silva rerum

Long time the manxome foe he sought

It’s been a while since I’ve really had any soul-​searching, coeur-​de-​coeur rev­el­a­tions which, I think, must be some indic­a­tion that I’m relax­ing! The unex­amined life, while not worth liv­ing, is rather relaxed – intro­spec­tion takes a lot of effort. While milling about my microb­lo­go­sphere, I’m pleased to see that most people are relax­ing this sum­mer and for those who aren’t, at least they’re adopt­ing healthy cop­ing strategies.

The other day, after hav­ing heard that Archie picked Veronica, I spoke with A about types of love and it brought back memor­ies of PSYC 100. For the unini­ti­ated, here are some of the most inter­est­ing facts about love and attraction:

• attrac­tion is primar­ily based upon three, some­times four, prin­ciples: prox­im­ity (anti­cip­a­tion of inter­ac­tion leads to more pos­it­ive inter­ac­tions; mere expos­ure is enough to stim­u­late lik­ing), sim­il­ar­ity (we like that which is sim­ilar to us – our ingroup), mutual lik­ing (we like those who like us) and phys­ical appear­ance (it’s a bio­lo­gical thing – infants even stare longer at uni­ver­sally attract­ive people – it’s an instinct!)
• Sternberg’s tri­adic the­ory of love includes three com­pon­ents: pas­sion (feel­ings of romance, sexual attrac­tion), com­mit­ment (the decision to remain together), and intim­acy (feel­ings of close­ness, bondedness)
  • Nonlove has none of these elements
  • Liking/​friendship is com­posed of intimacy
  • Infatuated love is com­posed of passion
  • Empty love is com­posed of com­mit­ment (think – arranged mar­riages with no real love between people)
  • Romantic love is com­posed of pas­sion and intimacy
  • Companionate love is com­posed of intim­acy and commitment
  • Fatuous love is com­posed of pas­sion and commitment
  • Consummate love is com­posed of all three elements
• oxy­to­cin (the hor­mone that is upreg­u­lated dur­ing breast­feed­ing, thus bond­ing mother and child) is the hor­mone of love – it facil­it­ates bond­ing and attach­ment with that whom we share the experience

For more on love, you can watch Helen Fisher’s TED talk: