Passionate and companionate love

In psychology, a distinction is often made between two types of love:

Passionate love, also called romantic love and infatuation, is "a state of intense longing for union with another. Reciprocated love (union with the other) is associated with fulfillment and ecstasy; unrequited love (separation) is associated with emptiness, anxiety, or despair", and "the overwhelming, amorous feeling for one individual that is typically most intense during the early stage of love (i.e., when individuals are not (yet) in a relationship with their beloved or are in a new relationship)". Companionate love, also called attachment, is "the affection we feel for those with whom our lives are deeply entwined", and "the comforting feeling of emotional bonding with another individual that takes some time to develop, often in the context of a romantic relationship". Evolutionary theories suggest these two types of love exist for different purposes, and research from psychology and biology suggests they follow somewhat different mechanics. Both passionate and companionate love can contribute to relationship satisfaction. Passionate and companionate love can also be further distinguished from a third important type of love, compassionate love, which is love focused on caring about others. Passionate love is commonly called "romantic love" in some literature, especially fields of biology, but the term "passionate love" is most common in psychology. Academic literature on love has never adopted a universal terminology. Other terms compared to passionate love are "being in love", having a crush, obsessive love, limerence and eros. Companionate love is commonly called "attachment" or compared to strong liking, friendship love or storge. This is usually considered the same as the "attachment system" from attachment theory, but not all authors agree.

Passionate love

Passionate love feelings are most commonly measured by psychologists with a questionnaire called the Passionate Love Scale (PLS). In the PLS form, Elaine Hatfield & Susan Sprecher specify the components of passionate love as:

Passionate love is linked to passion, as in intense emotion, for example, joy and fulfillment, but also anguish and agony. Hatfield notes that the original meaning of passion "was agony—as in Christ's passion." Rather than being an emotion itself, passionate love is said to be a motivational state which produces different emotions depending on the situation (e.g. joy when requited, and sadness when unrequited). Passionate love is said to usually only be present (or the most intense) in the early stage of love, when a relationship is new or before a relationship has started. However, in a rare phenomenon called long-term intense romantic love, intense attraction can remain for much longer than is typical, even for 10 years or more.

Infatuation Langeslag et al.'s Infatuation Scale (analogous to passionate love) has items asking about:

Staring into the distance while thinking of the beloved. Getting shaky knees while in the presence of the beloved. Feelings for the beloved reducing one's appetite. Thoughts about the beloved making it difficult to concentrate. Being afraid that one will say something wrong while talking to the beloved. Getting clammy hands while near the beloved. Becoming tense while close to the beloved. Having a hard time sleeping because of thinking about the beloved. Searching for alternate meanings in the beloved's words. Being shy in the presence of the beloved. Langeslag et al. found that infatuation is more associated with negative emotion than attachment, and tends to decrease after entering a relationship. Participants who were not in a relationship scored the highest on infatuation. The word "infatuation" is also sometimes used colloquially in contrast with "love", but Elaine Hatfield has argued that the only difference between infatuation (in this sense) and passionate love is semantic. Albert Ellis and Robert Harper conducted interviews and concluded that the only difference is that people use the word "infatuation" in hindsight to refer to a relationship after it ends and "love" to refer to a relationship still in progress. Hatfield suggests that when parents and friends say somebody is "just infatuated" they're just saying they don't approve of the relationship.

Companionate love

Companionate love is said to be felt less intensely than passionate love, consisting more of gentle affection which is felt when things are going well. Elaine Hatfield writes that companionate love is "a steady burning fire, fueled by delightful experiences but extinguished by painful ones" Companionate love is more about long-term relationships, and Hatfield emphasizes partner compatibility as being important. Ellen Berscheid comments that companionate love "may be the 'staff of life' for many relationships and a better basis for a satisfying marriage than romantic love." Companionate love is linked to intimacy and Hatfield suggests that intimate relationships have these characteristics:

Companionate love is usually considered the same as storge, although a meta-analytic factor analysis found the storge love attitude more corresponds to practical friendship, and lacks qualities of companionate love (such as intimacy and commitment in the triangular theory of love).

Attachment Langeslag et al.'s Attachment Scale (analogous to companionate love) has items asking about:

Feeling that one can count on the beloved. Being prepared to share one's possessions with the beloved. Feeling lonely without the beloved. Feeling that the beloved is the one for them. The beloved knowing everything about them. Hoping one's feelings for the beloved never end. Feeling emotionally connected to the beloved. The beloved being able to reassure them when they are upset. The beloved being the person who can make them feel the happiest. The beloved being part of their plans for the future.

Relation to attachment theory Companionate love is sometimes considered the same as the "attachment" referred to by attachment theory. John Bowlby's original concept of an "attachment system" referred to a system evolved to keep infants in proximity of their caregiver (or "attachment figure"). The person uses the attachment figure as a "secure base" to feel safe exploring the environment, seeks proximity with the attachment figure when threatened, and suffers distress when separated. A prominent theory suggests this system is reused for adult pair bonds, as an exaptation or co-option, whereby a given trait takes on a new purpose. However, companionate love has also been characterized as being more like strong friendship, and Ellen Berscheid suggests that it's unproven whether all adult relationships are attachments in the sense meant by attachment theory. Berscheid writes that the assumption that romantic partners are each other's attachment figures is "in dire need of empirical scrutiny."

