309 - Love is a Triangle
Theories of love
Love has been studied for centuries, with people trying to define it and developing models to understand its permutations.
First, some caveats: Some may feel uncomfortable labeling, naming, and modeling different forms of love. Putting labels on something as amorphous as love can feel bad to some people, and applying logical thinking to emotional experiences can seem constrictive. On the other hand, some may feel that labeling, naming, and modeling different forms of love feels amazing and putting a word to something they’ve always felt is empowering and uplifting.
Triangle theory of love
Developed by psychologist Robert Sternberg, the triangular theory of love was first published in Psychology Review in 1986 and can be boiled down to three different elements to form a triangle:
Intimacy: feelings of attachment, closeness, bonding, and familiarity.
Passion: enthusiasm, physical and emotional arousal, attraction, longing.
Commitment: decision to stay together, moving toward future goals, decision that you love the other person.
“The amount of love one experiences depends on the absolute strength of these three components, and the type of love one experiences depends on their strengths relative to each other.”
Robert Sternberg
Sternberg also came up with some examples of how different relationships might look when they have different mixtures of the aforementioned three elements:
Liking/Friendship: high intimacy, low passion, low commitment.
Empty Love: high commitment, low passion, low intimacy. A loveless, sexless marriage, or possibly an estranged co-parenting relationship, or certain friendships.
Fatuous Love: high passion, high commitment, low intimacy. Love at first sight, very fast-moving relationship escalation.
Companionate Love: high intimacy, high commitment, low passion. Certain long-term relationships, some family relationships, strong friendships, some chosen family.
Romantic Love: high intimacy, high passion, low commitment. Could be a fling, an affair.
Infatuated Love: high passion, low intimacy, low commitment. Temporary crushes, the beginning of a relationship, possibly a one-night stand.
Consummate Love: high intimacy, high passion, high commitment. Sternberg describes this as an ideal form of love that many people strive for, but also cautions that this state can be temporary and come and go throughout a relationship.
Non-love: Nothing.
Critique of Sternberg
Sternberg’s theory has mixed support from others who study love and relationships. Most of his study is based off of monogamous heterosexual couples, and the data drawn for it was almost all from college students. The majority of Sternberg’s studies also involved only American subjects. In 2020, however, a study was published in The Journal of Sex Research by a multi-national team of 115 researchers and observed over 7000 participants from over 25 different countries. Their findings supported cross-cultural universality to these three elements of love.
In the real world?
After publishing his first study, Sternberg expanded on his model in later studies, pointing out that at any given time and in any given relationship, we may be working with multiple triangles that we’re comparing to each other:
The ideal triangle vs. the real triangle: how I’d like the relationship to be versus how it actually is in the moment.
The self-perceived triangle vs. the other-perceived triangle: how I perceive the relationship versus how my partner perceives the relationship.
The feelings triangle vs. the action triangle: how did we feel the relationship versus what actions we take in the relationship.
It’s also been theorized that with all of these triangle comparisons, the more different they look from each other, the more likely it is that the relationship dissatisfaction will increase.
In the real world:
This can be used as a tool for taking the temperature of the relationship for yourself: “Is there a discrepancy between how I’d like the relationship to be and where it’s currently at?”
This is a great prompt for a check-in conversation with your partner: “What does our relationship triangle look like?” “How has it looked in the past?”
Are there ways I can express my intimacy, passion, and commitment that would help you feel that from me? Are there ways that my partner can express intimacy, passion, and commitment that would help me really feel that from them?
Transcript
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Jase: On this episode of Multiamory podcast, we are talking about the triangular theory of love.
Emily: We really like triangles on this podcast.
Dedeker: Everything is triangles.
Emily: It's the strongest shape.
Jase: We love triangles, and triangles are love, as it turns out. This is a model for relationships that was developed to help understand all the different permutations of love and relationship. We will talk about the different fundamental elements of love, which is water, fire, earth, and mercury, I think.
Dedeker: Boron and carbon.
Jase: And boron, yes. Got to have that. All the fundamental elements of love and how they translate to different types of relationships, and how you can use this knowledge to better take care of yourself and your relationships.
Dedeker: Defining love, that's a real brain buster, isn't it?
Emily: How does one even do that?
Dedeker: How? How indeed?
Emily: With this triangle.
