history of love research

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For centuries, people have tried to understand the behaviors and beliefs associated with falling in love. What explains the wide range of emotions people experience? How have notions of romance evolved over time? As digital media becomes a permanent fixture in people’s lives, how have these technologies changed how people meet?

Examining some of these questions are Stanford scholars.

From the historians who traced today’s ideas of romance to ancient Greek philosophy and Arab lyric poetry, to the social scientists who have examined the consequences of finding love through an algorithm, to the scientists who study the love hormone oxytocin, here is what their research reveals about matters of the heart.

The evolution of romance

How romantic love is understood today has several historical origins, says Robert Pogue Harrison , the Rosina Pierotti Professor in Italian Literature and a scholar of romance studies.

For example, the idea of finding one’s other half dates back to ancient Greek mythology, Harrison said. According to Aristophanes in Plato’s Symposium , humans were once complete, “sphere-like creatures” until the Greek gods cut them in half. Ever since, individuals have sought after their other half.

Here are some of those origin stories, as well as other historical perspectives on love and romance, including what courtship looked like in medieval Germany and in Victorian England, where humor and innuendo broke through the politics of the times.

Stanford scholar examines origins of romance

Professor of Italian literature Robert Pogue Harrison talks about the foundations of romantic love and chivalry in Western civilization.

Medieval songs reflect humor in amorous courtships

Through a new translation of medieval songs, Stanford German studies Professor Kathryn Starkey reveals an unconventional take on romance.  

The aesthetics of sexuality in Victorian novels

In Queen Victoria’s England, novelists lodged erotic innuendo in descriptive passages for characters to express sexual desire.

Getting to the ‘heart’ of the matter

Stanford Professor Haiyan Lee chronicles the Chinese “love revolution” through a study of cultural changes influenced by Western ideals.

Love in the digital age

Where do people find love today? According to recent research by sociologist Michael Rosenfeld , meeting online is now the most popular way to meet a partner. 

“The rise of the smartphone took internet dating off the desktop and put it in everyone’s pocket, all the time,” said Rosenfeld. He found that 39 percent of heterosexual couples met their significant other online, compared to 22 percent in 2009. 

As people increasingly find connections online, their digital interactions can provide insight into people’s preferences in a partner. 

For example, Neil Malhotra , the Edith M. Cornell Professor of Political Economy, analyzed thousands of interactions from an online dating website and found that people seek partners from their own political party and with similar political interests and ideologies. Here is some of that research. 

Online dating is the most popular way couples meet

Matchmaking is now done primarily by algorithms, according to new research from Stanford sociologist Michael Rosenfeld. His new study shows that most heterosexual couples today meet online.

Cupid’s code: Tweaking an algorithm can alter the course of finding love online

A few strategic changes to dating apps could lead to more and better matches, finds Stanford GSB’s Daniela Saban.

Political polarization even extends to romance

New research reveals that political affiliation rivals education level as one of the most important factors in identifying a potential mate.

Turns out that opposites don’t attract after all

A study of “digital footprints” suggests that you’re probably drawn to personalities a lot like yours.

Stanford scholars examine the lies people tell on mobile dating apps

Lies to appear more interesting and dateable are the most common deception among mobile dating app users, a new Stanford study finds.

The science of love

It turns out there might be some scientific proof to the claim that love is blind. According to one Stanford study , love can mask feelings of pain in a similar way to painkillers. Research by scientist Sean Mackey found intense love stimulates the same area of the brain that drugs target to reduce pain. 

“When people are in this passionate, all-consuming phase of love, there are significant alterations in their mood that are impacting their experience of pain,” said Mackey , chief of the Division of Pain Medicine. “We’re beginning to tease apart some of these reward systems in the brain and how they influence pain. These are very deep, old systems in our brain that involve dopamine – a primary neurotransmitter that influences mood, reward and motivation.”  

While love can dull some experiences, it can also heighten other feelings such as sociability. Another Stanford study found that oxytocin, also known as the love hormone because of its association with nurturing behavior, can also make people more sociable. Here is some of that research. 

Looking for love in all the wrong hormones

A study involving prairie vole families challenges previous assumptions about the role of oxytocin in prosocial behavior.

Give your sweetheart mushrooms this Valentine’s Day, says Stanford scientist

A romantic evening of chocolate and wine would not be possible without an assist from fungi, says Stanford biology professor Kabir Peay. In fact, truffles might be the ultimate romantic gift, as they exude pheromones that can attract female mammals.

Love takes up where pain leaves off, brain study shows

Love-induced pain relief was associated with the activation of primitive brain structures that control rewarding experiences.

Come together: How social support aids physical health

A growing body of research suggests that healthy relationships with spouses, peers and friends are vital for not just mental but also physical health.

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The Research on Love: A Psychological, Scientific Perspective on Love

Dr. Nina Mikirova

And now here is this topic about love, the subject without which no movie, novel, poem or song can exist. This topic has fascinated scientists, philosophers, historians, poets, playwrights, novelists, and songwriters. I decided to look at this subject from a scientific point of view. It was very interesting to research and to write this article, and I am hoping it will be interesting to you as a reader.

Whereas psychological science was slow to develop active interest in love, the past few decades have seen considerable growth in research on the subject.  The following is a comprehensive review of the central and well-established findings from psychologically-informed research on love and its influence in adult human relationships as presented in the article: “Love. What Is It, Why Does It Matter, and How Does It Operate?”  by H. Reis and A. Aron. A brief summary of the ideas from this article is presented below.

A BRIEF HISTORY OF LOVE RESEARCH

Most popular contemporary ideas about love can be traced to the classical Greek philosophers. Prominent in this regard is Plato’s Symposium. It is a systematic and seminal analysis whose major ideas

have probably influenced contemporary work on love more than all subsequent philosophical work combined. However, four major intellectual developments of the 19th and 20th centuries provided key insights that helped shape the agenda for current research and theory of love.

The first of these was led by Charles Darwin, who proposed that reproductive success was the central process underlying the evolution of species. Evolutionary theorizing has led directly to such currently popular concepts as mate preference, sexual mating strategies, and attachment, as well as to the adoption of a comparative approach across species.

A second important figure was Sigmund Freud. He introduced many psychodynamic principles, such as the importance of early childhood experiences, the powerful impact of motives operating outside of awareness, the role of defenses in shaping the behavioral expression of motives, and the role of sexuality as a force in human behavior.

A third historically significant figure was Margaret Mead. Mead expanded awareness with vivid descriptions of cultural variations in the expression of love and sexuality. This led researchers to consider the influence of socialization and to recognize cultural variation in many aspects of love.

The emerging women’s movement during the 1970s also contributed to a cultural climate that made the study of what had been traditionally thought of as ‘‘women’s concerns’’ not only acceptable, but in fact necessary for the science of human behavior. At the same time, a group of social psychologists were beginning their work to show that adult love could be studied experimentally and in the laboratory.

WHAT’S PSYCHOLOGY GOT TO DO WITH LOVE

What is Love?  According to authors, Reis and Aron, love is defined as a desire to enter, maintain, or expand a close, connected, and ongoing relationship with another person. Considerable evidence supports a basic distinction, first offered in 1978, between passionate love (“a state of intense longing for union with another”) and other types of romantic love, labeled companionate love (“the affection we feel for those with whom our lives are deeply entwined”).

The evidence for this distinction comes from a variety of research methods, including psychometric techniques, examinations of the behavioral and relationship consequences of different forms of romantic love, and biological studies, which are discussed in this article.  Most work has focused on identifying and measuring passionate love and several aspects of romantic love, which include two components: intimacy and commitment.  Some scholars see companionate love as a combination of intimacy and commitment, whereas others see intimacy as the central component, with commitment as a peripheral factor (but important in its own right, such as for predicting relationship longevity).

In some studies, trust and caring were considred highly prototypical of love, whereas uncertainty and butterflies in the stomach were more peripheral.

Passionate and companionate love solves different adaptation problems. Passionate love may be said to solve the attraction problem—that is, for individuals to enter into a potentially long-term mating relationship, they must identify and select suitable candidates, attract the other’s interest, engage in relationship-building behavior, and then go about reorganizing existing activities and relationships so as to include the other. All of this is strenuous, time-consuming, and disruptive. Consequently, passionate love is associated with many changes in cognition, emotion, and behavior. For the most part, these changes are consistent with the idea of disrupting existing activities, routines, and social networks to orient the individual’s attention and goal-directed behavior toward a specific new partner.

Considerably less study has been devoted to understanding the evolutionary significance of the intimacy and commitment aspects of love. However, much evidence indicates that love in long-term relationships is associated with intimacy, trust, caring, and attachment; all factors that contribute to the maintenance of relationships over time.  More generally, the term companionate love may be characterized by communal relationship; a relationship built on mutual expectations that oneself and a partner will be responsive to each other’s needs.

It was speculated that companionate love, or at least the various processes associated with it, is responsible for the noted association among social relatedness, health, and well-being. In a recent series of papers, it was claimed that marriage is linked to health benefits. Having noted the positive functions of love, it is also important to consider the dark side. That is, problems in love and love relationships are a significant source of suicides, homicides, and both major and minor emotional disorders, such as anxiety and depression. Love matters not only because it can make our lives better, but also because it is a major source of misery and pain that can make life worse.