Timeline While passionate love is sometimes associated with the phenomenon of love at first sight, not everyone falls in love quickly or suddenly. In one study of Chinese and American participants, 38% fell in love fast and 35% fell in love slowly, and in another study of Iranians, 70% fell in love slowly or very slowly. A popular hypothesis suggests that passionate love turns into companionate love over time in a relationship, but other accounts suggest that while companionate love takes longer to develop, it is important at the beginning of a relationship as well. Companionate love might also precede passionate love sometimes. There is some reason to think attachment takes about two years to develop, for example one study found that participants who had been in a relationship for about this long named their romantic partner as an attachment figure, while other participants named a parent. One estimate for the duration of passionate love is 18 months to 3 years, which comes from survey data collected by Dorothy Tennov, for her 1979 book Love and Limerence. Another estimate comes from a 1999 experiment performed by Donatelli Marazziti and colleagues which found a difference in blood serotonin levels between newly in love people and controls, and found these levels had returned to normal after 12 to 18 months. Intense attraction can also last much longer in rarer cases, as in the phenomenon of long-term intense romantic love. These lovers tend to show lower levels of obsession than in the early stage, however. Companionate love is thought to build over time as a relationship progresses, but then decrease very slowly over the course of several decades. In the past, some have thought companionate love to be stable after it develops, but for example one study of new marriages found a decline after a 1-year period.

Causal conditions

A number of theories exist about the causal conditions surrounding these types of love (i.e. who people feel a certain love towards and when), but authors generally agree that passionate and companionate love follow different mechanics. Companionate love generally increases with liking and familiarity, but the circumstances surrounding passionate love are more complicated. Studies show that love and conflict can sit side-by-side in a relationship, and passionate love in particular is even said to be amplified by negative emotions.

Liking According to Ellen Berscheid, companionate love "follows the pleasure-pain principle; we like those who reward us and dislike those who punish us." Examples of factors include similarity, familiarity, expressions of self-esteem and validation one's self-worth, physical attraction and mutual self-disclosures. Also, while passionate love is often said to come before companionate love, Berscheid suggests that companionate love can also be a component in the development of passionate love.

Sexual desire Authors disagree on the role sexual desire plays in the development of romantic love. Passionate love is often associated with sexual desire, for example Ellen Berscheid suggests that one possible account of passionate love is "a felicitous combination of companionate love and sexual desire." However, Lisa Diamond has suggested that while sexual desire is often a causal component, passionate love can occur outside the context of sexual desire. Diamond's argument rests on various reports and historical accounts, as well as an evolutionary argument that the brain systems underlying romantic love evolved independent of sexual orientation. Diamond thinks that time spent together and physical touch can act as a "stand-in" for sexual desire and facilitate romantic love between partners regardless of their sexual orientation. Helen Fisher has argued that passionate love is related to the phenomenon of mammalian courtship attraction, or mate choice, and that people have certain preferences for choosing a preferred mating partner that determines who they fall in love with. However, Fisher argues this type of attraction is distinct from the sex drive, although they are interrelated.

Emotional arousal Ellen Berscheid writes that emotional arousal, such as happy surprises, contributes to eliciting passionate feelings. Surprise and uncertainty tend to be more of a characteristic of new relationships because more established partners tend to behave as expected, thus rarely generating this sort of arousal. Helen Fisher recommends doing novel and exciting things together to ignite passion. In an experiment by Arthur Aron & Christina Norman, couples doing an exciting task (as opposed to a boring one) experienced increased feelings of relationship satisfaction and romantic love. Elaine Hatfield has even suggested that negative or mixed emotions can amplify feelings of passionate love. In A New Look at Love, she writes "Passion demands physical arousal and unpleasant experiences are just as arousing as pleasant ones." Hatfield cites animal studies, such as one study in which puppies that were inconsistently either rewarded or maltreated were the most attracted to and dependent on their trainer. People who behave consistently generate little emotion, she says, and "What would generate a spark of interest, however, is if our admiring friend suddenly started treating us with contempt—or if our arch enemy started inundating us with kindness."

Intimacy Another theory is that passion occurs when a rapid increase in intimacy occurs. A similar theory, by Arthur Aron & Elaine Aron, states that passion occurs in the context of a rapid self-expansion of the self and the inclusion of the qualities of the beloved into one's self-concept. With both of these theories, it's predicted that passion wanes in a relationship as partners get to know each other and the increase in intimacy tends to stabilize.

Biology

Passionate and companionate love are thought to be interrelated but involve different brain systems and serve different purposes. Passionate love is thought to have evolved for mate choice or to initiate a pair bond, while companionate love is for maintaining a pair bond, maintaining close proximity and affiliative behaviors. Passionate love is often associated with the neurotransmitter dopamine. Companionate love is often associated with the neuropeptide oxytocin, and sometimes vasopressin or endogenous opioids. Passionate love is sometimes compared to addiction, although there are differences. People in the early stages of romantic love share similar traits with addicts (for example, feeling rushes of euphoria, or craving for their beloved), but this tends to wear off over time, while the condition of a drug addiction tends to worsen. Helen Fisher has suggested romantic love is a "positive addiction" (i.e. not harmful) when reciprocated and a "negative addiction" when unrequited or inappropriate.

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