Dedeker: Defining love, labeling love, quantifying love, it's something that human beings have been trying to tackle for literally centuries. There's been a ton of writing, storytelling, general creation from multiple cultures across the world, far too much for us to do an in-depth review in this episode. If you have an interest in that, hearing more about how specifically the philosophy around love has changed over the years, we recommend checking out our episode with philosopher Carrie Jenkins all the way back in Episode 113, or if you don't want to listen to a Multiamory episode that is that old because who would, you can go check out her book, What Love Is: And What It Could Be.
Emily: First, let's talk about some caveats, because we like to preface the episode by doing that. It's important. We're going to be doing some labeling and naming and talking about different forms of love and that context, and that may be a little bit challenging to some listeners, understandably so, because labeling and modeling something is amorphous and subjective. It's this concept of love and what it is. It can rub a lot of people the wrong way. Applying this very logic brain thinking and naming to emotional experiences can feel constrictive and maybe a little bit hyper-rational. It's like a very Dedeker thing of hers.
Dedeker: What? To be hyper-rational?
Emily: It's very rational. I don't know, cerebral. It can be feel maybe like you're forcing just this wide spectrum of emotion into perhaps a more restrictive box, and imposing limitations. Our podcast model used to be relationships outside the box.
Dedeker: Oh, that used to be the motto way back, way back in the baby days when we were a baby podcast.
Emily: Exactly. It's interesting because now we're talking about a little bit more boxy, but going beyond that.
Dedeker: It's more like relationship inside the triangle.
Emily: That's true. It's not a box, but a triangle. I don't know. I know personally that I've felt challenged in the past by trying to live up to a particular label like queer or bisexual or relationship anarchists solo polyamorous, any of those things so that can be challenging for some people to live up to labels. That's the caveat with this episode, but we're going to try to move past it and just something to think about on this episode with us.
Jase: On the other hand, for some people, labels can be very freeing. For some people, finally having a name or a label for something that they've felt or something thing that they're doing can be very freeing and feel like, "Oh my gosh, I'm not alone. Oh my gosh, there's a name for this. I can call it something instead of always mumbling vaguely what I think it is." There is a lot of power in language. Naming a large concept or putting a word on something can be uplifting, can be freeing, and finding the right identity or label can feel like, "Oh, I finally found this. I have something to Google now if I want to learn more about this." It can be really helpful in those ways, rather than feeling restricted or stuck or challenged by it.
On either side of this, there's pros and cons to this. This is like people who find for the first time that there's a word for being demisexual, when that's how they've felt that way all their life, or polyamorous, or non-binary, or a romantic, et cetera, et cetera.
Dedeker: Tick, for wolf actually made a really cool comic, describing this very phenomenon, this dual nature of labeling and names and modeling. I think, in one panel, there's a person who's like, "Oh, my God, labels are so restrictive. Who needs them?" They ball up a piece of paper and throw it over their shoulder and they walk off frame. Then another person comes in frame, finds the crumpled piece of paper, opens and it looks at and they're like, "Oh my God, there's a word for this, this way that I've always felt. I'm so glad that I found this label."
Just to bear that in mind that for some people, any label applied to a relationship or love is going to be really challenging. For some people, it's going to be like coming home, and it's actually going to be a blossoming, and you may start in one camp and end up in the other. I know from my own life and relationships, I've started with a certain label, then been like, "Ah, that's bullshit. I need to get rid of it." Other times have been like, "Wow, this is an amazing new word that I can start to use to describe myself, my identity, my gender, things along those lines." Just bear that in mind as you're listening to this episode.
Triangles, right, am I right?
Jase: Oh yes, back to triangles.
Dedeker: Great.
Jase: We love triangles.
Dedeker: Isosceles, scalene, right triangle. What are the--
Jase: You all have a favorite type of triangle?
Dedeker: Well, what are the hits? What are the top triangles that you're a fan of?
Emily: The triforce of communication. That's all imagine in a triangle.
Dedeker: That's a good one.
Jase: Well, I think that the Triforce is an example of an equilateral triangle.
Dedeker: Oh, yes, you're right.
Emily: Yes, you're right.
Dedeker: Then what was it, scalene is all the sides are inequal, or all the sides are different. Then isosceles--
Emily: What's isosceles?
Dedeker: All of you listeners to Multiamory that love trigonometry, let us know. It's very important that we sort this out.