It is also believed that research will address how culture shapes the experience and expression of love. Although both passionate and companionate love appear to be universal, it is apparent that their manifestations may be moderated by culture-specific norms and rules.

Passionate love and companionate love has profoundly different implications for marriage around the world, considered essential in some cultures but contraindicated or rendered largely irrelevant in others. For example, among U.S. college students in the 1960s, only 24% of women and 65% of men considered love to be the basis of marriage, but in the 1980s this view was endorsed by more than 80% of both women and men.

Finally, the authors believe that the future will see a better understanding of what may be the quintessential question about love: How this very individualistic feeling is shaped by experiences in interaction with particular others.

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• Published: 07 March 2022

The cultural evolution of love in literary history

• Nicolas Baumard   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-1439-9150 1 ,
• Elise Huillery 2 ,
• Alexandre Hyafil   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-0566-651X 3 &
• Lou Safra   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0001-7618-6735 1 , 4  

Nature Human Behaviour volume  6 ,  pages 506–522 ( 2022 ) Cite this article

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• Human behaviour

Since the late nineteenth century, cultural historians have noted that the importance of love increased during the Medieval and Early Modern European period (a phenomenon that was once referred to as the emergence of ‘courtly love’). However, more recent works have shown a similar increase in Chinese, Arabic, Persian, Indian and Japanese cultures. Why such a convergent evolution in very different cultures? Using qualitative and quantitative approaches, we leverage literary history and build a database of ancient literary fiction for 19 geographical areas and 77 historical periods covering 3,800 years, from the Middle Bronze Age to the Early Modern period. We first confirm that romantic elements have increased in Eurasian literary fiction over the past millennium, and that similar increases also occurred earlier, in Ancient Greece, Rome and Classical India. We then explore the ecological determinants of this increase. Consistent with hypotheses from cultural history and behavioural ecology, we show that a higher level of economic development is strongly associated with a greater incidence of love in narrative fiction (our proxy for the importance of love in a culture). To further test the causal role of economic development, we used a difference-in-difference method that exploits exogenous regional variations in economic development resulting from the adoption of the heavy plough in medieval Europe. Finally, we used probabilistic generative models to reconstruct the latent evolution of love and to assess the respective role of cultural diffusion and economic development.

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Data availability.

The data, as well as the the Ancient Literary Fictions Values Survey and the Ancient World Values Survey ( Romantic Love and Attitudes toward Children ), are available on OSF ( https://osf.io/ud35x ).

Code availability

The code that supports the findings of this study is available on OSF ( https://osf.io/ud35x ). A detailed description of the model for study 4 as well as MATLAB code to fit and run such models can be found on https://github.com/ahyafil/Evoked_Transmitted_Culture .

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Acknowledgements

We thank P. Boyer, C. Chevallier, L. Cronk, H. Mercier, O. Morin and M. Singh for their comments and feedback on the draft. We thank S. Joye, M. White-Le Goff, M. Daumas, W. Reddy, K. Zakharia, E. Feuillebois-Pierunek, D. Struve and C. Svatek for their feedback on the design of the project, and S. Joye for her help in kickstarting the project. We thank T. Ansart for his help and advice in designing the figures. For their expertise in history of literature and their reading the Ancient Literary Fictions Values Survey, we thank M. Balda-Tillier, G. Barnes, B. Brosser, S. Brocquet, J.-B. Camps, N. Cattoni, M. Childs, C. Cleary, B. Cook, H. Cooper, M. Eggertsdóttir, W. Farris, E. Francis, H. Frangoulis, H. Fulton, G. Fussman, D. Goodall, I. Hassan, L. Haiyan, D. Hsieh, A. Inglis, C. Jouanno, R. Keller Kimbrough, J. D. Konstan, R. Lanselle, R. Luzi, M. Luo, R. Martin, D. Matringue, K. McMahon, G. Nagy, P. Nagy, H. Navratilova, D. Negers, P. Orsatti, F. Orsini, S. Ríkharðsdóttir, F. Schironi, S. Valeria, C. Starr, R. Torrella and S. Torres Pietro. Funding: This study was supported by the Institut d’Études Cognitives (ANR-17-EURE-0017 FrontCog and ANR-10-IDEX-0001-02 PSL) for N.B. and L.S., and by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness (RYC-2017-2323) for A.H.

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Nicolas Baumard & Lou Safra

Laboratoire d’Economie de Dauphine, Université Paris Dauphine, PSL Research University, Paris, France

Elise Huillery

Centre de Recerca Matemàtica, Bellaterra, Spain

Alexandre Hyafil

Sciences Po, CEVIPOF, CNRS, Paris, France

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N.B. conceived the project, supervised the creation of the Ancient Literary Fictions Database and wrote the Ancient Literary Fictions Values Survey. L.S. and A.H. designed the analyses for study 1. L.S. designed the analyses for study 2. E.H. designed the difference-in-difference for study 3. A.H. designed the latent probabilistic generative models for study 4. All authors wrote the paper.

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Baumard, N., Huillery, E., Hyafil, A. et al. The cultural evolution of love in literary history. Nat Hum Behav 6 , 506–522 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-022-01292-z

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Representations of love in the early stages of love

• Ivan Lukšík and Michaela Guillaume

Love, especially romantic and partnership love, has been a legitimate research theme in social science since the mid-twentieth century. In the research less attention is paid to how personal conceptions of love are formed within specific sociocultural contexts. One question that emerges in relation to social representations theory is: how are ideas about love, or knowledge of love, re-presented among particular social groups and which sociocultural resources are used in the process? In our questionnaire-based research we ascertained which perceptions, ideas and knowledge are prevalent among young people who are gaining their first experiences of partner relationships, what they consider love to be in their own context and what knowledge they have of love. The questionnaire was completed by 268 higher education students, who provided 38 representations of love, based on personal experience and linked to sociocultural sources of love.

Introduction

Love, particularly romantic love and partnership love, has been a popular research theme in social science since the mid-twentieth century. Since then love has been conceptualised and operationalised, and tools have been designed to measure it ( Hatfield et al., 2011 ; Karandashev & Clapp, 2015 ), while the models have become more complex (e.g. Karandashev & Clapp, 2015 ). Research has been conducted into the biological aspects of love, such as its links to the stress response system ( Mercado & Hibel, 2017 ). Sociocultural aspects have also been investigated, such as norms scripts, prototypical stories and the ideologies people are thought to draw on when forming their own ideas and stories about love ( Giddens, 1992 ). The psychological research on love is particularly strong (see the overview by Masaryk, 2012 ). Psychological discussions have tended to focus on the extent to which love is an emotion, what its characteristics are and what its constituent parts might be ( Masaryk, 2012 ). Love has also been considered as a means of self-reflection and identity moulding ( Mouton & Montijo, 2017 ). Also, ideas of love and partnership are studied ( Kraft & Witte, 1992 ). Discursive constructions of love is another research theme ( Watts & Stenner, 2013 ), and some interesting research has been conducted on the neurobiological and psychological contexts of love ( Feldman, 2012 ; Schneiderman et al., 2012 ). Alongside the more influential theories (Sternberg’s three components of love, which later became the duplex theory of love), provocative ones have emerged, such as “love as the transformative power of being in love” or as “an encounter of myth and drive” ( Lamy, 2015 )

Less attention has been focused on whether and how personal concepts of love tie into the sociocultural context. We can see how the many concepts, ideas and images of love are created and shared through literary and non-literary media, publishing and social networks. The visual culture created via the mass dissemination of an image-repertoire via the new technologies of image production has led to a “pictorial turn” ( Mitchell, 2017 ) and so, alongside verbal representations, non-verbal representation are becoming important as well. Although Mitchell is right to say that it is misleading to distinguish between “word and image”, since all representations are essentially a mix of the two, he admits the key issue is the power and effect of images (2017).

In our empirical research we concentrated on what young people think of love, how they write about it and whether it is a unique experience or if it is possible to identify any common characteristics. We also looked at whether some of the widespread knowledge, beliefs and myths about love apply to these expressions at the individual or group level. The theoretical framework employed in the research consisted of elements of social representations theory.

Social representations theory and its potential for investigating love

Moscovici first defined social representations as cognitive systems that have their own logic and language. They are systems of values, ideas and practices that have a twofold function: 1. to establish an order which will enable people to orientate themselves in their material and social world and master it; 2. to enable communication among social groups by providing a code for interacting, naming and unambiguously classifying the various aspects of their world and their individual and group history. S. Moscovici also stated that like scientific theories, religions or mythologies, social representations are representations of something else. They have their own specific content and vary in different spheres of life and in different societies. The social representations commonly adopted by a social group help shape that group’s identity ( Farr & Moscovici, 1984 ; Moscovici, 1973 ). In subsequent definitions Moscovici stressed that the symbolic and cognitive character of social representations is like a model of ideas, beliefs and symbolic behaviour or like culturally created artefacts that give meaning to human activity ( Moscovici, 2000 ). This definition of social representations differs from the definition of mental representations found in cognitive psychology, which largely concerns faithful images of segments of the world in the mind of the individual. I. Marková emphasises that the theory of social representations is based on dialogicality and representations are generated through tensions between the Ego, the Alter (another person, or group or society) and the object of the social representation. In structuring social representations some themata have been determined “essential to the survival and enhancement of humanity” ( Marková, 2003 , p.188). The so-called ‘basic themata’ are theorised as responding to ‘basic needs’ and ‘social drives’, such as the desire for social recognition, and may be implicated in the generation of many social representations, including those that seem to correspond to disparate phenomena” ( Marková, 2003 ).

