February 14th brings to mind love and romance for many married North Americans, but some 800,000 couples will divorce this year in the United States. (CDC, n.d.) What happened to the love that these couples thought they had? Can counseling psychology help them keep it?
Love and marriage go together in our modern, western culture but we tend to focus on the wedding part of the marriage thinking that the love has arrived and will remain static if it is “real”. Robert Sternberg, a Psychologist and Professor at Cornell University has developed what he calls the Triangular Theory of Love to explain that love will change over time. (Atkins, 2003)
The Triangular Theory posits that romantic love can consist of up to three components, forming a triangle.
Passion is the love that many westerners believe is the basis for falling in love. This is the physical attraction and desire one has for another. It is sexual attraction, excitement and “love at first sight.” Intimacy is defined as a closeness and trust with another person. This takes time to develop and involves sharing experiences, dreams and goals. Commitment is that decision to stay connected to that other person. It is the “’til death us do part” vow in a marriage.
What goes wrong in the marriages that end in divorce? Possibly one or more of the components of the love triangle are missing. A marriage consisting of passion and intimacy (described as a romantic love) alone might break if it is hit by hard economic times and one or both partners decide to move on. Passion will tend to fade over a short time and if a companionate love (intimacy and commitment) has not developed, commitment will not likely be strong enough to hold a modern marriage together. (We do however hear of some longer marriages where people are only together for religious reasons, possibly society’s definition of commitment has changed.) A combination of all aspects of the love triangle may be more likely to succeed and Sternberg has called this a Consummate Love.
This theory can be used by a counselor as a tool to help a couple evaluate how their love started and what it has evolved into. It can be a visual model of how love changes and potentially help some couples keep the love that has developed and grow it to a deeper lever.
References
Atkins, R. (2003) A review of Sternberg’s article A triangular theory of love published in Psychological Review . Retrieved 2/15/2015 from: http://langleyt.people.cofc.edu/217triangulartheoryoflove.html?referrer=webcluster&
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, National Vital Statistics System. 2000-2011 Divorce and Annulments. Retrieved 2/14/2015 from: http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/marriage_divorce_tables.htm
The Love Triangle does have its merit it does give good examples of what it takes to stay in a long-term committed relationship that will last throughout time. I am a victim of divorce twice now, not proud of it. I do recognize some of the components of the successful and the failures of my relationships through Sternberg’s triangle of love.
Although increased exposure to someone generally enhances preexisting feelings toward that person whether positive or negative there is no guarantee of any long lasting relationship. It seems to be the static part of the relationship that most can’t handle. I would describe it as a social dilemma.
Social trap is the second form of social dilemma that involves short-term pleasure and over time leads to pain or loss. They are dilemmas because a choice must be made of an immediate reward (lust, passion, sexual gratification) and the outcome that the long-term negative result can produce (heart break from loss of passion, divorce, depression) if the union doesn’t work out.
Steinberg’s article describes that in “romantic love you’ve got the passion, and the sharing and caring stuff, but the long-term commitment is not there. In compassionate love, you’re in it for the long haul, and you’re each others best friend, but the lust isn’t there. Fatuous love sounds pretty good, if perhaps less stable; the heat is there, and so is the long-term commitment to make the relationship last, but you do without all the lovey-dovey-yucky-disney stuff. And consummate love is the crem-de-la-crem, the combination of all three aspects” (Sternberg 1986).
I also believe that our family environment has something to do with whether a marriage makes it or breaks. Marriage is a huge commitment and the lovers’ look to family and friends for approval within their social circles; after all, this is an important life changing decision for all involved.
Your blog was inspiring and I really enjoyed reading it and doing some research of my own. Thanks!!
Sternberg, R. J. (1986). A triangular theory of love. Psychological Review, 93, 119-135.
This is an interesting subject. In the original post it was noted that some couples may stat together for religious reasons. This could be an arranged marriage for example. It is rare to come by people in present day that have had an arranged marriage. I am lucky enough to know a couple that immigrated to the United States as a newlywed couple from Italy and there they were placed in an arranged marriage. I heard stories that they did not even speak before the wedding and that the to-be bride did not want to marry the groom. The reasons that arranged marriages take place in some societies is for the fact that parents fear that couples will choose a spouse based solely on pleasure and not for the big picture. Rather parents take into account reputation, job title, money, values, appearance, religion or caste, medical history, or even in some cases their horoscope (Zuffoletti, 2007). Understanding the Law of Attraction is what aids these parents in suiting the young couples, and alternatively aids in the marriage staying together. The law of attraction states that we are attracted to those that are similar to us. The Sternberg triangle can work in this scenario in that parents may predict who will continue to be passionate, intimate, and committed throughout a marriage and are able to pear those people together.
References:
Similarity. (n.d.). Retrieved February 16, 2015, from http://www.lawsofattraction.com/psychology/similarity/
Zuffoletti, A.R. (2007). Traditional Arranged Marriages. Retrieved February 16, 2015, from http://iml.jou.ufl.edu/projects/spring07/zuffoletti/traditional.html
I was wondering how Sternberg’s Triangular Theory would address how we do relationships in this country. What about books and movies like Twilight and 50 Shades of Grey. These books present love as something that is, well juvenile and immature. And while it does make sense that a relationship should do well as long as there is passion, intimacy, and commitment, sometimes even that isn’t enough. Relationships are individual and dynamic and people change and sometimes the relationship just can’t accommodate those changes. Another thing to think about, marriage originated in a time when we didn’t live as long as we do now, it might just be that aren’t meant to stay with one person for 40, 50, 60 years. Sure, there are those marriages that have sustained the test of time, but of those marriages, how many were truly happy, how many stayed together, not because they wanted to, but because they had to, or thought it was the right thing to do.