Online Date with Fish2Fish: love triangle

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Which of the 7 Types of Love Relationships Fits Yours?

Identify and improve your intimate relationships with this simple 7-item test

Psychology continues to struggle with the question of how to define love, and after decades of research, is no closer to the ultimate answer. However, the triangular theory of love proposed by University of Wyoming Robert Sternberg provides a fascinating and useful framework. The triangle here is not a true "love triangle," but instead is the shape used to represent love's three main dimensions.

It’s easiest to understand the theory by looking at this figure. Each point of the triangle represents the extreme of one of the dimensions of love. At the top of the triangle is the extreme of intimacy, which is the extent to which your relationship is characterised by feelings of closeness, connectedness, and strong emotional bonds.

The commitment pole reflects your decision to stay in the relationship. People who are strongly committed to their relationship make a vow to stay in that relationship through thick and thin, and therefore are willing to work hard to keep it going even if the thin outweighs the thick.

Finally, passion reflects the intensity of your sexual desire toward your partner. This desire may take the form of romantic attachment as well as strong sexual attraction and a desire to be with your partner.

Sternberg’s model predicts that as your relationship ripens, passionate love mellows into companionate love. If you're lucky, the flames of passion remain alive, though, and you experience consummate love.

Strong sexual attraction helps spice things up, but more important for relationships to last are commitment and intimacy. The feelings of sharing, having mutual goals, and enjoying your time together in a quieter and more reflective way are what build lasting emotional bonds.

Returning to the triangular model, Sternberg’s theory describes a total of 7 types of relationships:

Consummate (the highest form): High on all three dimensions (represented by a point in the middle of the triangle)

Infatuated High on passion only

Fatuous High on passion and commitment

Empty High on commitment only

Companionate High on intimacy and commitment

Romantic High on intimacy and passion

Liking/friendship High on intimacy only

Now that you have this framework in mind, you’re probably wondering how your closest relationship measures up along these dimensions. Read these brief descriptions, and for each one, see which comes closest to your closest relationship. Don’t peek at the ratings until you’re done:

1. You have been together for several years, still feel very close and connected emotionally, but do not always feel the same passion toward one another as you once did.

2. You have a strong sexual drive and a need for physical and romantic contact with each other, but do not feel very close to each other. You have not planned for your future together, and in fact have not even thought about any form of long-term commitment.

3. You have been married or cohabiting for a long time and still verbally proclaim your love for each other, but admit to having lost much of the emotional connectedness, as well as the sexual desire that you once had.

4. After more than 6 years together, you are as “in love” as ever. You remain close and connected, very sexually and romantically in sync, and are completely committed to each other and to your relationship.

5. You have been together for only a couple of months, and although you feel you have become close and are connected emotionally, you have yet to become passionately involved or think about your future commitment.

6. You are in love and have a strong sexual desire for one another, are very close and connected emotionally, but have yet to discuss any future plans that would include a decision to commit only to each other.

7. You have been together for a while and are planning on staying together. You continue to maintain a healthy and satisfying sex life, but say you do not feel very closely connected where emotion is concerned.

Interpretation

1. Companionate Love

2. Infatuation

3. Empty Love

4. Consummate Love

5. Liking

6. Romantic Love

7. Fatuous Love

How did your relationship rate? It’s possible that you don’t fit completely into one category, as these are the extremes. You can use that triangle to plot your relationship’s exact point. Higher on intimacy and passion but not quite ready to make a commitment means that you’re starting to move from romantic love and into the consummate region.

This example shows that just as it can be useful to find out where your relationship fits in the triangle, it’s also helpful to remember that relationships are rarely static over time. You don’t have to give up on a relationship that’s fatuous or empty because the relationship lacks either intimacy, passion, or both. At least one study, though conducted on undergraduates (Madey & Rodgers, 2009), suggests that intimacy and commitment contribute to relationship satisfaction. Research on long-term relationships suggests, further, that passion in the form of wanting to be near your partner continues to predict a couple’s satisfaction. You can dial up or down the dimension that’s in need of adjustment by working on that function of your relationship.

If you want to take this even further, ask your relationship partner to take this quick quiz. Perhaps you’ll be surprised to find out that what you think is an empty love is one that your partner finds has more passion and intimacy than you realise. Or you may find out that the relationship you think is consummate is one that your partner finds lacking in one of the three crucial dimensions.

Your partner’s happiness, as well as your own, can benefit from a candid discussion of where you feel you need to make those adjustments. Relationship education, though intended for premarital counselling, can also help long-term couples gain skills and knowledge to prop up their ways of handling communication and conflict resolution.

Psychologists may still not have the ultimate definition of love, but the framework provided by triangle theory can give you a practical tool to maximise the fulfilling you receive out of your closest ties.

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Issue Behind Loving A Married Woman

IF you love a married woman and you’re in a love relationship with her, read this post. You are engaged in what is commonly thought of as a ‘triangle.’ Triangles are rough on the heart.