Although there are a number of streams within social representations theory we base our research on the work of S. Moscovici and its further elaboration by I. Marková. We concentrate on the socially shared content and form of knowledge and the tensions between these, seeking out the themes around which this knowledge is organised and structured. However, we do not explore the meta-knowledge level disseminated in society, but look instead at the individual social representations operating at the individual level as referred to by Von Cranach (1995) . This concept is based on Von Cranach’s distinction between representations at the level of collective and individualized consciousness. The first one concerns social representation and the other individual social representation. We relate these individual social representations to their potential social source (through their social representations).

The theory of social representations and communication is concerned with specific types of representations. It deals with social phenomena that for some reason have become the subject of public interest and around which a theory is being constructed—issues of health and disease or environmental or physical phenomena, for instance. The phenomena that are debated and contemplated generate tension and lead to action ( I. Marková, 2003 ). If love is a social representation, then it follows that it should become the subject of public attention. This is not hard to verify by looking at consumerist non-aesthetic and aesthetic (literary) production. The second supposition is that the representation must be based on a source. This could be a cultural source, a myth, archetypal image, basic topic, or something that is handed down from one generation to the next largely unchanged. Another source of social representations could be scientific sources and popular versions of these, such as Sternberg’s Love is a Story , Fromm’s The Art of Loving . another potential source is a dialogue between the Ego, Alter (another person, group or society) and the object of the social representation, or in our case love ( I. Marková, 2003 ) [2] . It follows from this that discussing and writing about love should communicate something, generate something before our eyes and in our mind (which, is the French interpretation of representation, according to I. Marková, 2003 ).

Sociocultural sources of love

If we begin from the fact that, when forming their own ideas and knowledge of love, young people make use of sociocultural sources, then we have to ask what these might be. There is an abundance of sources. To start with there is the literature on this topic found in Slovak libraries (Slovak national bibliography), including genres such as fiction, Christian literature, popular songs, manuals, romances and partner relationships. This area deserves a more indepth analysis; however, for now we shall limit ourselves to three examples: 1. the Western myth of romantic love and its current form 2. the concept of Christian love, likely to be relevant in the sociocultural context of Slovakia, and 3. popular psychology concepts of love.

Western myth of romantic love and its current form

In his important book, Love in the Western World (1972), Denis de Rougemont examined the nature of passion-love ( amour passion ), which in the Western world has an antagonistic relationship with marital love. De Rougement considers passion and marriage to be incompatible; their parallel existence leads to irresolvable problems and conflicts that endanger “every one of our social safeguards” ( de Rougemont, 2001 , p. 213 [3] ). His rejection of adulterous passion-love is based not on the fact that it ignores the moral imperatives of Christian tradition, but on the malignant effects of a burning passion that brings suffering, tragedy and the risk of death. He thought the myth of Tristan and Isolde, with their passionate adulterous love affair and its tragic ending to be crucial in this respect. The persistence of this myth in romances and more recently in films has resulted in Western lyrics being enthused with amorous passion: “it swoops upon powerless and ravished men and women in order to consume them in a pure flame; … it is stronger and more real than happiness, society or morality” ( de Rougemont, 2001 , p. 21). Yet Western literature tells us nothing about happy love. The force of passion-love derives from the fact that it cannot be fully realised. Its energy grows as it becomes laden with obstacles; all the things that stand in the way of this love simultaneously foster and sanctify it. But de Rougemont also pointed out it was unreal under conditions of liberty: “The spontaneous ardour of a love crowned and not thwarted is essentially of short duration. It is a flare-up doomed not to survive the effulgence of its fulfillment. But its branding remains…”. ( de Rougemont, 2001 , p. 42).

In his exploration of contemporary forms of love, Giddens introduces a more up-to-date concept: that of “a pure relationship”—a relationship of emotional and sexual equality between partners. The contemporary democratised form of love owes its origins to older concepts. While the passion-love of the past showed itself to be uncontrollable and even dangerous, romantic love was more stable and became an appropriate unit of cohabitation. Romantic love incorporated elements of Christian moral values, absorbing passion-love and becoming a form of cultivated love ( Giddens, 1992 ). It ceased to be an unreal enchantment and became a potential route to controlling the future, a form of psychological security for those entering into it. For the majority of the normal population love was associated with marriage; couples today are increasingly connected in what is referred to as a partnership. Giddens (1992) defines a pure relationship as one “entered into for its own sake, for what can be derived by each person from a sustained association with another; and which is continued only in so far as it is thought by both parties to deliver enough satisfactions for each individual to stay within it”. The distant echoes of romantic love brush up against pure relationships and come together in “confluent love”. This latter involves the partners being open with one another, and it is an active, conditional kind of love. It evolves only to the extent that intimacy evolves; in so far as one partner is prepared to reveal their anxieties and needs to the other, and to expose their vulnerabilities. It and erotic love constitute the core of the relationship and the ability to provide mutual sexual satisfaction within it is decisive, determining whether it continues to exist or to die. In a confluent relationship, erotic love forms the core, and the capacity for mutual sexual satisfaction is crucial, determining its continued existence or demise.

However, research findings ( D. Marková, 2012 ) show that in Slovakia, Giddens’s concept of a “pure relationship” is still by and large an idealistic partner relationship. His premise that pure relationships are not based on external criteria, institutions, exterior norms or duties and dependency, but on mutual feelings and emotional gains does not seem to be an accurate reflection of the Slovak reality. It is true that the research found that partners wanted good quality relationships, communication and so forth, but external criteria, obligations and so on were also relevant, indicating that there is still a tendency to favour traditional relationships in Slovakia. As far as value preferences are concerned, D. Marková (2014 , 2015a , 2015b ,) found a variety of moral preferences in sexual and partner relationships, but also that the prevailing moral ideal in sexual and partner relations is a relationship based on values such as love, fidelity and responsibility. This ideal also included some of the emotional and relational aspects of Giddens’s partnership, such as emotional understanding, trust, mutual respect, openness, intimacy and closeness.

Concept of Christian love

The concept of Christian love is common in Slovakia. A glance at the Slovak national library catalogues, which contain the most representative collection of publications found in Slovak libraries, shows that Christian love is the second largest theme after literature.

There are two main kinds of love in Christianity: “love thy neighbour as thyself” and marital love. The agape concept of love—love for thy neighbour—comes from the Judaeo-Christian tradition and is found in Islam and Judaism as well as Christianity. The Judaeo-Christian concept of neighbourly love is found in the Old Testament and in the Torah. This basic concept of the value and importance of love for our neighbours is found in all the holy books of these three religions. Nonetheless, it has a specific meaning in Christianity. Agape is described as the love God gives to man first in the expectation that he will give the same love to those around him. In the New Testament love takes on a new quality in the Jewish commandment “love they neighbour”. Here it is no longer simply a command meaning love thy neighbour from the same tribe ( Nygren, 1953 , Aslanian, 2018 ), but has been extended to embrace the concept of the universal neighbour. The command to love thy neighbour refers to all “others” and exhorts us to let the differences between us and others dissolve away ( Steinhouse, 2013 ).

According to Možný (1990 , p. 64) “the fact that Christianity defined the relationship between husband and wife as love is its most important historical contribution”. Marital love means that a man should love his wife as he does his own body. The man is responsible for his wife’s spiritual wellbeing. Love means taking responsibility for the happiness and therefore the spiritual wellbeing of the other. This kind of love need not be erotic; nor should it be egotistic or hedonistic. But in essence erotic love was driven out of marriage ( Možný, 1990 ).

Popular psychological concepts of love

One of the most important sources of representations of love is psychology, a field where a great deal of research and theorising has been done on love ( Masaryk, 2012 ). In Slovak the psychological aspects of love are most frequently found in the books of E. Fromm, J. Sternberg, J. Willi, I. Štúr, M. Plzák, and more recently J. Prekopová (Slovak national bibliography) and others. We will now look more closely at the first two examples which are more prominent in the Slovak environment.

Sternberg (1995 , 2008 ) bases his theory around the fact that people have a specific idea about love (they have their own story of love), and they expect their own relationship to resemble it. If both partners have the same idea of that story, then no matter how peculiar the relationship, or even absurd to others, their shared story—their love—will work. But if their ideas of the story differ, the relationship will begin to fall apart, no matter how harmoniously it develops or seems to others. Sternberg begins from the Kantian premise that it is impossible to know the definitive essence (truth), and then goes on state that in reality fact cannot be clearly separated from fiction, because we adjust the facts of the relationship to reflect our own personal fictions. Although we may feel we are gradually getting to know our partner better, that need not be the case. It could be that we are creating a story that has less and less in common with what that person is really like. The process of getting to know the other person affects the ideas, feelings and wisdoms that we have acquired along with our emotional baggage from the past. Sternberg thinks that in principle our stories are influenced by the environment and culture in which we live, so our stories can change over time and across space. We spend our whole lives listening to and being aware of various stories about love, and we can draw on all these stories when we create our own ones.

