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Love
It is probably too simple to think of love as a single emotion or type of behavior. In an early attempt to define and measure feelings of love, social psychologist Zick Rubin <REF>(1973) proposed that love has at least three important components: caring, attachment, and intimacy. Caring is the feeling that the other person's happiness is as important as your own. Attachment is the need to be in contact with the other person and spend time in their company. Intimacy involves a willingness to share personal and private information with the other person. Based on this definition, Rubin created a psychological scale to measure the degree of love felt for another person, in which individuals agreed or disagreed with statements such as: "I'd be miserable if I could never be with _______." Couples who have high scores on Rubin's "love scale" are much more likely to actually say that they are "in love" with each other. In laboratory studies, high-scoring couples tend to make more eye contact and gaze at each other for longer periods of time. Scores on Rubin's scale may also predict the duration of a relationship: Partners with high scores tend to stay together for a longer period of time. Passionate love and companionate love
Companionate love, on the other hand, is a kind of commitment more gradually developed from friendship and respect for the other person. Companionate love involves supporting and understanding a partner, as well as tolerating flaws and idiosyncrasies. It certainly includes caring and affection for the other person, but without quite the same intensity or feverish degree of emotion. Some evidence suggests that in successful long-term relationships, couples manage to make the transition from a primarily passionate love to a more companionate love over time <REF>(Berscheid, 1983; Hatfield & Rapson, 1993).  |
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Social scientists make a distinction between passionate love
<glossary term> and companionate love <glossary term>
<REF>(Hatfield, 1988). Passionate love is a highly emotional
state of intense absorption in another person; it is the "romantic"
love so often portrayed in novels and films. Passionate
love usually involves strong, sometimes overwhelming emotions
and feelings of fascination with the other person. The Shakespearean
characters of Romeo and Juliet often come to mind as the prototypical
romantic couple who are compelled by their passionate love for
each other. This concept of love appears in nearly all cultures.
In one survey by William Jankowiak & Edward Fischer 
<REF>(1991),
the notion of romantic, passionate love was found in the literature
and art of 147 of 166 societies studied.Western cultures, however,
appear to place more emphasis on passionate love as the basis
of marriage and long-term relationships.