Fundamentally, they are unstable, like three legs on a table. Something always goes wrong, or at least it should, because triangles usually end up hurting people more than anything else.

Triangles exist simply because a problem is not being resolved in a marriage. Two people get married and have marital problems, instead of resolving those problems either by fixing the relationship or ending it, which by the way can be a valid resolution of a problem, a third party is brought into the relationship, and now you have a triangle.

I know the story books tell us that it’s better to stay together. But I think there are plenty of people who never should have gotten together to begin with. A lot of misery is avoided with a respectful ending and opportunity to start again with someone else after a period of sincere efforts to fix a love relationship. The point is, a triangle happens when two married (or simply committed people) don’t fix their marriage.

Instead, defensive stuff happens like distancing from each other or finding another lover to make up for what is not happening in the marriage. The problem is you can’t get a piece of what you need from one person and another piece from someone else and expect to have a stable and satisfying love-life. Too many pieces for stability. What you get instead is fragmentation, conflict, and limited intimacy.

So let’s look at the type of triangle that has one woman and two men in it. The target of desire in the relationship is the woman. She’s at the apex. Her husband is not leaving and she is not letting him go (otherwise she wouldn’t need a triangle to cope).

The marriage is active and bonded. It doesn’t matter how negative wife and husband feel about each other, they are together. It doesn’t matter how passionate the sex with the ‘other man’ in her life is, she is not leaving her husband.

Usually at the beginning of such an arrangement, when the triangle is young so to speak, the ‘other man’ usually tells himself he likes this arrangement because he doesn’t have to make a commitment. She can go back to her husband when we’re done making love, right?

For a time this may feel freeing and easy. The problem comes in when over time, an attachment forms between the married woman and her ‘other man.’

Now she is growing used to the arrangement and has convinced herself that the triangle makes her disappointing marriage tolerable. If the ‘other man’ gets attached he will inevitably at some point start needing more from the married woman. He may start thinking about asking her to leave her husband. This is when the trouble starts happening.

Dating and Get the relationship you deserve

Let’s talk about the ‘other man’ for a moment. My heart goes out to him more than any one else in this arrangement because he is usually the one who gets disturbed first and has more to lose. He could be thrown out of the triangle and the married couple ends up fixing their relationship, this could happen. The ‘other man’ gets painfully left out, not yet knowing that is the best thing that could happen to him.

All three people in this triangular arrangement have their issues.

Let’s do one at a time starting with the ‘other man.’ He is definitely looking for love in the wrong place and with the wrong person. His superficial belief that he wants someone else’s woman for the convenience is a lie he defensively tells himself. The reality is he’s looking for love like the rest of us and afraid of what he’ll find.

The ‘other man’ is probably afraid that he won’t be able to ‘handle’ a love relationship with a fully available woman. He thinks that loving someone else’s woman will save him from this fear of intimacy. It only brings this issue roaring to the surface.

In my world that’s an opportunity for growth because triangles are no good for people. But for the ‘other man’ this is a painful transition from a illusory relationship with a married woman in a triangle with a married man to a period of being alone again where some serious work can be done on his love-life (if he’s up for it).

The work needed is usually in the area of developing a better tolerance for love and intimacy by clearing out whatever fears and blocks the guy has in the way. Then he can go after a whole and available single woman.

Now onto the married man. He’s the ‘other man’s’ competition, but not really. The important thing about the married man is he’s probably coping with his limited marriage by doing something else (work, alcohol, substances, whatever consumes and distracts him).

In some instances he ‘knows’ his wife is cheating on him and looks the other way. In other instances his defences are so thick he doesn’t read the signs, at least consciously. Personally, I think most if not all married people know on some level if a spouse is cheating, but that’s my belief.

Anyway, the married man like his supposed competition is afraid of a deeper intimacy as well. They have this in common. His willingness to live in a limited marital relationship thinly disguises this fear of deeper love and intimacy.

By the way, when people say they are afraid of intimacy think ‘exposure’ to what they themselves have difficulty accepting in themselves. Most people I’ve met who are afraid of intimacy, lose the fear when they accept and feel better about themselves.

The question is whether or not the married man will fix this intimacy issue with this wife. It’s hard to tell, some couples can pop out of a triangle and do the work of recommitment, others can’t and end up doing it apart, alone, or with someone else.

In this kind of triangle with two men and a woman, there are instances when the two men fight over the woman. This kind of drama is amusing only because if they know how connected they both are and how much they have in common they might realize that it would be more profitable for both of them to have a conversation together about the whole thing in a coffee shop or something.

That way they would learn about their love-life issues and probably resolve the triangle with less pain, skipping the whole painful machismo thing.

View the original articles

Monday, 23 May 2016

Which of the 7 Types of Love Relationships Fits Yours?

Which of the 7 Types of Love Relationships Fits Yours?

Tuesday, 4 November 2014

Issue Behind Loving A Married Woman

Issue Behind Loving A Married Woman

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