Fromm thought love was the only true and permanent solution to questions about the depths of a person’s essence, and that is the need “to overcome his separateness, to leave the prison of his aloneness” (1956, p. 9). This feeling of separation and the finality of natural laws causes people to feel anxious about being excluded. None of these solutions, however, are permanent or even complete, since they do not ensure a true connection with other people. This human need can only be fully realised, thought Fromm, through love and by becoming one with another person (p. 29). He considers love to be an activity and so falling or “standing in” love (p. 22) is impossible. Love’s most basic characteristic is giving not taking, but giving , he warns, is often misunderstood to be a process whereby you have to forfeit something or make a sacrifice . In love giving without getting anything in return brings joy. Erotic (partner) love is exclusive, unlike fraternal or maternal love. It is an act of will. It is the decision to devote the rest of your life to another person. Fromm notes that a degree of confusion entered twentieth century perceptions of love, with love being seen as an object problem rather than a skill problem . People search for the right object so they can be loved, but what is essential, according to Fromm, is realising that love is an art (a skill) and that it has to be mastered just like any other skill ( Fromm, 1956 ).

Methodology

Research questions.

We asked the following research questions: what knowledge, ideas, beliefs and images of love do young people have based on their initial experiences of partner relationships? Which of these are common among young people, which dominate and which are individual? How are they structured? What sources do young people draw on in articulating them?

Bearing in mind the above research questions and our use of social representations theory as a theoretical framework, and given that social representations of love is an under-researched area, we decided to adopt an explorative research plan.

In her research on social representations Plichtová (2002) recommends the researcher should begin by investigating the ideas of specific individuals and how these are embedded in everyday existence. In our study we adopted an inductive approach, in which we used a thematic content analysis beginning with the individual responses, definitions and experiences of love and working our way to more general categories.

The research tool was a questionnaire survey with open questions. We electronically distributed an anonymous questionnaire to which respondents could answer freely. In it young people were asked: 1. What they thought love was, or what they thought suggested love, given what they had observed in their social milieu 2. Which associations, memories, did they make or have in relation to love 3. Had they come across works of art or artistic performances that represented love [4] and lastly 4. How would they briefly explain what love was to someone. In this research we analysed the written responses to questions 1, 2 and 4, which target the social and individual representations; question 3 was not part of this analysis.

Research sample

The research participants were 264 full-time students at five higher education institutions in Slovakia (Bratislava, Trnava, Banská Bystrica, Nitra and Prešov). The vast majority of the respondents were women (91.7%). The most frequent subjects studied were: education—general (33.7%), psychology (9.5%), ethics, ethics education (7.5%), media studies (5.3%), languages (4.9%), education—subject-based (4.9%) and social work (4.2%). The percentage of research participants declaring they were religious was 78.4%. Regarding sexual orientation, 95.8% stated they were heterosexual, 2.7% bisexual and 0.8% homosexual. The majority were single and in a relationship (64.4%), while 32.3% were single and not in a relationship, and 3.4% were married. The participants were most likely to have had two partner relationships (27.3%), followed by one (26.1%), three (16.7%) and four (12.1%). The most frequent number of short-term partner relationships was one (27.7%), followed by none (25.0%), two (17.4%) and three (6.4%). Most were or had been involved in one longterm partner relationship (48.5%), followed by two (21.6%), none (9.5%) and three (6.4%). Participants with children represented 1.5% of the sample.

Method of analysis

We considered a thematic content analysis to be the most suitable theoretical framework and inductive approach for the analysis in this research. Within described epistemology, an inductive thematic analysis (ITA) was proved to be a suitable approach ( Braun & Clark, 2006 ). In practical terms, we focused on the “bottom-up way”, i.e. the identification and coding of themes emerging from the text. In the final stage of the analysis we looked for the structure of the themes based on the content and language connections.

In the first phase, researchers conducted an initial marking of text passages (initial coding). Individual passages of text were assigned a number of codes. During the coding process, researchers coordinated their codes. At this stage, 44 different love themes were identified. The data coding was performed by four students (first stage only) who had attended a course on data methodology and processing, and two researchers (the authors of this article). In the first stage of coding the six of us independently analysed the first 25 respondents’ answers and then the second 25. Meetings were held during the coding process to ensure there was agreement on the coding (92% at the end of the first coding stage). The remaining responses were coded independently by student pairs and the senior researchers also coded a selection. The codings were then compared at meetings (agreement of 87%– 95%).

Then in the second phase the two researchers independently created the second order categories which were again compared, recategorised and categories were joined together. Where the categories were unclear we returned to the initial responses, and so forth. In the end, the researchers agreed on 38 categories that captured the meaning of the clusters of love obtained from the research sample. The results of this analysis are in Table 1 .

Representations of love among higher education students

In the third phase based on similarities in the content and language of the themes two researchers selected themes that formed a coherent and structured line. This led to the creation of Diagram 1 .

Individual social representations of love among higher education students: lines and structure [6]

The analysis described above revealed 38 individual social representations of love [5] , shown in the table below.

Subsequent analysis revealed the relationships between the various individual social representations and the structure they created. This led to three lines of representations: 1. physical closeness and being in tune, 2. transcendental love, and 3. inner harmony and the meaning of life (see Diagram 1 ). The first line is the strong representation of physical love, love as emotion and love as reciprocity, and then there are more minor representations branching off: love as a state of ecstasy, fleeting love and togetherness. In the second line love is strongly represented as a norm and commitment, as self-sacrifice, prosocialness, and as certainty and security. On the third line we placed love as inner harmony and freedom. As can be seen in Diagram 1, there are smaller interlinking representations. For example love as a bond and co-creation link the first and second lines together, while love as decision and to some extent prosocialness link the second and third lines.

Variety and structure of representations of love

The analysis revealed 38 representations of love. New representations were still being found towards the end of the coding process. This may be an instance of the dialogicality of thinking, described by I. Marková, who states that dialogic thinking is characterised by polyphasia, that is, the multifaceted or even oppositional nature of thinking. One of our categories reflects this multifaceted aspect (19). Even in our case it seems that cognitive polyphasia leads to the use of varied and often very distinctive ways of thinking and types of knowledge, such as popular science (love as emotion), ordinary sharing (e.g. love as reciprocity and love as togetherness), religious (love=God) and metaphor (looking for the heart’s other half). This could also be an example of Bakhtin’s “heteroglossia of language that relates to divergent styles of speech stemming from the infinite openness of language in various specific situations” ( I. Marková, 2007 , pp. 152-153). The young people described love as an encounter between two people who feel the same way, as the communion of two souls and two bodies or the joining of two hearts. Karandashev and Clapp (2015) also refer to a similar breadth of representations of love, although they call them mental representations. Their dimensions of these representations of love that resemble our representations are affection, comfort, commitment, communion, companionship, concern, elation, empathy, forgiveness, intimacy, obsession, protection, reciprocity, sharing, trust and understanding. The wide range of representations of love clearly relates to the breadth and changing nature of partner relationships and sexual lifestyles ( Lukšík & D. Marková, 2012 ; D. Marková, 2012 , 2015a , b ). One of the lines of representations of love—passionate and socialised love—largely linked to personal experience, is only weakly influenced by normative social instruments, bringing it closer to Giddens’s “pure relationships”, particularly the aspects we labelled reciprocity and togetherness.

Our results do not appear to support Sternberg’s concept of love ( Sternberg, 2008 ), in which ideas on love are considered to be holistic, intuitively story-based, illogical and spontaneous. Although our respondents’ answers were shaped by the questionnaire method we used, only in exceptional cases, when they have to characterise love, do young people give stories as examples. Nor did we find many connections with Sternberg’s 27 love stories, other than stories of self-sacrifice and of dependence. But we should note that young people of this age still have limited experience, and stories require time to develop. In addition to time the protagonists need both the maturity and the ability to identify and name the specific features of a relationship. These often become clear only once they have arisen in other relationships.

In addition to finding a rich array of social and individual representations of love among young people, we also identified the structure connecting the various representations. Three lines of representations were found: 1. Physical closeness and being in tune, 2. Transcendental love, and 3. Inner harmony and meaning. Each of these contained dominant representations such as love as sentiment, physical love, reciprocity, love as a norm, commitment, and love as inner harmony; and further smaller representations can be linked to these or develop from these ( Diagram 1 ). It is only through further research that we will be able to establish whether these three lines are in some way connected to the basic themes or social representations of love. In this research we did not explore the opposite representations that might constitute these themes ( I. Marková, 2007 ). However, opposites such as self-love versus personal or transcendental love, love as being in tune versus love as a struggle could be examples of these.

Sources of social representations

Although our analysis of sociocultural sources of love is just preliminary, it has revealed some connections to contemporary forms of the Western myth of love as well as to Christian love and psychological conceptions of love (in this case E. Fromm’s). The strong representations of love we identified among young people can be arranged into three lines that correspond to the sociocultural sources of love analysed. The first line— physical closeness , being in tune , —is compared to the written source, a more physical, emotional and socialised type of love than the tragic passion-love described by de Rougemont (1972) . The love of passionate flaming is close to the meanings of love as state of ecstasy and fleeting love. This line is closer to what Giddens (1992) describes as a “pure relationship” relating to similar meanings of love, like reciprocity, togetherness, and relationship in particular.