Jase: I just feel like those labels for triangles are really restricting, and that a triangle has to live up to being scalene or not.
Dedeker: I know. What was the scalene triangle before we had the word scalene? Come on.
Emily: It was just a triangle.
Dedeker: Really, though, the triangular theory of love. This is a theory that was developed by psychologist, Robert Sternberg. He initially published this theory in an academic journal of psychological review, way back in 1986. He published this theory, this model after essentially doing a survey of many, many, many previous studies on love and on the development of romantic relationships. I read through his entire 1986 paper. As a matter of fact, I read through so many studies as a preparation for this episode, so many so that all y'all don't have to, so you're welcome.
Emily: Thank you.
Jase: Thanks.
Dedeker: I'm going to start you out with a super brief overview of the triangular theory of love. Basically, if you imagine a triangle-shaped shape, if you will.
Emily: You mean a triangle.
Jase: Now what triangle is this? Isosceles or scalene?
Emily: Equilateral. What?
Dedeker: We're going to start out imagining an equilateral triangle. It doesn't necessarily have to stay that way, but for now, we're going to start out there. Essentially, there's three different factors or scales or elements of love that correspond to each point of the triangle. One of those factors is intimacy, so feelings of attachment, of closeness, of bonding, a familiarity with someone. The second point on the triangle is passion, or feelings of enthusiasm, physical and emotional arousal, or attraction or longing for somebody. Then the third point on the triangle is commitment, which is the decision to stay in a relationship with someone, the decision to move toward future goals with someone. Also, this is interesting, this is in Sternberg's words, the decision that you love the other person, which makes it sound like, "Ah, do you decide that or not?" I don't know if it's like you decide whether or not you actually love someone, but almost the realization of like, "Yes, I love this person, and I'm going to commit to them." That's what commitment's all about in this case.
Jase: Yes, maybe it's like that deciding that I'm going to use the word love instead of liking or being attracted to or being into or something. It makes sense.
Emily: It's just like the decision stay with the person all the time, or the decision to continue being in a relationship with that person, which is a decision that you make every day. They get a relationship with them.
Dedeker: Kind of that decision to be intentional in this.
Jase: Intimacy means not like physical intimacy, that's more about feeling close and understanding and bonding. Then passion is the one that's more physical and attraction and stuff.
Dedeker: Potentially it can be physical and emotional, but it's like there's this high affect of this high vibration, even though that makes it sound super hippie-dippie.
Jase: I love it.
Dedeker: Attraction, high emotion, physical arousal, and attraction, things like that.
Jase: Then commitment. Got it. Intimacy, passion, and commitment, or the IPC triangle.
Dedeker: Sure, something like that.
Emily: There you go. I hope he's making it our own.
Dedeker: I know, he’s doing the face thing.
Emily: Here it goes.
Jase: It's called the triforce of love. It's the PIC Triforce of love.
Emily: I don't know even to use the word triforce again, that's already a thing that we have made. All right. Let's talk a little bit about this triangle. According to Sternberg, the amount of love one experiences depends on the absolute strength of these three components. The type of love one experiences depends on the strength relative to each other.
Dedeker: That's maybe a little confusing, right out the gate, and it's easiest I find to talk about this with examples. Sternberg himself in his studies, came up with specific examples of how this may play out in real life that we're going to go over.
Emily: This is not a complete list, and bear in mind that the naming and labeling are from Sternberg, and they can be improved upon. Maybe Jase is about to try to improve upon that one.
Jase: I was just going to say let's try to improve them as we go.
Emily: The first one is liking/friendship. I like you maybe a little bit. High intimacy, low passion, low commitment.
Dedeker: The idea being there's a person that I feel very close to, very attached to, but maybe I don't feel a big physical or emotional draw. I don't feel like I want to bone them, and I'm also not necessarily making future plans with them. Maybe it's a close friendship of some kinds.
Emily: Oh boy, this next one.
Jase: Then to go back to the first part of what Emily said before, that the amount of love is the absolute strength of all of it, and the type is relative to each other. This list we're going through is describing the type based on them relative to each other. As we all know, with friendships that might fall into this category, there can be much closer ones and less close ones. I guess that's the magnitude versus the type or the shape of the triangle, perhaps. The size of the triangle and the shape of the triangle.
Dedeker: Exactly.
