Weve all heard of love, we have it in our lives in some type of shape or form. At some point in our lives, someone probably said I love you, but what does that mean? How can we explain what love is? Are there more types of love than we know about? Hendrick & Hendrick, (2017), answer these questions in The Oxford Handbook of Psychology touching on subjects such as linking and loving and passionate and compassionate love. They move on to explain theories such as attachment, triangular, self-expansion, and love styles. I will be expanding on these topics later in the paper, however, before talking about anything, we must see where love comes from and how it has changed over decades (Hendrick & Hendrick, 2017). Ancient Concepts of Love and Modern Love MarriageHendrick & Hendrick, (2017), mention in their study that some people have questioned if love even existed before the last few centuries. If whether romantic love or passionate love was alive. In the Middle Ages, love was perceived as different than what it is perceived now. Courtly love was possible only for the nobility and not everyday people, which idealized the love between a woman and a man, who had little contact with each other and were not generally married. This love involved a stylized ritual and was associated with arranged marriages. This led slowly, to ‘love marriages’ and this link between love and marriage is still changing (Hendrick & Hendrick, 2017). Modern BeginningsIn the 1960s, the beginnings of love were diverse, with a study starting then. Romantic love or at the least passion was ‘suspected’ by writers to have roots in evolutionary heritage. The next section looks at the evolution of love, attachment, loving and liking, and passionate and compassionate love (Hendrick & Hendrick, 2017).Evolution of Love. The beginning of love was hypothesized to be an emotional bond between breeding partners. This bond would push the two partners to attend to their helpless children or infants. Now, if this emotional bond didnt exist, the pairs lost the evolutionary race and had higher infant mortality. Themes regarding this subject have been further developed by evolutionary psychologists (Hendrick & Hendrick, 2017).Attachment.Attachment initially was conceptualized as consisting of secure attachment, anxious/ambivalent attachment, and avoidant attachment. These types of attachment were observed in infants forming different types of relationships with their adult caregivers and are believed t
o be related to subsequent relationships (Hendrick & Hendrick, 2017). Loving and Liking. Work was done previously on liking, where liking was used as a starting point for developing a liking scale and a parallel love scale. It was found that for couples who were highly romantic, their love could be predicted later in their relationship based on their level of love at the start of the relationship. This finding helped later research done on passionate love, to predict romantic partners staying together (Hendrick & Hendrick, 2017).Passionate and Compassionate Love. The affection felt by two people who share their lives deeply is how companionate love is viewed. Passionate love, on the other hand, is viewed as a state of total absorption between two partners. This is characterized by mood swings, from a feeling of ecstasy to an opposite of anguish. This suggests that a relationship starts with the heat of passion cooling down with companionship (Hendrick & Hendrick, 2017). Recent Love Theories and Their MeasurementPrototypes of Love. As mentioned before, there are different types of love ranging from maternal/paternal love and friendship to passionate and sexual love. A study was done to find what is the most typical love and the results showed that parental love and friendship scored higher than passionate and sexual love. The research was done in the hopes of finding a general concept of love. Companionship was found to be that general concept as it can be found in romantic love as well, which is a passion that goes along with companionate love (Hendrick & Hendrick, 2017).Self-Expansion.Self-expansion, as stated in the title is all about the self. A rapid expansion of the self happens when people fall in love. It incorporates physical possessions, power, and influence. Hendrick & Hendrick, (2017), found that as self-expansion grows, so does the love. Once the love grows, as it is associated with self-expansion, the self-expansion grows too, and so on (Hendrick & Hendrick, 2017).Love Triangles. A triangle refers to three things, commitment, passion, and intimacy. The relationship between the three can lead to eight types of love. The love can be measured using a scale designed specifically for this, which was used to explore other topics. The topics include the relationship between the three components mentioned before with attachment. This view also presents love as a personal ‘story’ that we create for ourselves by living it (Hendrick & Hendrick, 2017).