Three Components, Seven Love Types
Robert Sternberg's Triangular Theory of Love, published in 1986, proposed that all forms of love — romantic love, friendship, parental love, and others — can be described as combinations of three fundamental components: Intimacy, Passion, and Commitment. Different combinations of these three produce qualitatively different love experiences with different trajectories, challenges, and satisfactions.
The "triangle" of the theory is not a literal shape but a metaphor: the three components form the vertices of a triangle, and the area of the triangle represents the amount of love present. A relationship high on all three components has a large, equilateral triangle; a relationship with only one component has a thin, elongated shape. The theory predicts that compatibility requires not just mutual love but matching triangle shapes — similar amounts and combinations of each component.
The Three Components
Intimacy
Intimacy encompasses the warmth, closeness, and connectedness of a relationship — the sense of bond, the mutual understanding, the emotional safety that allows vulnerability. It includes caring for the partner's wellbeing, experiencing happiness with them, valuing their presence, offering emotional support, and maintaining mutual understanding through communication.
Intimacy develops through self-disclosure, shared experiences, and consistent mutual care. It tends to grow steadily in the early relationship and continue building if the relationship is healthy. Unlike Passion, Intimacy does not typically decline with relationship duration in satisfied relationships — it tends to deepen.
Passion
Passion includes romantic and sexual attraction, physical arousal, and the intense longing and excitement characteristic of early romantic love. It encompasses the motivational aspects of love — the drive toward union with the partner, the desire, the obsessive thinking, the somatic experience of attraction.
Passion is subject to the most dramatic trajectory effects of the three components. The initial "falling in love" experience is characterized by high-Passion states that involve neurobiological changes (dopamine, norepinephrine, and other neurochemicals associated with reward and excitement). These states typically diminish over 18–36 months of relationship — the "honeymoon period" transition that many couples experience as concerning but is actually normative.
Commitment
Commitment encompasses two related elements: the short-term decision to love a specific person, and the longer-term commitment to maintain that love through relationship challenges. The short-term element is the moment of choosing to be in a relationship; the long-term element is the ongoing investment in the relationship's continuity.
Commitment grows through relationship investment, shared history, and the explicit or implicit decision to build a life together. Unlike Passion (which can arise quickly and fade), Commitment typically grows gradually through behavioral consistency and conscious choice.
The Seven Love Types
Nonlove: Absence of all three components. Defines most casual acquaintances.
Liking: Intimacy only — the warmth of genuine friendship without romantic or committed elements.
Infatuation: Passion only — intense attraction without emotional depth or commitment. "Love at first sight."
Empty Love: Commitment only — sustained for reasons (children, finances, convention) without emotional connection or attraction. Often where long relationships end up after Intimacy and Passion have faded.
Romantic Love: Intimacy + Passion — deep connection and physical desire without the commitment to a shared future. Characteristic of early romantic relationships before commitment is decided.
Companionate Love: Intimacy + Commitment — deep bond and long-term commitment without the passion intensity. Often characteristic of long-term marriages or deep friendships where physical passion has evolved into warm, stable connection.
Fatuous Love: Passion + Commitment — commitment based on passion without the intimacy that sustains it. "Whirlwind romance" marriages often start here and are challenged when passion fades and the absence of intimacy is revealed.
Consummate Love: All three — the ideal complete love, combining deep connection, sustained attraction, and long-term commitment. Sternberg noted it is possible but relatively rare and requires ongoing maintenance.
The Passion Paradox
Sternberg's theory explains a common relationship experience: the transition from high-Passion early love to the deeper but less exciting companionate love of established relationships. This transition is not relationship failure — it is normal development. The error is interpreting the decline of Passion-state intensity as evidence that the love itself is diminishing, when in fact Intimacy and Commitment may be deepening.
The most satisfied long-term couples tend to be those who value and invest in all three components — maintaining physical connection (even if less intense than early relationship), deepening emotional intimacy through ongoing disclosure, and making explicit commitments that reinforce the relationship's future orientation.
Triangle Matching
Sternberg proposed that relationship satisfaction depends not just on the absolute levels of the three components but on the match between partners' triangles. A high-Passion, low-Commitment individual in a relationship with a high-Commitment, low-Passion partner will experience frustration — not because of incompatibility in values or personality but because their love profiles are differently shaped.
Understanding your partner's love triangle — through observation, conversation, and assessment — creates the explicit awareness that allows mismatched needs to be negotiated rather than experienced as mysterious dissatisfaction.
Discover Your Love Profile
Take the Sternberg's Love Triangle assessment to identify your Intimacy, Passion, and Commitment profile. Combine with the Attachment Styles assessment for a comprehensive picture of how you experience and navigate love relationships.