If you give love, you probably receive love, humans usually function as a kind of mirror when it comes to exchanging, including emotions, on the other hand, we tend to be faithful to the principle of reciprocity that includes the popular phrase “today for you, tomorrow for me”, or the famous “you owe me one”. One way or another, we owe not only money, but also actions and feelings.
To learn more about love and the act of giving and receiving, I would like to focus this report on the psychologist Robert Sternberg, whose triangular theory of love is based on the relationships between people and distinguishes three important behaviors: passion, intimacy and commitment. which, following a geometric metaphor, would occupy the corners of an imaginary triangle.
- Robert Sternberg is an American psychologist born in 1949 who taught at the prestigious Yale University and chaired the American Psychology Association.
- To which some of the best professionals in the field belong.
Sternberg based his studies and research on human intelligence, wisdom, hatred and, of course, love, whose concept is what our interest is today and what we are talking about in this article.
Now let’s talk about the triangular theory of love, based on Robert Sternberg’s research on this feeling. As we said earlier, Sternberg focuses on three components of love in relationships: intimacy, passion and commitment. Let’s explain it better:
If you give love, do you get love? In the triangular theory of love, Robert Sternberg distinguishes different types of love that could also be considered steps, however, we can make combinations of two or more, so that one type does not exclude others:
If you give love, it may be a good idea to ask you the same questions Sternberg asked the couples who participated in his study, we have gathered them below as they will certainly be very interesting to study your own relationship:
Sternberg interviewed men and women during his study of the triangular theory of love and concluded that the results are very clear in relation to the feelings generated in both partners.
After men and women from different couples answered previous questions, the results were very similar in terms of gender in terms of passion, commitment and intimacy, however, some differences have arisen:
Does this mean that the triangular theory of love states that if you give love, you will receive love?, maybe she doesn’t say it directly, but it’s obvious that if you give love, if you contribute with good levels of commitment, passion intimacy, it’s very likely that nothing will go wrong in your romantic relationship.