With the meanings of love as a relationship and bond and love as co-creation, this line is interconnected with the second line of individual social representations— transcendental love . The second, line transcendental love may only marginally refer to marital love and not at all to “love thy neighbour” love, but it has a number of indirect features that show it is linked to Christian love. Love is defined as being a commitment to faithfulness, devotion, respect and so forth, and it is also prosocial or social in a positive sense and contains representations of love such as certainty and security, often expressed using the mother–child image. The question is to what extent this line of representations of love is simply the ideal norm and to what extent it is real life, as D. Marková (2012 , 2015a , b ) has pointed out. The third inner harmony and meaning , where we placed love as inner harmony, liberating, prosocialness and love as a decision is closer to Fromm’s concept of love.

The results show a large variety of representations of love among higher education students. In addition to finding a rich array of social and individual representations of love among young people, we also identified the structure connecting the various representations. Three lines of representations were found: 1. Physical closeness and being in tune, 2. Transcendental love, and 3. Inner harmony and meaning. Each of these contained dominant representations such love as sentiment, physical love, love as reciprocity, love as a norm, commitment and love as inner harmony; further smaller representations can be linked to or develop from these. It is only through further research that we will be able to establish whether these three lines are in some way connected to the basic themes or social representations of love.

Although the analysis of the sociocultural sources of love was only preliminary in nature, it has revealed certain connections between the social representations of love and the contemporary forms of the Western myth of love, and Christian love and psychological conceptions of love (in our case E. Fromm’s theory). A deeper analysis of the socio-cultural environment is needed. The representations of love we identified bear features of the dialogicality of thinking, as described by I. Marková (2003) . A deeper qualitative analysis is, however, required to confirm this. The results should also be viewed in relation to the fact the sample comprised students and with regard to the fact that they are just embarking on their partnerships, or as we rather ambitiously referred to them in the title in the “early stages of love”. Further research using participants with more extensive experience of partnership life and a deeper qualitative analysis are also required.

1 Grant support: VEGA grant Psychological , sociocultural and biological sources of love , no. 1/0426/18

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Science of love, theories of love in the ancient world.

It is easy to think of love in purely romantic terms, but the theme of love occurs in a variety of contexts in Greek and Roman thought. From cosmological speculation on the structure of the universe to medical theories of the emotions, from philosophical investigations into the nature of friendship to poetic accounts of the birth of the gods, love has a central role to play.

Diogenes Laertius (c. 3 rd century CE)

Les vies des plus illustres philosophes de l'antiquité .

Aamsterdam: Chez J. H. Schneider, 1758.

PA3965.D6 .A2 1758 2

Empedocles of Acragas, modern Agrigento, was a prominent pre-Socratic philosopher who proposed that the world is made up of four elements—air, earth, fire, and water—that combine and separate under the influence of two divine forces: strife and love. His writings survive only in fragments, including several passages quoted by Diogenes Laertius. Diogenes, who wrote biographies of many ancient philosophers, also reports that Empedocles died by leaping into a volcano to prove that he had become immortal.

Plato (428/427 – 348/347 BCE)

Omnia divini Platonis opera .

Basileae: In Officina Frobeniana, 1532.

PA4280 A4 1532

The Greek philosopher Plato wrote a number works of the topic of love. The most famous of these is the Symposium , in which a series of distinguished Athenians attending a banquet deliver speeches on the theme of love. Particularly well known is the speech of the comic playwright Aristophanes, who proposes that humans once had bodies made up of what would now be two humans, with four arms and legs and two faces looking in opposite directions (right). Zeus split these original humans in two as a punishment for their hubris, and Aristophanes argues that human love resulted from this splitting and reflects the desire to find one’s ‘other half’. Almost unknown in medieval Europe, Plato’s works were reintroduced into Western Europe in the original Greek in the 15 th century, but it was Marsilio Ficino’s translation into Latin (left) that made Plato accessible to a wide audience.

Lysis, or Friendship; Symposium; Phaedrus .

[Mount Vernon]: A. Colish, 1968.

B358 .J865 1968

Titus Lucretius Carus (99 – 55 BCE)

De rerum natura .

Los Angeles: Ward Ritchie Press, 1957.

Rare PA6483 .E5 L4 1957

According to St. Jerome, Lucretius went mad after drinking a love potion and wrote De rerum natura during brief spells of sanity. It is unlikely that there is much truth in Jerome’s account, but love plays a central role in Lucretius’ poem nevertheless. De rerum natura begins with an invocation of Venus, goddess of love, who is viewed as the prime generative force in nature, but elsewhere in the poem he describes love as a festering wound in need of a cure.

Lucius Annaeus Seneca (c. 4 BCE – 65 CE)

Opera qvae exstant omnia .

Antverpiae: Ex Officina Platiniana B. Moreti, 1652.

Rare Folio PA6661 .A2 1652

The Stoic philosopher Seneca discusses many kinds of love in his works – love of one’s family, love of one’s country, love of one’s self – but it is the relationship between love and friendship that particularly interests him. Love, he says, is “friendship gone mad”. This edition of Seneca’s complete works was edited by the famous Flemish humanist Justus Lipsius, who receives a magnificent portrait on the frontispiece. Seneca himself makes do with a much smaller portrait at the bottom of the title page.

Plotinus (204/205 – 270 CE)

Plotini opera omnia .

Oxonii: E Typographeo Academico, 1835.

PA4363 .A2 1835

Like earlier thinkers such as Empedocles and Lucretius, the Neoplatonist philosopher Plotinus took a cosmic view of love. Although Plotinus closely associates love with beauty, Plotinus makes love as much a part of his metaphysics and epistemology as of his aesthetic theory. True love is the endpoint of a journey undertaken through the perception and contemplation of Beauty. Beauty is itself a property of the Forms, eternal and unchanging entities that underlie everything that is intelligible in the universe. This scholarly edition of Plotinus, beautifully printed at Oxford University, includes both the original Greek text and a Latin translation.

Pseudo-Galen (c. 3 rd century CE)

Microtegni .

France: 13 th century.

The emotions, including love, did not play a large role in ancient medicine. They were almost always explained reductively as the result of an imbalance in the four humors – black bile, yellow bile, phlegm, and blood – that formed the basis of ancient medical theory. Occasionally, however, emotions were recognized as a cause of illness. In a famous case, the doctor and medical writer Galen concluded that a women suffering from a mysterious ailment had, in fact, simply fallen in love. These two manuscript fragments are both indirectly associated with Galen. The Microtegni may well be identical with a treatise called the De spermate , written in late antiquity and at some point attributed to Galen himself. The Treatise on Tumors may be the work of Averroes and, if so, may ultimately derive from Galen, a compilation of whose works Averroes is known to have assembled.

Averroes/Galen? (1126 – 1198 CE /129 – c. 210 CE )

[Treatise on Tumors] .

France: 14 th century.

Terence (c. 190 – c. 160 BCE)

Terentius .

Strassburg: Reinhard Grüninger, 1496.

Both Plautus and Terence, the two Roman comic playwrights whose works survive, make extensive use of stock characters from earlier Greek comedy. These characters frequently include a pair of young lovers and a lena (or procuress), who acts as a go-between. This leaf from a late-15 th -century edition of Terence includes a woodcut of one of the young lovers – the puella , or girl – and the lena from the Hecyra . The first two attempts to stage this play were unsuccessful: on the first occasion the audience abandoned the theater in favor of a tightrope walker and some boxers, and on the second the theater was overrun by spectators from a gladiatorial show.

Hesiod (c. 700 BCE)

Hesiodi Ascraei quae extant .

[Lugduni Batavorum]: Officina Plantiniana, 1603.

PA4009 .A2 1603

Contemporary with the more famous Iliad and Odyssey of Homer, Hesiod’s poetry provides the earliest systematic account in Greek literature of the creation and arrangement of the cosmos, with love playing a central part. In his poem the Theogony , Hesiod names Eros (Love) as one of the very first gods to emerge from primeval Chaos and describes him as “fairest of the immortal gods, loosener of limbs, who overcomes the minds of all gods and mortals”. The Plantin edition of 1603 (left) is a scholarly edition and contains notes and essays by the famous Dutch humanist Daniel Heinsius. The Recurti edition of 1744 (right) contains the first translation of the Theogony into Italian, by Gian Rinaldo Carli. The family trees included in this edition show the central place of Love—“Amore” in the Italian—in Hesiod’s cosmos.

La Teogonia, ovvero la generazione degli dei .

Venezia: Giambatista Recurti, 1744.

PA4010 .I9 T5 1744

Catullus (c. 84 – c. 54 BCE)

Catulli, Tibulli, et Propertii opera .

Birminghamiae: J. Baskerville, 1772.

PA6274 .A2 1772

Although his poetry covers a wide range of topics, Catullus is probably best known for the poems that describe his intense relationship with a woman Catullus calls Lesbia. Perhaps the most famous of these poems is Catullus 85 – Catullus 83 in Baskerville’s edition – a brief but powerful reflection of the contradictions of love: I hate and I love. Why should I do this, perhaps you ask. I do not know; but I feel it happening and I am torn apart . John Baskerville was one of the most influential printers of the eighteenth century. His new, lighter typefaces and his rejection of excessive ornamentation were widely imitated throughout Europe.

Publius Vergilius Maro (70 – 19 BCE)

The Eclogues .

New York: Printed at the press of A. Colish, 1960.