Emily: There you go. Number two, empty love, high commitment, low passion, low intimacy. Something like, this is according to Sternberg, a loveless, sexless marriage--
Dedeker: Well, I think it calls to mind our stereotypical image of the loveless, sexless marriage where it's like, "Yes, we're committed to each other."
Emily: We're staying together for the kids.
Dedeker: Maybe it could be that or for whatever reason, really, but maybe we've drifted apart, and we're not really attracted to each other anymore.
Emily: Or possibly in a strange co-parenting relationship or certain friendships.
Dedeker: This, again, is that like Sternberg calls this empty love, but again, something that's high commitment, but low passion, low intimacy also could be just a friendship, like maybe you're deciding to co-parent with a friend, for instance, even though you don't feel necessarily. I don't know. I think the thing is that it's like this could be a wide variety of potential relationships.
Emily: Low intimacy, though, is the caveat there in my mind.
Dedeker: That's true.
Jase: Maybe not as much friend affair. I was thinking that this could be an ideal business partner.
Dedeker: Oh, Yes. That's true.
Jase: We're like we have high commitment to each other, even though we're not super entwined in each other's lives and we are not boning each other. This could be an ideal business partner actually.
Emily: That's true.
Jase: Or like an ideal workout buddy, or any number of things. I could see this being a great relationship rather than empty love. Come on, Sternberg.
Dedeker: Well, I think a lot of this, bear in mind that he's coming from-- First of all, he's writing a lot of this in the '80s. Then second of all, he's also coming from a lens of really looking at traditional romantic relationships and grading them there. He is honest about the fact that it's like, "Yes, you can still apply this model to think about family relationships, friend relationships," but I do think because he's looking through that romantic relationship lens, there tends to be a little bit more of a value judgment that gets applied to some of these things.
Jase: I bet some people, though, when they heard that empty love, they're like, "Yes, and there." All right. Number three on this list is fatuous love. This is high passion, high commitment, but low intimacy. The example would be like love at first sight, or really fast relationship escalator with getting married after you've been dating for a month. There's not that intimacy, because you really just don't know each other that well yet, but you've jumped into very high commitment and a lot of high passion, which is why you did that. This is the one we're always talking about with NRE. That sort of the fatuous state.
Emily: Don't sign.
Jase: Don't sign anything.
Dedeker: Just don't sign. Don't sign. Also, for some reason, it brings to mind the image of an Austenian couple that are courting each other, where it's like, because of our culture, we've literally never been allowed to actually hang out with each other and be friends. We know that we're attracted to each other, and I'm going to try to get you to marry me. Then the intimacy can come later. That's what I think of.
Jase: Next one is companionate love, which is high intimacy, high commitment, but low passion. This could be certain long-term relationships, where there's still a lot of closeness and connection, a lot of commitment, but not that passion and attraction and excitement. Maybe some family relationships, strong friendships. Maybe this is not the empty love, not the loveless marriage, but maybe it's just, "You know what, we're just great as really good friends and partners, even if we don't have a very sexual connection or something like that."
Dedeker: Definitely I've worked with a lot of clients, and I feel like I've seen a lot of people specifically in the non-monogamous community, who are much more likely to, I think, be able to, in a healthy way, come to this place with let's say, a nesting partner of like, "While we've been together 15 years. We absolutely love each other care for each other want to be in each other's lives, but we've learned that we're just really not sexually compatible. We're both okay with that. We're both okay with seeking that in other people, for instance. We still feel very high intimacy, high commitment, just not that passion. For some people, that's a nightmare, and for some people, that's fantastic and perfect.
Jase: Then this next one is romantic love, which I feel like his categorization of this is different than I've seen in other studies that use that label romantic love. In this one, it's high intimacy, high passion, but low commitment. We're into each other, and we're really close with each other, but we're not really committed to each other. Maybe a fling or an affair.
Dedeker: I think to put a more non-traditional relationship non-monogamy lens on it, it could be someone were to do a call back to our could be a comment. It could be like to do a call back to her Jessica for an episode, maybe this isn't necessarily an attachment-based relationship potentially, or maybe I feel really close to you and I have a lot of attraction for you but we're not exactly planning on moving in together at all. This is going to be a non-escalator relationship, potentially.
Jase: Or maybe we've just identified that it would not be a good fit for us to live together or to share finances or do any of those commitment things, but we're still very close and very passionate with each other. I could see that being a great intentional type of relationship too.
