Passionate and companionate love


In psychology, a distinction is often made between two types of love:
  • Passionate love, also called infatuation, is "a state of intense longing for union with another. Reciprocated love is associated with fulfillment and ecstasy; unrequited love 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 ".
  • 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 also 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. 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. A 2014 study of Iranian young adults found that the early stage of romantic love was associated with the brighter side of hypomania and better sleep quality, but also stronger symptoms of depression and anxiety. The authors conclude that romantic love is "not entirely a joyful and happy period of life".
Passionate love is said to usually only be present 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.
In contemporary literature, the original characteristics of passionate love are seen to some degree as being a mixture of things. For example, it's been determined that the PLS has questions which measure companionate love, which led Sandra Langeslag and colleagues to develop the Infatuation and Attachment Scales as a newer measure of passionate and companionate love. The PLS also measures an obsessional element which is distinguishable in that it's possible to experience love feelings with lower levels of obsession. Finally, while Elaine Hatfield originally described passionate love as having a component of sexual attraction, contemporary authors generally agree that sexual attraction and romantic attraction are distinct. People are motivated to initiate and maintain a pair bond in a way that's different from the sex drive, and it is possible to fall in love in the absence of sexual desire.

Infatuation

Langeslag et al.'s Infatuation Scale 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 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.

Obsession

Passionate love is described as having an obsessional element characterized by intrusive thinking, uncertainty, and mood swings. Intrusive thinking is a component of early-stage romantic love. One study found that on average people in love spent 65% of their waking hours thinking of their loved one.
Studies by Bianca Acevedo & Arthur Aron found that the obsessional component of the PLS can be separated from the non-obsessional component. Items on the PLS measuring obsession are, for example, "Sometimes I feel I can't control my thoughts; they are obsessively on my partner", "I sometimes find it difficult to concentrate on work because thoughts of my partner occupy my mind" and "I get extremely depressed when things don't go right in my relationship with my partner." Items on the PLS measuring non-obsessional romantic love are, for example, "I want my partner—physically, emotionally, and mentally", "For me, my partner is the perfect romantic partner", "I would rather be with my partner than anyone else" and "I possess a powerful attraction for my partner".
In Acevedo & Aron's analysis, passionate love with obsession was associated with increased relationship satisfaction only in short-term relationships. Romantic obsession was associated with slightly decreased satisfaction in the long-term. Another meta-analysis by James Graham found a strong association between romantic obsession and decreased satisfaction over time.
These authors have speculated that continued romantic obsession within a relationship could be connected to attachment style. Attachment style refers to differences in attachment-related thoughts and behaviors, especially relating to the concept of security vs. insecurity. This can be split into components of anxiety and avoidance. It has been suggested that attachment style forms during childhood and adolescence, but twin studies have also suggested a heritable component, and attachment anxiety is correlated with the personality trait neuroticism. People can also have different attachment styles with different partners, for example an avoidant partner can cause a secure partner to feel and act anxious.

Positive illusions

Idealization is a form of positive illusions. A 1996 study of couples who had been dating for 19 months and couples who had been married for 6.5 years found that "Individuals were happier in their relationships when they idealized their partners and their partners idealized them." A brain scan experiment also found that couples who were still in love after four years showed activation in a region associated with suspending negative judgment and over-evaluating a partner.
While Elaine Hatfield and others have traditionally associated idealization with passionate love, studies on positive illusions have looked at couples in varied stages of their relationships, including long-term couples.

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 James Graham has argued on the basis of a meta-analytic factor analysis that the storge love attitude most corresponds to practical friendship which lacks qualities of companionate love.

Attachment

Langeslag et al.'s Attachment Scale 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. 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."