COUPLE LOVE: HOW IT IS FORMED, CHARACTERISTICS AND EXAMPLES - GEOGRAFÍA - 2024

The romantic love is one of the most complicated issues of all studied by the various branches of psychology, especially social psychology. Because it is one of the most powerful emotions human beings can feel, researchers have been trying to unravel its secrets for several decades.

However, due to the difficulty of studying this phenomenon in a controlled environment, there is still no unified theory about couple love, how it is formed and its characteristics. Despite this, there are several theoretical and experimental works that try to explain some aspects of this powerful emotion.

In this article we will explore some of these theories, from those based on neuroscience to those focused on the more social aspects of love as a couple.

How is it formed?

Couple love is one of the most powerful emotions that we can experience throughout our lives. Throughout history, a multitude of works of art based on this sentiment have emerged, while wars have been fought and conflicts created because of it.

But where exactly does romantic love come from? According to evolutionary psychology experts, love is a by-product of our biology, which prompts us to form more or less stable couples with the intention of raising children that allow us to perpetuate our species.

Evolutionary origin of couple love

The human species has much in common with the rest of the higher primates; however, most of these live in highly hierarchical communities, in which an alpha male reproduces with a large number of females that are part of his harem.

In this sense, human beings use a strategy quite different from that of other species close to us.

Due to changes produced throughout the evolution of our species (such as the impossibility of knowing at a glance when a woman is fertile), our ancestors were forced to form stable couples to promote the raising of their children.

To ensure that a couple would stick together until the time when children could fend for themselves, evolution led us to develop the emotion known as romantic love.

In this way, during the period in which the couple's children still needed the care of both parents, love kept both together and pending their young.

Love on an individual level

Understanding how love arose in our species does not help us understand why we feel such powerful emotions for a special person.

However, evolutionary psychology does not limit itself to telling us why love was necessary for our ancestors, but it tells us under what conditions we can notice this feeling for someone.

According to psychologists like David Buss, love has its origin in a concept known as "value in the sex market."

Each of us has a number of characteristics that will bring both benefits and disadvantages to the next generation, if we ever have children: things like our physical attractiveness, our resources, our intelligence or our social skills play a role in determining our value.

The latest theories about love tell us that when we meet someone with a higher sexual value than we possess, our genes and our subconscious mind make us feel attracted to that person.

If this attraction is reciprocated, our brain begins to generate a series of substances that will make us feel love for the other person.

Love at the brain level

What happens in our brain when we fall in love? The latest studies have discovered that when we start dating a new partner, we begin to secrete a series of substances (so-called neurotransmitters) responsible for making us feel romantic love:

Dopamine

Dopamine is the neurotransmitter in charge of the reward circuit. When we fall in love, it makes us feel extremely good when we see our partner, so we feel more and more attached to the other person.

Norepinephrine

Norepinephrine gives us an increase in energy and motivation every time we see our partner, which results in nervousness, excitement, and even physical symptoms like a racing heart or sweaty hands.

Serotonin

Serotonin is a neurotransmitter that helps us improve our mood, in addition to regulating bodily functions such as sexual desire.

characteristics

What goes through our mind once we fall in love? According to Sternberg's triangular theory of love -the most accepted within the scientific community- this emotion is made up of three main components:

- Commitment.

- Intimacy.

- Passion.

Commitment

The first of the components of couple love makes us be faithful to our partner and see a long-term future with it. If this is the only component of our romantic emotions, our relationship will be based on what is known as "empty love."

Privacy

Intimacy is the desire to meet the other person and be known by him; it is what leads us to talk for hours about ourselves and listen to the stories of our partner.

If intimacy is the only thing that sustains our relationship as a couple, we are talking about "platonic love" or affection.

Passion

The last component of couple love is what leads us to feel strong emotions and a great sexual desire for the other person. Loves based solely on passion are known as "infatuation."

Examples

Each couple is different and all love stories unfold differently. However, based on the triangular theory of love we can find some common features to different types of relationships:

- The young couple who have just started dating, in which both feel mostly physical attraction, is based almost exclusively on passion.

- Later, when some time passes and the two of you know each other better, passion can be accompanied by intimacy. Also, if the two of you want to stay together and strive for it (creating commitment), the relationship would be made up of "complete love," the feeling that brings together the three components described by Sternberg.

- Over the years, if the couple loses passion and intimacy but stays together for the sake of their children or for religious or social reasons, the initial love would end up becoming empty love.

References

1. "The Psychology of Romantic Love" in: Psychcentral. Retrieved on: April 19, 2018 from Psychcentral: psychcentral.com.
2. "All about love" in: Psychology Today. Retrieved on: April 19, 2018 from Psychology Today: psychologytoday.com.
3. "Triangular theory of love" in: Wikipedia. Retrieved on: April 19, 2018 from Wikipedia: en.wikipedia.org.
4. "5 Psychological Theories of Love" in: Very Well Mind. Retrieved on: April 19, 2018 from Very Well Mind: verywellmind.com.
5. Buss, DM (1994). The evolution of desire: Strategies of human mating. New York, NY, US: Basic Books.