PA6807.B7 C28

Virgil’s Eclogues – also, and perhaps more correctly, called the Bucolics – are the first of his three great contributions to Latin literature, the other two being the Georgics and the Aeneid . Love is a constant theme in the Eclogues and nowhere more that in Eclogue 10, which recounts the fate of Virgil’s fellow poet Gaius Cornelius Gallus. Gallus is imagined wasting away from love, and much of the poem is taken up with a lament spoken by Gallus himself. The lament, and Gallus’ life, ends with the famous line: omnia vincit amor, et nos cedamus amori (‘love conquers all; let me too yield to love’).

What is love? A philosopher explains it’s not a choice or a feeling − it’s a practice

Associate Professor of Philosophy, University of Missouri-Kansas City

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Edith Gwendolyn Nally does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

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How do you define love? Is it a choice or a feeling? – Izzy, age 11, Golden, Colorado

Love is confusing. People in the U.S. Google the word “love” about 1.2 million times a month . Roughly a quarter of those searches ask “ what is love ” or request a “ definition of love .”

What is all this confusion about?

Neuroscience tells us that love is caused by certain chemicals in the brain . For example, when you meet someone special, the hormones dopamine and norepinephrine can trigger a reward response that makes you want to see this person again. Like tasting chocolate, you want more.

Your feelings are the result of these chemical reactions. Around a crush or best friend, you probably feel something like excitement, attraction, joy and affection. You light up when they walk into the room. Over time, you might feel comfort and trust. Love between a parent and child feels different, often some combination of affection and care.

But are these feelings, caused by chemical reactions in your brain, all that love is? If so, then love seems to be something that largely happens to you. You’d have as much control over falling in love as you’d have over accidentally falling in a hole – not much.

As a philosopher who studies love , I’m interested in the different ways people have understood love throughout history. Many thinkers have believed that love is more than a feeling.

More than a feeling

The ancient Greek philosopher Plato thought that love might cause feelings like attraction and pleasure, which are out of your control. But these feelings are less important than the loving relationships you choose to form as a result: lifelong bonds between people who help one another change and grow into their best selves.

Similarly, Plato’s student Aristotle claimed that, while relationships built on feelings like pleasure are common, they’re less good for humankind than relationships built on goodwill and shared virtues . This is because Aristotle thought relationships built on feelings last only as long as the feelings last.

Imagine you start a relationship with someone you have little in common with other than you both enjoy playing video games. Should either of you no longer enjoy gaming, nothing would hold the relationship together. Because the relationship is built on pleasure, it will fade once the pleasure is gone.

Compare this with a relationship where you want to be together not because of a shared pleasure but because you admire one another for who you are. You want what is best for one another. This kind of friendship built on shared virtue and goodwill will be much longer lasting. These kinds of friends will support each other as they change and grow.

Plato and Aristotle both thought that love is more than a feeling. It’s a bond between people who admire one another and therefore choose to support one another over time.

Maybe, then, love isn’t totally out of your control.

Celebrating individuality and ‘standing in love’

Contemporary philosopher J. David Velleman also thinks that love can be disentangled from “ the likings and longings ” that come with it – those butterflies in your stomach. This is because love isn’t just a feeling. It’s a special kind of paying attention, which celebrates a person’s individuality.

Velleman says Dr. Seuss did a good job describing what it means to celebrate a person’s individuality when he wrote: “Come on! Open your mouth and sound off at the sky! Shout loud at the top of your voice, ‘I AM I! ME! I am I!’” When you love someone, you celebrate them because you value the “I AM I” that they are.

You can also get better at love. Social psychologist Erich Fromm thinks that loving is a skill that takes practice : what he calls “standing in love.” When you stand in love, you act in certain ways toward a person.

Just like learning to play an instrument, you can also get better at loving with patience, concentration and discipline. This is because standing in love is made up of other skills such as listening carefully and being present. If you get better at these skills, you can get better at loving.

If this is the case, then love and friendship are distinct from the feelings that accompany them. Love and friendship are bonds formed by skills you choose to practice and improve.

Does this mean you could stand in love with someone you hate, or force yourself to stand in love with someone you have no feelings for whatsoever?

Probably not. Philosopher Virginia Held explains the difference between doing an activity and participating in a practice as simply doing some labor versus doing some labor while also enacting values and standards.

Compare a math teacher who mechanically solves a problem at the board versus a teacher who provides students a detailed explanation of the solution. The mechanical teacher is doing the activity – presenting the solution – whereas the engaged teacher is participating in the practice of teaching. The engaged teacher is enacting good teaching values and standards, such as creating a fun learning environment.

Standing in love is a practice in the same sense. It’s not just a bunch of activities you perform. To really stand in love is to do these activities while enacting loving values and standards, such as empathy, respect, vulnerability, honesty and, if Velleman is right, celebrating a person for who they truly are.

How much control do you have over love?

Is it best to understand love as a feeling or a choice?

Think about what happens when you break up with someone or lose a friend. If you understand love purely in terms of the feelings it stirs up, the love is over once these feelings disappear, change or get put on hold by something like a move or a new school.

On the other hand, if love is a bond you choose and practice, it will take much more than the disappearance of feelings or life changes to end it. You or your friend might not hang out for a few days, or you might move to a new city, but the love can persist.

If this understanding is right, then love is something you have more control over than it may seem. Loving is a practice. And, like any practice, it involves activities you can choose to do – or not do – such as hanging out, listening and being present. In addition, practicing love will involve enacting the right values, such as respect and empathy.

While the feelings that accompany love might be out of your control, how you love someone is very much in your control.

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The Changing Landscape of Love and Marriage

Celebrities breaking up, making up, and having kids out of wedlock. Politicians confessing to extramarital affairs and visits to prostitutes. Same-sex couples pushing for, and sometimes getting, legal recognition for their committed relationships. Today’s news provides a steady stream of stories that seem to suggest that lifelong love and (heterosexual) marriage are about as dated as a horse and carriage. Social conservatives have been sounding the alarm for some time about the social consequences of the decline of marriage and the rise of unwed parenting for children and for society at large. Are we really leaving behind the old model of intimacy, or are these changes significant but not radical? And what are the driving forces behind the change we see?

In the United States, marriage historically has been an important and esteemed social institution. Historian Nancy Cott argues that, since colonial times, Americans have viewed marriage as the bedrock of healthy families and communities, and vital to the functioning of democracy itself. But today, nearly half of all marriages end in divorce. People are getting married later than they used to; the median age at first marriage is now 28 for men and 26 for women, compared to 23 and 20 respectively in 1960. The proportion of adults who never marry remains low but has been climbing in recent years; in 2006, 19% of men and 13% of women aged 40–44 had never married. Roughly one-third of all births are to unmarried parents, and unmarried cohabitation has gone from being a socially stigmatized practice to being seen as a normal stage in the adult life course, especially as a prelude to marriage. More than half of all American marriages now begin as cohabitations. Many of the same patterns have occurred in Europe, although divorce is lower there (see Figure 1 ).

Marriage Dissolution by Country

Two conclusions from these demographic trends seem undeniable: Marriage has lost its taken-for-granted, nearly compulsory status as a feature of adult life, and as a result both adults and children are experiencing more change and upheaval in their personal lives than in the past. Sociologists have entered the fray to try to make sense of these trends, both by offering causal explanations and by predicting the depth and future direction of changes in intimacy.

How and Why Intimacy Is Changing

Two prominent sociologists have offered different but related theories about what is happening to intimacy in modern Western nations today. The British theorist Anthony Giddens argues that we are witnessing a “transformation of intimacy,” and the American family scholar Andrew Cherlin suggests that we are witnessing the “deinstitutionalization” of marriage.

In his 1992 book The Transformation of Intimacy , Giddens observes that intimacy is undergoing radical change in contemporary Western societies. The romantic love model, which emphasizes relationship permanence (epitomized in the marriage vow of “till death do us part”) and complementary gender roles, is being displaced by a new model of intimacy, which Giddens calls “confluent love.” The confluent love model features the ideal of the “pure relationship,” meaning a relationship that is entered into for its own sake and maintained only as long as both partners get enough satisfaction from it to stick around. Partners in a pure relationship establish trust through intense communication, yet the possibility of breakup always looms. Giddens sees the rise of confluent love resulting from modernization and globalization. As family and religious traditions lose influence, people craft their own biographies through highly individualized choices, including choice of intimate partners, with the overarching goal of continuous self-development. Giddens argues that pure relationships are more egalitarian than traditional romantic relationships, produce greater happiness for partners, and foster a greater sense of autonomy. At the same time, the contingent nature of the relationship commitment breeds psychological insecurity, which manifests in higher levels of anxiety and addiction.

Cherlin’s deinstitutionalization argument focuses more specifically on the present and future of marriage. The social norms that define and guide people’s behavior within the institution of marriage are weakening, according to Cherlin. People today experience greater freedom in how to be married, and in when and whether to marry at all. Several factors have contributed to marriage’s deinstitutionalization, including the rise of unmarried childbearing, the changing division of labor in the home, the growth of unmarried cohabitation, and the emergence of same-sex marriage. These large-scale trends create a context in which people actively question the link between marriage and parenting, the idea of complementary gender roles, and even the connection between marriage and heterosexuality. Under such conditions, Cherlin argues, people feel freer to marry later, to end unhappy marriages, and to forego marriage altogether, although marriage stills holds powerful symbolic significance for many people, partly as a marker of achievement and prestige. The future of marriage is hard to predict, but Cherlin argues it is unlikely to regain its former status; rather, it will either persist as an important but no longer dominant relationship form, or it will fade into the background as just one of many relationship options.

