By: Myka Villegas
Love. The affection towards another individual. The feeling of warm tenderness and pleasure from the other. A profound and admiring connection that is utterly beyond mere infatuation. Loving another is one of many amazing phenomenons to which humans get to experience in their lives. Love is just as fundamental to us just like our other necessities. Love is something every individual needs, but is difficult to understand. Many struggle to seek love from others due to several issues, and beliefs from one being. Why do we love? Love is a nice, genuine feeling, but there are also some hardships that this feeling carries. Why does it sometimes hurt to love? Is love just an intimate relationship type bond? Scientifically, what are some theories that psychologists came up with in regards to love? Love in general is a difficult feeling to understand and maintain. But genuinely, we just all want to feel the warm, and comforting feeling of being in love.
According to some researchers, they believe that love is a complex group of adaptations which are designed to solve problems of human survival and reproduction. Love with romantic relationships, or with family and friends can also contribute to a strong connection. This results in having positive health benefits to the individual. However, with all this in mind, love can also impact people differently. Since people are different in many aspects, like emotional and physical symptoms when it comes to love. Although love is an adaptation to human life, it is also a driving purpose to many. Love allows humans to treasure, find meaning and purpose for themselves. But in spite of all this, love also tends to hurt for some individuals. The main reason this comes into relationships is the wanting of more in a relationship, or knowing their partner is lacking. This causes a disconnection from the other person, but also is painful to cope with. This feeling, the dreadful heartache we feel when we go through events like this in our lives, results in our cortisol levels (stress hormone) to rapidly increase, which triggers a feeling of anxiety in the person. Which makes sense as when you feel like you are losing somebody who we felt connected to us, the pain and mourning of the loss is the pain of detachment to one being. This is all of our body's instinctive process. All these feelings that run through you is an experience, a lesson of a way to accept the event.
Sternberg’s Triangular Theory of Love is a common theory that explains his understanding of the feeling of love. Sternberg is a psychologist who believes that the topic of love is an interpersonal relationship. He described that there are different types of love based on the set scale he came up with: intimacy, passion, and commitment. According to the chart of “Combinations of intimacy, passion, and commitment,” the type of bond, or love that tends to be much success is consummate love. This is the complete form of love, consisting of all the elements of the scale. This represents the relationship many strive for, but yet few achieve. This type of bond tends to be hard to maintain as it consists of all the components, generally speaking, the couple that shares this relationship shares the desire to keep going, and that their spark in their bond has not died. Thus, their closeness and genuine love is still within themselves. The other types of bonds in relationships are: friendship/liking, infatuation/limerence, empty love, romantic love, companionate love, and fatuous love. However, the balance within the theory, and the three aspects are more likely to shift throughout the course of the relationship. Although a dose of all three components is our typical ideal relationship, it is a good way for couples to maintain their relationship if these ideas were taken into account.
Love is a feeling that we all need to live. It is one of our main necessities. It helps us feel joy, comfort, and a feeling of purpose in life. Although hardships may be encountered throughout the process, the feeling of love will always remain with a person, no matter who they are. Being loved, or loving one another is the necessity of human lives, just like every other human emotion.
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