
based on his own personal experience, he does caution in
his papers on this subject that maintaining consummate love maybe
harder than just achieving it. You know, he really does
(09:44):
stress that these are just all these components are important.
Having intimacy, having passion, having commitment are important, but they
are just the beginning. You have to translate those components
of love into action. Without expression, even the greatest of
loves can die. And I think that's a really important message,
not just for people in the twenties, but of any age.
(10:07):
If you have a love that you want to last,
you have to understand that love, especially the triangular theory
of love makes it so that this is also a verb.
This is something that we act on. I think there's
this idea that like, when you meet the right person,
you just know and it should feel easy. And this
theory says that, yes, you may have everything you need
(10:29):
to experience consummate love in the beginning, but it is
not just the sum of its parts. You have to
work for it. And the reason I really love this
theory is because it doesn't think of love as stationary.
It actually allows us to explain how love goes through
many stages. We're going to take a short break, but
when we return, I want to discuss what these stages
(10:49):
actually are. So, like I said before, the triangular theory
of love likes to be explain how love goes through stages.
It likes to kind of suggest that we begin with
either passion or intimacy, then we gain the other, and
(11:11):
then finally we have commitment. So at any given stage
in a relationship, you can kind of place where someone
is in the timeline of love by looking at where
they sit on this triangle. If they're in the beginning stages,
they might just have passion. If they're in the middle
stage of their relationship, they might have passion and intimacy.
(11:32):
If they're in the consummate stage, they have passion, intimacy,
and commitment. But then as you maybe go further along
on your relationship, you might lose the passion and just
have commitment and intimacy, And then you might lose the
intimacy and just have commitment, and then you might lose
the commitment and have nothing. It also describes some of
(11:52):
the relationships that happen in between, like situationships, like affairs.
It describes friendships, It describes people who stay for the kids.
It describes you know, the people that you meet in
those brief moments, maybe only for a couple of hours
or for a week, and you never see them again.
You have this brilliant, beautiful moment. Basically, I like that
(12:17):
it doesn't show love as this static thing or as
this you know, singular kind of thing. I also like that,
for a theory, and a rather dated one at that
it actually has a lot of real world application and
modern day evidence. For example, a twenty twenty study looked
at the application of this theory in twenty five countries
from all inhabited continents. It had over eleven thousand respondents,
(12:41):
and it found that, yes, this theory actually does hold
up under many different contexts and in many different cultures.
This theory of love does represent many of the kinds
of relationships that people will experience and go through. Another
reason I like this theory is because it can kind
of act as a litmus test for whether the relationship
(13:02):
you're in is fulfilling all that you want it to fulfill.
I think in our twenties we encounter a lot of
half baked relationships and we go back and forth on
is this person right? Is this relationship right or not?
Should we stay? Should we go? And this is a
great way of kind of analyzing our relationship and saying, okay,
but do we have intimacy? Do we have passion? Do
(13:24):
we have commitment? If I seriously look at my relationship
and it's missing one of these things, well, I actually
don't have consummate love, as much as I might feel
like I have some kind of love. The thing is,
you probably do have some kind of love, but is
it the kind of love that you expect and that
you want that will fulfill all three of these needs
(13:45):
for you. Now, something you may have noticed is that
whilst the triangular theory of love is definitely a good start,
it is kind of missing some things. It's definitely got
the foundations down pat it's definitely stripped love to its
very bare scientific stumps. But some researchers have remarked that
(14:05):
it doesn't talk about culture. It doesn't really talk about
the context in which a relationship is taking place. It
treats the love between two people as if it's occurring
in a vacuum. It doesn't include things like family expectations.
It doesn't include things like values, religion, money, other circumstances
(14:28):
that are keeping people apart. All these things do impact
whether love lasts, and where we sit on the triangle.
I think favorable or unfavorable circumstances or the practicality of
one's love should also be a factor as to whether
a consummate love will be achieved or will last. But again,
(14:49):
I think this theory doesn't claim to have predictive powers
over whether a love will last, you know, so we
can't ask from it more than it wants to give.
It kind of just gives the ingredient which will cause
it to form. So again, maybe I'm asking a little
bit too much from a scientific theory, but it's still
something to think about. Another criticism is that it doesn't
(15:11):
specify whether multiple consummate loves can occur at the same time.