The Persistent Pull of Marriage

Several recent empirical studies suggest that the transformation of intimacy predicted by Giddens is far from complete, and the deinstitutionalization of marriage described by Cherlin faces some powerful countervailing forces, at least in the U.S. context. In her interview study of middle-class Americans, Ann Swidler found that when people talk about love and relationships they oscillate between two seemingly contradictory visions of intimacy. They often speak about love and relationships as being hard work, and they acknowledge that relationship permanence is never a given, even in strong marriages. This way of talking about intimacy reflects the confluent love Giddens describes. But the same people who articulated this pragmatic and realistic vision of intimacy would also sometimes invoke elements of romantic love ideology, such as the idea that true love lasts forever and can overcome any obstacles.

Swidler speculates that people go back and forth between these two contradictory visions of love because the pragmatic vision matches their everyday experience but the romantic love myth corresponds to important elements in the institution of marriage. In other words, the ongoing influence of marriage as a social institution keeps the romantic model of intimacy culturally relevant, despite the emergence of a newer model of intimacy that sees love very differently. Swidler’s findings at least partially contradict the idea of a wholesale transformation of intimacy, as well as the idea that marriage has lost much of its influence as a cultural model for intimate relationships.

Other studies have also challenged Giddens’ ideas about the nature and extent of change occurring in intimate relationships. A 2002 study by Neil Gross and Solon Simmons used data from a national survey of American adults to test Giddens’ predictions about the effects of “pure relationships” on their participants. They found support for some of the positive effects described by Giddens: People in pure relationships appear to have a greater sense of autonomy and higher relationship satisfaction. But the survey results did not support the idea that pure relationships lead to higher levels of anxiety and addiction. A 2004 British interview study of members of transnational families (i.e., people with one or more close family members living in another country) found that people often strike a balance between individualistic approaches to marriage and attention to the marriage values of their home countries, families and religions. Study authors Carol Smart and Beccy Shipman conclude that Giddens’ theory of a radical transformation of intimacy ignores the rich diversity of cultural values and practices that exists even in highly modernized Western nations. And sociologist Lynn Jamieson has critiqued Giddens’ theory for ignoring the vast body of feminist research that documents ongoing gender inequalities, such as in housework, even among heterosexual couples who consider their relationships to be highly egalitarian.

In his recent book The Marriage-Go-Round , Cherlin documents the fact that the deinstitutionalization of marriage has not gone as far in the U.S. as in many other Western countries. Americans have established a pattern of high marriage and remarriage rates, frequent divorce and separation, and more short-lived cohabitations, relative to other comparable countries. The end result is what Cherlin calls a “carousel of intimate partnerships,” leading American adults, and any children they have, to face more transition and upheaval in their personal lives. Cherlin concludes that this unique American pattern results from the embrace of two contradictory cultural ideals: marriage and individualism.

The differing importance placed on marriage is obvious in the realm of electoral politics, for example. The current leaders of France and Italy, President Nicolas Sarkozy and Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, have weathered divorces and allegations of extramarital affairs without any discernible effect on their political viability. In the U.S., by contrast, President Bill Clinton endured an impeachment which many interpreted as a kind of punishment for his extramarital liaison with an intern, and more recently the revelations of extramarital dalliances by South Carolina governor Mark Sanford and former North Carolina senator John Edwards were widely viewed as destroying their prospects as future presidential candidates.

What Young People Want

To understand where intimacy in America is headed, we might look to youth as a harbinger of future developments. Today’s mainstream media paints a picture of young people having substantially different attitudes toward intimacy compared to older generations. In some ways, young people’s attitudes toward relationships today are quite similar to the attitudes of their parents. A 2001 study by Arland Thornton and Linda Young-DeMarco compares the attitudes of high school students across time from the late 1970s to the late 1990s. They find strong support for marriage among both male and female students across the two-decade period. The percentage of female students who rated “having a good marriage and family life” extremely important was roughly 80% throughout this time period, and the percentage of male students hovered around 70%.

Some studies track changes in young people’s specific expectations regarding intimate partnerships. For example, a study by psychologist David Buss and colleagues examined college students’ preferences for mate characteristics over a period of several decades. They found that both male and female students rank mutual love and attraction as more important today than in earlier decades. Changing gender roles also translated into changes in mate preferences across the decades, with women’s financial prospects becoming more important to men and men’s ambition and industriousness becoming less important to women. Overall, gender differences in mate preferences declined in the second half of the 20 th century, suggesting that gender has become a less important factor in determining what young people look for in intimate partnerships.

In a recent study published in the Journal of Marriage and Family , we compared the relationship attitudes and values of lesbian/gay, bisexual, and heterosexual 18–28 year olds. Notably, people in all of these groups were highly likely to consider love, faithfulness, and life-long commitment as extremely important values in an intimate relationship. These findings indicate that romantic love is widely embraced by most young adults, regardless of sexual orientation, which contests stereotypes and contrary reports that sexual minorities have radically different aspirations for intimacy in their lives. Yet, we also found modest differences that indicate that straight women are especially enthusiastic about these relationship attributes. They are more likely to rate faithfulness and lifelong commitment as extremely important compared to straight men and sexual minorities. Our findings are similar to other studies that consistently show that while both men and women highly value love, affection, and life-long marriage, women assign greater value to these attributes than men.

In his recent book The Age of Independence , sociologist Michael Rosenfeld argues that same-sex relationships and interracial relationships both have emerged in the last few decades in large part because of the same social phenomenon: young people today are less constrained by the watchful eyes and wishes of their parents. Unmarried young adults are much less likely to be living with their parents than in generations past, giving them more freedom to make less traditional life choices. And making unconventional choices along one dimension may make people more willing to make unconventional choices along other dimensions. Thus, while people’s aspirations for romantic love may not be changing substantially, partner choice may be changing over time as taboos surrounding unconventional relationships erode. In our study, we find that sexual-minority young adults report being more willing to date someone of a different race or enter into less financially secure relationships than heterosexual young adults, lending support to Rosenfeld’s claim that nontraditional relationship choices breed further departures from tradition.

Why Intimacy Matters

If the ideas of today’s young adults are any indication, Americans still place a high value on traditional, romantic love ideals for their relationships, including the ideal of lifelong marriage. Yet, all evidence suggests that many of us do not follow through. What difference does it make if our behaviors around intimacy are changing? Some social scientists see these shifts as alarming, whereas others welcome the changes as long overdue. What does it all mean for our society, our lives and those of our children?

In 2004, sociologist Paul Amato outlined the typical positions on this “so what” question. The marital decline position argues that changes in intimacy are a significant cause for concern. From this perspective, the current decline in lifelong marriage and the corresponding increase in single-parent and disrupted families are a key culprit in other social ills like poverty, delinquency, and poor academic performance among children. This is because stable marriages promote a culture in which people accept responsibility for others, and families watch over their own to protect against falling prey to these social ills. In short, marriage for the long haul groups people together in families where we check each other’s behavior and take care of each other—marriage helps keep our societal house in order.

The marital resilience perspective , in contrast, contends that changes in family life have actually strengthened the quality of intimate relationships, including marriages. From this perspective, in the past many people stayed in bad marriages because of strong social norms and legal obstacles to exit. Today, however, no-fault divorce provides an opportunity to correct past mistakes and try again at happiness with new partners. This is a triumph for individual freedom of choice and opportunities for equality within intimate relationships.

Perhaps today’s intimacy norms dictate more individualism and a corresponding reduction in the responsibility we take for those we love or loved. Maybe we are better for it because we have more freedom of choice—after all, freedom is one America’s most cherished values. Americans in general seem to be willing to live with mixed feelings on the new norms for intimacy. Most of us value the commitment and security of a lifelong partner, but we also want the option of exit. And, almost half of people who marry use this option. But, some evidence suggests that the “carousel of intimate relationships” may be taking its toll on us. Sociologists Mary Elizabeth Hughes and Linda Waite recently compared the health of middle-aged Americans who were married once and still with their partner to those who were never married, those who were married then divorced and remarried, and those who were married, divorced, and not remarried. They found that those who experienced divorce reported more chronic conditions, mobility limitations and depression years later, and remarriage boosted health some (particularly mental health), but not to the level of those who never divorced in the first place. Those who divorced and did not remarry had the worst health, even after accounting for many factors that may make one more likely both to have poor health and to divorce. Having loved and lost may have some lasting consequences.

What about the kids? This is the question that lingers in academic and policy debates, as well as amongst friends and neighbors who are considering severing ties with their significant others. A fair amount of research suggests that kids are more likely to avoid most social ills and develop into competent, successful adults if they are raised by two happily and continuously married parents. Marital happiness is key. A number of studies have found that frequently quarrelling parents who stay married do not do their kids many favors. Children of these types of marriages have an elevated risk of emotional and behavioral problems as well. Most children who are raised by caring parents—one or two of them, married or not—end up just fine. Further, if our social policies provided greater support to all varieties of families, not just those characterized by lifelong heterosexual marriage, we might erase the association between growing up with happily married parents and children’s well-being. More family supports, such as childcare subsidies, might translate into happily-ever-after for most kids regardless of family form.

