Love: Attachment Styles And Relationships

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Attachment Styles and Relationships Marcia Henderson Psy/220 April 05, 2013 Tricia Henderson Part One: Robert Sternberg's triangular theory of love focuses on three dimensions of love; passion, intimacy and commitment. Intimacy is a dimension of love that pertains to mutual understanding, warm affection, and reciprocal concerns for the other's welfare. Another dimension of love is passion, which can be cause by strong emotions, excitement and physiological arousal, often associated with sexual desire and attraction. Passion can cause strong feelings of love and it can actually be so strong that the presence of the feeling can become a sense of love towards a person without needing anything else,…show more content…
This is true because in order to be in a romantic relationship, there is not a required amount of commitment necessary. Another example of one of these combinations would be infatuated love. This kind of love occurs when a person is very passionate about someone without feeling a sense of intimacy or commitment. Infatuated love can be fueled by an obsession. Many people view infatuated love as irresponsible, immature and blind love built solely on unreasonable passion, which could simply stem from a sexual attraction. Empty love occurs when a person is solely looking for a commitment with no interest in intimacy or passion. This could simply be a result of not wanting to be alone in the world. It is built on the promise that the couple will maintain their relationship in the future. Fatuous love is caused from the combination of passion and commitment, without a sense of intimacy. Companionate love forms from the combination of intimacy and commitment. Companionate love is built on a very special friendship, the kind of bond that you build over time with your partner. It is not the same as the passionate…show more content…
However, once we begin to venture out on our own, we begin to make our own life choices and experiences, which we will then begin to learn from regularly. When the timeline does begin to change, our attachment styles can change from infant attachment styles to adult attachment styles. Currently, adult attachment styles are viewed as a constant in one's life, rather than just a minor secret setback and these attachment styles demonstrate two underlying dimensions of love; anxiety and avoidance. As an adult, a high anxiety level can be the result of a negative view of one's self, possible issues of abandonment while displaying low self esteem in general. A high level of anxiety can leave a person unable to fully trust a person when trying to form a close, intimate relationship. The explanation for high levels of anxiety can even be partially due to the fact that, said person, holds a lack of confidence and believes in his inadequacies over seeing the positive side of his attributes. Certain fears like feeling that one is not good enough to be loved or fearing one's partner may discover their faults can lead to this kind of level of anxiety as

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