According to Robert Sternberg’s research, “Love” is an emotion consisting of three components: intimacy, passion & committment.

Intimacy, the feeling close and connected to someone (developed through sharing and very good communications over time). Intimacy is what makes you want to share and offer emotional and material support to each other.

-Intimacy alone is Liking (true friendship without passion or long-term commitment)

Passion, the feeling physically aroused and attracted to someone. Passion is what makes you feel “in love” and is the feeling most associated with love. It also rises quickly and strongly influences and biases your judgment.

-Passion alone is Infatuation (passionate, obsessive love at first sight without intimacy or commitment)

Commitment, pledging to your self and each other to strengthen the feelings of love and to actively maintain the relationship. Commitment is what makes you want to be serious, have a serious relationship and promise to be there for the other person if things get tough.

-Commitment alone is Empty Love (decision to love another without intimacy or passion)

Romantic Love: Intimacy & Passion, no Commitment

-Lovers physically and emotionally attracted to each other but without commitment

-“As in a summer romance”

Companionate Love: Intimacy & Commitment, but no Passion

-Long-term committed friendships or a marriage in which the passion has faded

-I love you but I’m not IN love with you

Fatuous Love: Passion & Commitment, but no Intimacy

-Commitment based on passion with without time for intimacy to develop

-Shallow relationship such as a whirlwind courtship

Consummate Love: A complete love consisting of all three components

In terms of relationship, to me, is the emotional attraction that sparks towards each other after having been together for a period of time.

Practically, it cannot be defined. Why do i say so? My reason is that when it happens it happens.

Hehehe…. The irony is that I have my own questions about Love. Some of them you have asked over here? I hope during the course of this discourse I will also get answers.

But here is what I think. Love means different things to different people and different people have different ways of expressing love.

The other thing is this; even though Love is an emotional thing, there is still some form of decision making involved. So one you can choose to love the wrong person either because if or inspite of your emotions or even for the for the wrong reasons.

Its beginnig to look like the more you try to describe the word called love the more complicated it becomes. So i will stop here and hope that someone will also be able to answer the questions in my heart.

I will only add this ” I am completely convinced however, that we were created to Love and so, life without love is meaningless, no matter how much Love hurts. And…. I am deeply in LOVE too……. 🙂