Dedeker: The next example is what he calls infatuated love, which is high passion, but low intimacy and low commitment. This could be something like a temporary crush. Someone you're just really drawn to and really attracted to, but maybe you don't know them very well, and you're also not committed to them because you don't know them very well. It could be the beginning of a relationship when you're first experiencing that attraction for someone, and you're still first getting to know them, and possibly a one-nightstand. Now, this is interesting because Sternberg actually puts one nightstand under the romantic love category so as in a one-nightstand is high intimacy, high passion but low commitment. I thought that that was a little bit debatable because I'm like, "Well, with the one nightstand, how much intimacy are you really having?"
Emily: It's more passion-
Dedeker: It's much more passion.
Emily: -based of his model.
Dedeker: Of course, I'm sure there's a certain amount of intimacy that you need to develop when you're on the trajectory toward heading toward bed, I suppose. I feel like that more falls into the category of infatuated love, according to his labeling system.
Jase: Yes, that makes sense.
Dedeker: Then he talks about consummate love, consummate peace.
Emily: Like you're consummating the--
Dedeker: I think different, but it's like you are firing all cylinders, its high intimacy, high passion, and high commitment. Sternberg lays this out as possibly this ideal form of love that a lot of people strive for, but he is also realistic in talking about how this is a state that can be temporary and can come and go throughout a relationship.
I guess if you think about it, I do think that that is the romantic model that a lot of us are encouraged to strive for, is we're super close, we're best friends, the sex is amazing, and it's always amazing, and we stay together until we die. Yes, it is a tall order, but that is the one that is set up on the pedestal as the ideal. Then, of course, there's what he calls non-love, which is just like nothing, nowhere on the triangle. There's no intimacy, there's no commitment, there's no passion, it's just--
Emily: Like acquittance, like a passing human that you pass.
Dedeker: The random guy walking his dog in the street that I just happened to glance at.
Emily: I think about some of my coworkers and I'm like, you're cool, but that's it. I don't know if I can go past that with them, so interesting. This is fun.
Dedeker: Definitely.
Emily: It's just fun. Well, just looking at it and being like, huh, okay, if I'm going to look at this model and truly take my relationships in my life and stick them in these categories, where would each of those relationships go?
Dedeker: What do you think?
Emily: Oh, goodness, I don't know. We have pretty high commitment-
Dedeker: We do have high commitment.
Emily: -and high intimacy-
Dedeker: We do have high intimacy.
Emily: -and low passion, I guess, so companion, it's loved.
Dedeker: We're not really doing it. It's pretty companion/ businesy.
Jase: A companion at podcast.
Dedeker: I always describe ourselves as co-parents, like intentional co-parents of a podcast baby.
Emily: Probably a lot of very close friends, I feel, fall under that category. Well, although we have high commitment because we also own a business together, so that's a high level of something, whereas some friends, I mean, the commitment is just to hang out or see each other, or be in each other's lives in some way, but not necessarily all the time like we have to be.
Jase: Yes, and that's actually something worth pointing out here, that for the one that he labels as liking/ friendship, is that like, HINFC, we're very close, but we're low passion, low commitment. Something that we talk about on this show a lot is this idea of romantic relationships aren't the only relationships that we can be intentional about, and that we can be committed to, and that that's not generally the way society teaches us to think about relationships.
It's interesting that in his model, that's the friendship, is the intimacy but no commitment and no passion, and then his companion at love is the one that's got the commitment and intimacy, but low passion, which is just of well, we're in this family-type relationship, or maybe we're in this sexless marriage or something, but we still care about each other or maybe we're co-parenting. I think that very much falls into that idea of an intentional friendship. One that you actually are putting intention and commitment into, which is a cool thing, I like that.
Dedeker: Well, this definitely, I think, calls back to our shows and family episode a little bit as well, because it calls up some questions around our definition of commitment, because now I know a lot of people, who in a very chosen family way, have decided this is going to be my person.
They're a friend, we're not having sex, we're not doing the traditional couply thing, but this friend is the person who is going to be there for me if I get sick, and I'm going to be there for them if they get sick, and we have plans of buying a home together. It brings in this sense of very intentional commitment and intentional commitment toward future goals even if we're not looking like a traditional couple by any means.
