Give me love, love. love...
A recent British study
has divided love into nine distinct kinds:
- Trust, recognition and support – described as the “central
story of love in our culture”, this is a shared effort where the job
of each partner is to make the life of the other ‘better’ and
to help them maximize their potential.
- Cupid’s arrow – love “rooted in the physical
attraction” and a passion so intense that the lovestruck one loses sight
of who they are.
- Hedonistic Love – little more than the pleasant and hedonistic
feelings of excitement that can be produced by sex. No attempt is made here
to establish a long-term commitment or relationship.
- Love as the ultimate connection – a belief that love is the
most profound of human feelings and the ultimate way of relating to another
person. These are the people who think they have found “the one”.
- Demythologised love – a rejection of the “romantic
myth of love” in favor of hard work, patience and compromise.
- Love as a transformative adventure – an unpredictable roller
coaster ride which can bring great pleasure, but can just as easily go wrong
and become unfulfilling.
- From Cupid's arrow to a role-bound relationship – the familiar
‘rite-of-passage’ story where love begins as an uncontrollable
passion before the couple “settle down” to marriage and children.
- From Cupid's arrow to the security of close friendship –
where initial intense feelings give way over time to a more secure relationship
based on the characteristics of everyday friendship.(i.e. Lesbian Bed
Death!)
- Dyadic partnership love – involves “the merging of
two people” where both partners put their relationship before their
own individual needs.
So what kind of love are you involved in right now? What kind was your most
memorable past love? And do you agree with these nine (and only these nine)
types of love?
I find the study interesting, but I also find the size of their sample (50
people) to be too small to make such generalized conclusions. For a subject
so broad, hundreds of people from many different cultures and groups need to
be questioned. However, I can see my past relationships in several of these
categories, and would love to read further research on this subject.
Now, which type of love do you really want?
9:48:52 PM 
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