Finally, what do new rules of intimacy mean for society? If social order is substantially buttressed by traditional marriage, and a new model of intimacy is weakening the norm of lifelong, heterosexual marriage, will these changes erode social cohesion and stability? If we think this is a threat, it seems a few policy adjustments could help to promote social order. If marriage has the benefits of status, institutional support, and legitimacy, granting the right to marry to same-sex couples should bolster their relationships, making them more stable and long-lasting and therefore benefiting the adults and children in these families, and society more generally. This would bring some Americans into the marriage fold, but many who already have access choose not to enter or they enter and later exit marriage.

Can healthy, well-functioning societies be maintained without reinforcing marriage as the ideal family form? Evidence from other Western nations suggests that different models of intimacy are compatible with societal well-being, but social policy must be aligned with the types of relationships that individuals choose to form. Many comparable countries have lower marriage rates and higher cohabitation rates than the U.S. (see Figure 2 ). Some of these countries extend significant legal protection and recognition to nonmarital relationships, and these countries do as well as, or sometimes better than, the U.S. on key measures of social and familial well-being. For example, Swedish children who live with only one parent do better, on average, than American children of this same circumstance. Many observers argue that this is attributable to Swedish pro-family policies that grant significantly longer periods of paid maternity and sick leave and government-subsidized, high-quality childcare. All parents are eligible for these family supports, minimizing the differences in care children receive across family types.

Cohabitations as Proportion of Unions

In the end, current research suggests a paradox. Most people, including young adults, say things to researchers that suggest they hold fast to the ideal of an exclusive, lifelong intimate partnership, most commonly a marriage. Yet often people behave in ways more aligned with the “pure relationship” that Giddens argues is the ascendant model of intimacy. Perhaps this contradiction indicates that it is harder than ever for people to live out their aspirations in the area of intimacy. Or perhaps it suggests that we are indeed in the midst of a transition to a brave new world of intimacy, and people’s willingness or ability to articulate new relationship values has not yet caught up to the changes in their actual behavior.

Recommended Resources

• Cherlin Andrew J. The Marriage-Go-Round: The State of Marriage and the Family in America Today. Alfred A. Knopf; 2009. Describes how Americans’ simultaneous embrace of the contradictory values of marital commitment and individual freedom has resulted in a “carousel of intimate partnerships” featuring shorter relationships and more frequent transitions. [ Google Scholar ]
• Coontz Stephanie. Marriage, a History: From Obedience to Intimacy or How Love Conquered Marriage. Viking; 2005. Points out that the linkage of marriage and romantic intimacy is a relatively recent phenomenon, and one that has involved a tradeoff between marital stability and personal freedom and happiness. [ Google Scholar ]
• Giddens Anthony. The Transformation of Intimacy: Sexuality, Love and Eroticism in Modern Societies. Stanford University Press; 1992. Argues that romantic love is being replaced in modern societies by the ideal of the “pure relationship,” in which intimacy is maintained for its own sake and only as long as both parties believe its benefits outweigh its costs. [ Google Scholar ]
• Gross Neil. The Detraditionalization of Intimacy Reconsidered. Sociological Theory. 2005; 23 :286–311. Challenges Giddens’ account of the transformation of intimacy by suggesting that “regulative” traditions have lost influence but “meaning-constitutive” traditions remain powerful in modern intimacy. [ Google Scholar ]
• Stacey Judith. In the Name of the Family: Rethinking Family Values in the Postmodern Age. Beacon Press; 1996. Examines the fluid and contested nature of the “postmodern family condition” and argues that most contemporary social problems are not the result of innovations in family form. [ Google Scholar ]
• Swidler Ann. Talk of Love: How Culture Matters. University of Chicago Press; 2001. Uses interviews with middle-class Americans to show that people simultaneously maintain inconsistent views on love, oscillating between a romantic love ideology and a more pragmatic, contingent vision of the nature of intimacy. [ Google Scholar ]

Greater Good Science Center • Magazine • In Action • In Education

Is There Science Behind the Five Love Languages?

Love languages—the concept coined by Baptist pastor Gary Chapman some 30 years ago—has taken the relationships world by storm. It’s often the “go-to” topic on first dates, and, for those in relationships, love languages are said to provide deep, meaningful, and reliable insights into how relationships function. Putting love languages into action is believed to increase relationship happiness.

The concept clearly has appeal. At last count, 20 million copies have been sold worldwide of Chapman’s 1992 book The 5 Love Languages: The Secret to Love That Lasts . The book has been translated into 49 languages.

There is only one catch. There is little evidence to support the idea that love languages are “a thing,” or that love languages do much of anything to help improve relationships.

What are the love languages?

According to Chapman , there are five love languages. Each of these love languages is a way to communicate your love to your romantic partner.

In his role as a Baptist pastor, Chapman had been counselling couples for years. It was through his observations of couples that the idea of love languages was born.

He believed love languages were an intuitive and simple way to teach couples about how to tune into each other’s ways of expressing love. And so, he began running seminars for husbands and wives, and the popularity of his seminars grew.

The five love languages are:

• acts of service (doing something that helps a partner, such as running an errand)
• physical touch (demonstrating physical affection, such as giving your partner a hug or kiss)
• quality time (spending time together and giving each other undivided attention)
• gifts (giving your partner a present that communicates thoughtfulness, effort, or expense)
• words of affirmation (such as expressing your admiration, or complimenting your partner).

Chapman suggests that people typically use all love languages, but that most people tend to rely on one love language most of the time. This is referred to as a person’s primary love language.

According to Chapman, people are more satisfied in their relationships when both partners match when it comes to their primary love language. However, people experience less satisfaction in their relationships when both partners do not share the same primary love language.

Another important aspect of the love languages concept is that relationships are likely to deliver the greatest satisfaction when a person can understand their partner’s love language, and act in ways that “speak to” their partner’s language. In essence, this idea is about tuning in to what a partner wants.

This is an idea that has existed across many models and theories about how relationships function well. That is, responding to a partner in a way that meets their needs and wants makes a person feel understood, validated, and cared for .

What does the evidence tell us?

Despite the popularity of the theory of love languages, only a handful of studies have been conducted and reported over the past 30 years. Research is largely inconclusive, although the balance sways more toward refuting rather than endorsing the love languages concept.

Let’s start with how love languages are assessed. In popular culture, the Love Language Quiz TM is an online questionnaire that people can complete to find out about their love languages. Despite millions of individuals having taken the quiz (according to 5lovelanguages.com), there are no published findings as to the reliability and validity of the measure.

Researchers have developed their own version of the love languages survey, but the findings did not meet the statistical thresholds to suggest the survey adequately captured the five love languages. Also, their findings did not support the idea that there are five love languages.

Furthermore, a qualitative study, in which researchers coded the written responses of undergraduate students to questions about how they express love, suggested there may be six love languages. However, the researchers reported difficulty agreeing on how some of the students’ responses neatly fitted into Chapman’s love languages, particularly in the categories of “words of affirmation” and “quality time.”

Next, let’s turn to research testing a core premise of the love language theory: that couples with matching love languages experience greater satisfaction than those who do not. Evidence for this premise is very mixed.

Three studies , including one that used Chapman’s Love Language Quiz, have found that couples with matching love languages were no more satisfied than couples who were mismatched.

However, a more recent study found that partners with matching love languages experienced greater relationship and sexual satisfaction than partners with mismatched love languages. This research also found that men who reported greater empathy and perspective taking had a love language that better matched the language of their partner.

Finally, what does the research say about whether having a better understanding of your partner’s love language is linked to higher relationship satisfaction? Only two studies have investigated this question. Both found that knowing your partner’s primary love language did predict relationship satisfaction in the present or into the future.

So, as you can see, not only is there very little research investigating love languages, but the research to date doesn’t strengthen belief in the powerful properties of love languages.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article .

About the Author

Gery Karantzas

Gery Karantzas, Ph.D. , is currently a professor and director of the Science of Adult Relationships (SoAR) Laboratory in the School of Psychology at Deakin University. He is also a couples therapist and was the former national convener of the Australian Psychological Society Psychology of Relationships Interest Group.

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Modern Love

A Life Shaken by an Old Love Letter

To be drawn into the past is to experience it anew.

By Elizabeth Uphoff Courtney

I hadn’t meant to find it, this missive that triggered so many memories from my past. I had been looking for something else, rooting around an old storage box in my basement, when I came across a decades-old love letter tucked among postcards, articles and photos.

It was postmarked September 1991 and addressed to me via general delivery at the Block Island post office. It’s a miracle I even got it. It was long: five pages of handwritten single-spaced prose, baring the soul of a man with whom I had fallen deeply in love.

He wrote, “Part of me loathes art, literature and the quest for the eternal. Part of me couldn’t live without it. I’m torn, crunched and scrambled.”

He kept on, diving deeper into our growing passion. “You draw the best from me, but you don’t consume it; you play with it, you slam it, you enliven it, but you don’t consume it. After I’ve been with you, I feel charged. I respect you for your love, for your strength, and for your straightforwardness. Never have I encountered a woman so sure of her body.”

The feeling was mutual. This man was my equal in every way — intellectually, sexually. He was strikingly beautiful, of German descent, as was I. Perhaps our ancestors had loved one another in a distant age?

We were not strangers when our lives collided — we had known each other in college — but any attraction back then was tempered by the fact that we were in loving relationships with other people.

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