Jase: Yes, I love that. This reminds me, my last thought before we move on to the second half of this episode, was it reminds me of a conversation I had a few years ago where I was trying to explain the concept of relationship anarchy to someone, and was talking about how normally we think that romance and sex and love all have to go together, and that those things can each happen differently in different relationships. One of their questions to me was they thought about it and they're like, so, how is the romance without sex different from just love? It was just like--
Dedeker: Oh, I thought it was different from friendship, was it not the question?
Jase: Yes, or different from friendship love, yes. Maybe I should use that term better. They were like, how is romance without sexual attraction and physical intimacy different from friendship, and I was just like, "Yes, you got me, I don't know." I think our words are just so limiting for it.
Dedeker: They're limited.
Jase: This is a new way of looking at that, maybe redefining how we look at labeling or describing those things.
Dedeker: Yes, and I would really encourage people out there listening to not necessarily get hung up on the labels that Sternberg himself put on these things or the values that he put on these things because, again, like the empty love one, the high commitment, low passion, low intimacy, could be a wonderful relationship if that's what's appropriate and that's what these two people want, and what he calls the consummate love, this ideal of high intimacy, high passion, high commitment. You could have all of those things and it could still be a toxic, shitty relationship. Just bear that in mind when thinking about these things.
Emily: In the second part of this episode, we're going to talk about more research and critique on this triangular situation that we've got going on here, and also some real-world applications. Before that, we're going to get into some ways that you can help support this show and allow us to continue bringing it to you for free.
Dedeker: Some of you out there are listening to all this and thinking, oh my gosh, wow, that makes so many things in my life and my past relationships and my present relationship make sense now. Some of you out there are listening to this and thinking, this is a load of horseshit, and I hate it. I hate labels, I hate triangles. Now, both of you are the worst, I have good news, because other researchers seem to agree the theory and the model has mixed support, both a fair number of people who seem to agree with it and support it and the opposite, from other researchers who also study love and relationships.
Jase: Yes. The first critique is something that we've heard a lot and that we mentioned a lot on the show, is that it studies presumably monogamous heterosexual couples. The other big critique that comes up a lot in studies about love and sex and relationships, is that almost all of the data comes from studies of college students, which, yes, just really limits things like not only the age of the people being studied, but also things like their socioeconomic background and their race and things like that just based on how higher education is already skewed in those areas.
Emily: Researchers, Michelle Acker and Mark Davis, studied in older-skewing sample of respondents in order to address this. Thank goodness, we need some people other than those college students. Sternberg himself would go on to repeat his study with the sample that had a much wider age range. I'm glad that they did that, he should have done that.
In his repeated studies, he even came to the conclusion that the data is generally but not completely supportive of his triangular theory of love. He came to the conclusion that ultimately his model would probably be best combined with other models, such as attachment theory or favorite, in order to present the most robust account of the complexity of love. That's good. Don't just take one thing and say, this is it, this is the end, I'll do all, this is what love is, because it's not.
Dedeker: Yes, I appreciate it, but I think a true researcher should, being open and honest about the fact that there's a lot of support this, but it's also not 100% airtight, and that this is probably best served by also roping and things like attachment theory to fully understand all the moving pieces of love.
Let this be a lesson that if anyone out there is trying to sell you on, this is 100% accurate or this science 100% proves this, it don't, it ain't.
Jase: Yes, there was something that I think I put on my wishlist some year. It was a little pillow thing for sleeping on an airplane, but rather than being like an inflatable pillow, it's sort of a little plastic, almost like a neck brace that kind of lets you rest on it. Anyway, I sent this wishlist with this item on it to my dad, and he wrote back to me and he was like, "Oh, well, it says on the box that it's scientifically proven to do whatever." My dad being a college professor scientist, he's like, "That's amazing that it's scientifically proven since science doesn't prove things. That's not what science does." It was just sweet.
Dedeker: You're like, "Dad, come on. Dad, just buy me the frickin neckbrace."
Jase: We joked about what would the scientifically appropriate marketing be. It would be like, not scientifically disproven to help you sleep on an airplane, something like that.
Dedeker: The data generally, but it's not completely supportive of it helping you to sleep on an airplane.
Jase: Yes, exactly.
Emily: Good luck with that.
Jase: Good luck.
Emily: I like that.
