What's Love Got To Do With It?

It seems that psychology is catching up with the Bible in the area of love.

The Greek language of the New Testament has three words for “love”:
“eros” which is physical sexual love.
“phileo” which is social or brotherly love.
“agape” which is godly unconditional love or commitment.

The following article appeared in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

WHAT'S LOVE GOT TO DO WITH IT?
Elizabeth A. LehnererOf the Suburban Journals
Collinsville Herald
02/08/2006

Songwriters have become famous off of it. Poets have won the hearts of audiences from it. Battles have been won and lost because of it. It can put you on cloud nine or break your heart. And, with Valentine's Day right around the corner, we ask the question:What is love?

For centuries, psychologists have researched love and developed theories about the different types of love. Scientists have studied why our bodies and minds respond in certain ways when we come across that someone special.But is love really so simply broken down?

Dr. Paul Rose, a professor of social psychology at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville, seems to think so. He has studied psychology professionally since 2003 with his research mainly focused on relationships between dating and married people.

Rose said that there are three basic components of love: passion, intimacy and commitment and that the three parts, developed by Dr. Robert J. Sternberg in 1986, mix and match in different relationships.

For instance, romantic love, like the kind between Romeo and Juliet, is a combination of passion and intimacy.

People in love typically carry the same symptoms – they are carefree and happy and the world is full of possibilities. Rose said that the reason a human being finds pleasure in romantic love is because passion and intimacy fulfill two basic drives that all normal human beings have.

"We have this drive to reproduce and so we have these feeling of passion toward another person, and then we have this drive to socially connect with other people and feelings of intimacy help us fulfill that drive," he said.

Although passion may mean something different to everyone, in the psychology field, passion means sex. "When you feel passion toward another person it means that your body is physiologically responding to them," Rose said. "In a nutshell, what is happening - and we don't like to admit this in polite society - but your body is getting ready for sex; that heart pumping, that rise in body temperature and all those kinds of things are an indication that you are sexually attracted to that person."

When it comes to bodily response, being attracted to someone has been compared to fear. A person's heart rate, blood pressure, breathing and muscle tone all increase, pupils dilate, and the skin begins to perspire, giving off a healthy glow.

And no matter how little you may want to think about it, Rose said every normal human being has a sex drive. "Over the course of evolution, if we didn't have a need to reproduce, your genes would be selected out of the pool and you wouldn't be here," Rose said.

But there are different types of love.

"Companionate" love is a combination of intimacy and commitment. This is the type of love you feel toward a friend or family member. "You're going to be there for them and you believe they're going to be there for you," Rose said. "You have a sense of closeness with them and you talk about things that you wouldn't share with strangers.

"When your son or daughter says they're in love with the newest hunk or hottie in Hollywood what they really are infatuated – a mix of passion and commitment. "You're totally devoted to this person, you yearn for them, you're telling your friends, ‘I want to live with this person forever.' But you don't know anything about them," Rose aid. "Teenage infatuation is the typical combination of passion plus commitment but there's no intimacy." Rose said that the components combine to create a stereotypical relationship -- friend, lover, idol -- but just having one component in a relationship can lead to awkward or dangerous situations.

"Like when you meet someone one the bus who you will never talk to again in your life but for some reason for 10 minutes on the bus you just really got into a deep conversation. So you've got intimacy there but no commitment and no passion.

"Rose also said just having passion could have devastating results. "Let's take passion all by itself – if that's all you've got that may describe a rapist. They have no sense of compassion with this person, certainly not sense of commitment, all they're after is fulfilling their lust."

Although people have different goals in their relationships, the ideal situation seems to have all three components. "People definitely vary on what they want," Rose said. "I know a lot of 18-year-olds who are just looking for passion on a Saturday night and there are other people who have been in traumatic relationships over and over again who will willingly sacrifice on passion and intimacy if they could just get commitment.

"In my professional opinion, what's healthiest is having all three. I think that love fulfills basic needs. Every normal human being has a sex drive and to feel gratified they've got to fulfill that. "Every normal human being has a need to connect with other people -- intimacy and commitment fulfill that."

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