Triangular Theory of Love - Three Components - A Triangular Theory of Love

Oct 22, 2026

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Triangular theory of love explains how “to love” can vary over time by breaking love into three interacting components: intimacy, passion, and decision/commitment. Intimacy covers feelings of closeness, connectedness, and bondedness; passion covers drives linked to romance, physical attraction, and sexual consummation; decision/commitment covers short-term decision and long-term commitment. Different strengths and relations among these components produce different kinds of loving experiences and help account for empirical findings in love research and everyday experiences.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryLiterature

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Pages17

Reading Time26 min

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Three Components

A Triangular Theory of Love

Properties of the Components of Love

What does it mean “to love”someone?Does it always meanthe same thing,and if not,in what ways do loves differ from eachother?Why do certain loves seem to last,whereas others disappearalmost as quickly as they are formed?This article seeks to answerthese and other questions through a triangular theory of love.This tripartite theory deals both with the nature of love and withloves in various kinds of relationships. The presentation of the theory will be divided into three mainparts.In the first part,the main tenets of the theory will beexplained and discussed,and the theory will be compared withother theories of love.In the second part,the implications of thetheory for close relationships and satisfaction in them will bedescribed.In the third part,the theory will be shown to accountfor many of the empirical phenomena that have been observedwith regard to love. The Triangle of Love # Three Components¹ The triangular theory of love holds that love can be understoodin terms of three components that together can be viewed asforming the vertices of a triangle.These three components areintimacy(the top vertex of the triangle),passion (the left-handvertex of the triangle),and decision/commitment (the right-handvertex of the triangle).(The assignment of components to verticesis arbitrary.)Each of these three terms can be used in manydifferent ways,so it is important at the outset to clarify theirmeanings in the context of the present theory. # A Triangular Theory of Love Robert J.SternbergYale University This article presents a triangular theory of love.According to the theory,love has three components:(a)intimacy,which encompasses the feelings of closeness,connectedness,and bondedness one ex-periences in loving relationships;(b)passion,which encompasses the drives that lead to romance,physical attraction,and sexual consummation;and(c)decision/commitment,which encompasses,inthe short term,the decision that one loves another,and in the long term,the commitment to maintainthat love.The amount of love one experiences depends on the absolute strength of these three com-ponents,and the kind of love one experiences depends on their strengths relative to each other.Thethree components interact with each other and with the actions that they produce and that producethem so as to form a number of different kinds of loving experiences.The triangular theory of lovesubsumes certain other theories and can account for a number of empirical findings in the researchliterature,as well as for a number ofexperiences with which many are familiar firsthand.It is proposedthat the triangular theory provides a rather comprehensive basis for understanding many aspects ofthe love that underlies close relationships. The intimacy component refers to feelings of closeness,con-nectedness,and bondedness in loving relationships.It thus in-cludes within its purview those feelings that give rise,essentially,to the experience of warmth in a loving relationship. The passion component refers to the drives that lead to ro-mance,physical attraction,sexual consummation,and relatedphenomena in loving relationships.The passion component thusincludes within its purview those sources of motivational andother forms of arousal that lead to the experience of passion ina loving relationship. The decision/commitment component refers to,in the shortterm,the decision that one loves someone else,and in the longterm,the commitment to maintain that love.The decision/com-mitment component thus includes within its purview the cog-nitive elements that are involved in decision making about theexistence of and potential long-term commitment to a lovingrelationship. In general,the intimacy component might be viewed as largely,but not exclusively,deriving from emotional investment in therelationship;the passion component as deriving largely,althoughnot exclusively,from motivational involvement in the relation-ship;and the decision/commitment component as derivinglargely,although

FAQs

What three components does Sternberg’s triangular theory of love propose?

The theory proposes intimacy, passion, and decision/commitment as three components that together form love’s “triangle.”

What does intimacy include in this theory?

Intimacy encompasses feelings of closeness, connectedness, and bondedness, producing the experience of warmth in a loving relationship.

How do the components differ in stability and controllability?

Intimacy and decision/commitment are described as relatively stable in close relationships, while passion is more unstable and less consciously controllable; people may be aware of passion but can vary in awareness of intimacy and commitment.

Oct 22, 2026

Upload by Franzy