3 Types of Love – a Theory that Changes Views on Romance

A scientific approach to feelings based on the work of neuroscientists and anthropologists.

My favorite relationship model comes from the work of anthropologist Helen Fisher. She has devoted decades of her life and career to the study of love, intimacy, and relationships. I find her theory of the three kinds of love incredibly helpful in understanding relationships.

It starts from the premise that not all love is experienced in the same way. Anyone with enough romantic and sexual experience will tell you that love and passion can taste different. In some it is rich and frantic, in others it is soft and delicate. Some relationships are like a roller coaster with many ups and downs, others develop slowly and consistently over time.

But the theory of the three types of love is not abstract reasoning. Scientists like Fisher have studied the cognitive and neurobiological processes that underlie attraction and love, and have begun to pinpoint the different emotions that come up at different stages of a romantic relationship. Thanks to these studies, Fisher was able to isolate the neurobiological components of various kinds of love experiences and correlate them with existing social realities.

Let's take a closer look at what each of the three types is.

Type one: lust
Many people know this feeling. It is a pure instinctive drive to procreate. Lust is a kind of sentence that can be answered with yes or no. Everything happens instantly and is based on fairly simple physical and behavioral components of attraction.

Lust can disappear as quickly as it appeared. It is temporary and constantly changing. He has no preferences or "favourites".

Type two: passion
It is an emotional bond between two people. Two in a state of passion are considered head over heels in love. They constantly look at each other, want to spend every minute together and talk heart to heart until six in the morning.

Imagine the newlyweds on their honeymoon, the “candy-bouquet” period, Romeo and Juliet. Passion is created through strong emotional attraction and a sense of novelty and spontaneity. Therefore, a long-married couple goes on a romantic trip to rekindle the flame of a relationship.

Passion has an incredible ability to turn off logical thinking. It makes us say things that are not well thought out and make reckless promises. A guy who confesses his love to a new girl, and after four months changes his mind. A girl who dreams of moving in with a guy for a year, and then, as soon as this happens, she realizes that she does not love him as much as she thought. Blinded by passion, we cling to the present moment and create an image of an endless and utopian future for relationships.

Passion does not develop without lust, although it can be maintained even after the attraction to each other has faded (again, think of a long-married couple).

Without unifying experience and novelty, passion dies. After 6-12 months of marriage, when the freshness of the first impression wears off, the couple will face a serious compatibility test. If two people can bring their lives together to share their new experiences with each other, then the passion will continue. If not, it will eventually disappear.

And this brings us to the last type of love.

Type Three: Devotion
If two people have long enough passion for each other, their compatibility has stood the test of time, and they continue to exchange new life experiences, then loyalty arises. This is an incredibly strong feeling that is rare in life.

Devotion appears when passion becomes unconditional. Couples who are in Type 2 love but haven't yet moved on to Type 3 are often fine until something big happens—he loses his job, she has a miscarriage, someone starts drinking, and so on. Commitment means that you emotionally accept and love your partner's flaws as well as their virtues.

Scientists have noticed that in people who have reached this level of attachment, the perception of their own "I" merges with the perception of a partner. Specialists observed couples who have been together for a long time and recorded patterns of neuron activation. They found that if you ask a man who has been married for 20 years to imagine that his wife had an accident, and then that he himself had an accident, the same areas in the brain are activated. And they will not "turn on" if he thinks about other people. Such a "merger" with a partner occurs only in those who have long felt devotion.

This type of love is born with the idea that the relationship will last indefinitely. They can only end if one or both of them change to such an extent that it is dangerous to identify with the other. For example, if the husband becomes an alcoholic or the wife begins to constantly change. But sometimes devotion persists even in such situations.

Lust and passion can disappear after devotion arises and cannot be affected in any way. Thus, each type of love serves as a prerequisite for the emergence of the next, and then loses its meaning. Lust is necessary for passion, but it can exist without it. Passion is necessary for devotion to arise, but later it is not needed.

Each type of love has its own "schedule". Although it is quite random and varies from couple to couple, it is useful to think about it. Lust is instant, it constantly comes and goes, it is very easy to return it.

It takes from several days to several weeks for the appearance of passion, and it usually lasts from 3 to 6 months. In couples with a high level of compatibility, passion can last longer, but this will require a lot of effort and constant communication.

Loyalty appears after 1-3 years of marriage and lasts until the end, unless the two part once as individuals. In this case, it will take years to permanently get rid of the last type of love.

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