You know, people in polyamorous relationships, for example, would claim
that that can occur. But this is an old model
and it doesn't kind of include or represent some of
the newer forms of love that we are experiencing or
(15:36):
seeing in the modern day, especially since it was first
created founded in the eighties when there was definitely a
lot of love that wasn't socially acceptable or talked about,
but was still valid. Finally, and this is the biggest
issue I find with this theory. It doesn't cover whether
(15:56):
one person can be in consummate love and another person
just being passionate love or fatuous love or empty love
at the same time. It doesn't explain or provide an
explanation as to whether two people in the same relationship
can actually be at different spots on the triangle. What
(16:17):
kind of love is occurring then, do both people have
to be experiencing the same combination for the love to
be that thing, or could you have consummate love on
one end fatuous love on the other and does that
still count as a kind of love? You know, this
theory is very one dimensional, right, It is literally a
two D triangle. Look it up you'll see what I'm
(16:37):
talking about. But the feelings we feel towards someone at
any given moment are multidirectional, and they are four D,
five D, six D, and they are complex. You can
have all three ingredients and still not be able to
be together because you know it won't work, or because
keeps distance keeps you apart, or because there's another factor
(16:59):
here isn't being explained by this model. And you know
what about people with relationship anxiety? Where do everyday doubts
about our relationship fit into this? Does having doubts mean
you can never be in consummate love? I don't think so.
I think it's a very natural part of a relationship.
And this is just another reminder that a theory is
(17:20):
not a full It's not going to provide the full picture.
It's not going to explain everything. It's just a theory.
This is where the quadruple theory of love comes in,
which has expanded on the triangular theory of love to
kind of give it some more texture. The quadruple theory
was first introduced in twenty twenty, so a long time
(17:41):
after the triangular theory. It's much newer, and it proposes
that love is built on attraction, connection slash, resonance, trust,
and respect. This model, I think, describes how love develops
over time much better. It also allows for more types
of love to be analyzed since it has that fourth factor.
(18:04):
I think it allows for parental love, love between friends,
polyamorous love to fit into this model. And I like
that it also includes resonance and trust rather than just commitment,
because you can be committed in a very basic way
and still not trust the person you're with or have
respect for them. So I think that this does go
(18:25):
deeper into the complex factors and the human emotion of
it all. It also describes the love cycle in a
more I think, a less stagnant way. If you want
to look up the quadruple theory of love, it actually
has a model and a visual representation for the love
(18:45):
cycle it describes, which I think is a lot more
comprehensive and beautiful. I think it's less of a black
and white model as well, which I love. But yes,
this is a very new theory. It doesn't have as
much evidence, but I do. I think a combination of
the triangular and the quadruple theory would give us a
much more complete version of what love looks like as humans.
(19:11):
But I want to know, do you think that with
all this conversation about theories, love could ever actually ever
be fully explained by a model or by a theory
like these ones. Our researchers and psychologists just trying too
hard to categorize something that can't be categorized. That's the
(19:34):
big question I keep coming back to. At least, if
we know every and any theory will be an oversimplification
in some way or exclude some kind of love in
another way, why do we keep attempting to create these models?
And is love something that really needs to be studied
or graphed or can it only ever just be experienced
(19:55):
and that unique experience is as comprehensive as we may
ever make of it. I don't know. I go back
and forth. I really love looking into these theories, but
sometimes I'm like, You're just never gonna It's never gonna
be the full picture, so why even try? But I
guess they would say that trying is what gets us
as close as we can be. I also know that
(20:17):
when I was in my previous relationships, this model did
help me understand what was missing. So it does really
help in those ways, and it does give words to
a feeling. But I want to know what you think.
Drop a comment below, tell me how you feel, tell
me whether you think this is a good theory a
bad theory, and also give me some suggestions for some
(20:40):
other theories you think I should cover. I really want
to do an episode another Psychology by its bonus episode
on personality tests, whether they're a myth or not. I
really want to talk about narcissism, sociopathy, all of those
things concepts that I think are talked about a lot,
but which you know we may not have the depth
of knowledge on them that we should have. So I
(21:01):
would love to hear your ideas. And I want to
thank you for listening to this smaller episode. Tell me
what you think, tell me if you like it, make
sure to share it with a friend if you think
they would enjoy it as well, and yeah, follow us
along whatever you are listening. So you get more content
like this in your feed. Give us a five star
review only if you feel cold to do so, and
I always forget to say this, but follow me on
(21:23):
Instagram at that Psychology podcast if you want to see
some behind the scenes stuff, some like simplified breakdowns of
these topics. If you want to be able to chat
more with me about these episodes, I'd love to hear
from you. Until next time, thanks for tuning in. Stay safe,
be kind, be gentle with yourself. We will talk very
very soon.
Host
Jemma Sbeghen
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