Jase: Another critique of Sternberg's studies was that they were all American subjects, but this, in 2020, was remedied by a study that was looking internationally. This is a 2020 study published in the Journal of sex research by a multinational team of 115 researchers. Really if you have like a word count or a page count for a research paper, and you put this in there, you will instantly hit your word count, because the citation, the citation for this has 115 names in it. You'll have like 20 pages of your bibliography at the end, and you'll only have to write one page of paper, it's brilliant.
Dedeker: It was so long, and I had to sit and count every single one of those names, because I was like, "What?'
Jase: You wanted to know how many?
Dedeker: Yes, I wanted to know. I was like, this is a big chunky citation, this is so many names. I sat there and counted how many research it was, and it was 115.
Jase: This study looked at over 7,000 participants from 25 countries, and including at least one from every single inhabited continent. Their findings did support that there is a cross-cultural universality to these three elements. These aren't only in our culture, but that there is at least a certain extent that this is universal. That's pretty cool.
Dedeker: Yes, and the cool thing about this study was, when they were getting subjects, is basically the only criteria was you had to be over 18 and you had to just be currently in a relationship, but they didn't put any restrictions on whether that was a heterosexual relationship, or not, whether you were married, or dating, or whatever it was.
Emily: Monogomus or not.
Dedeker: They didn't say anything about monogamy or non. They just said you had to be in a relationship.
Jase: Again, the three are commitment, passion, intimacy.
Dedeker: Yes, exactly, that they're like, yes, it does seem that cross-culturally, these check out as being these three common building blocks or common elements when it comes to different types of love and different types of relationships around the globe. They did say that they collected a lot of data about socioeconomic status, and work and family of origin, and stuff like that, but they didn't really crunch any of that data or mine of any of that data, necessarily. They were suggesting to say that this is a place that future researchers could look, though, to look at some of these things.
Jase: Right, look at that data and try to find other correlations and things like that. Yes, that's cool.
Dedeker: Why do we care about triangles?
Jase: Why do we care about these triangles specifically?
Dedeker: Yes, yes, is there any way to actually apply this in the real world? In some of Sternberg's later studies, and remember that he did eventually come around and repeat his studies with older-skewing, or a more wider age range, more diverse group of subjects. He has over the years started to expand on this triangular model. He pointed out the fact that at any given time, and at any given relationship, we may actually be working with multiple triangles that we are comparing to each other. It's like the multiverse, multiriangular universe.
Jase: I was thinking, it's like the string theory of love triangles.
Dedeker: Oh, good.
Jase: Where there's multi-dimensional triangles all existing in the same space, across dimensions. The first of these dimensions is the ideal triangle versus the real triangle. This is about either the nicely matching up or the conflict between how we would like our relationship to be and how it actually is at the moment. An example would be, I want to have an ideal relationship that's high on all three elements, and even in all of them, but currently, it's high passion and high intimacy, but low on commitment. There can be tension there from wanting it to be that. I could also imagine another one where it's like, I have a relationship that's very high on intimacy and high on commitment, and really, I just wish all we did was bone each other. I wish it was all passion. Yes, there's lots of different ways that this could look.
Yes, that dimension is the ideal versus the real triangle.
Dedeker: Yes. Another dimension of this is the self-perceived triangle versus what he calls the other perceived triangle. As in how I perceive the relationship versus how my partner perceives the relationship. Maybe the way I receive the relationship is, "Oh, yes, I think we're super high in intimacy. We know each other so well, we're so closely attached, we're best friends." Maybe the way my partner perceives it is differently. Maybe the way they perceive it is like, "I don't feel like my partner knows me very well at all."
Emily: How about this dimension, the feelings triangle versus the action triangle. How we feel in the relationship versus what actions we take in the relationship. For example, you might feel super committed to your partner, but in reality, you actually drop the ball all the time, you don't demonstrate your commitment in effective ways, you choose to be flaky, flaky. I don't know, something like that. The challenges here are that these are all troubled ruined dimensions. Trouble is one.
Dedeker: The examples we gave from the examples we gave can sound not great.
Emily: Yes, and it is theorized that with all of these triangle comparisons, the more different they look from each other, the more likely that the relationship dissatisfaction will increase. That makes a lot of sense, you want those things to kind of correlate and go together, that if you and your partner perceive the same level of intimacy, and commitment, etc, then you're going to be happier. If your actions are the same as your feelings, you're going to be happier. If your ideal is the same as your real, happier.
Dedeker: Or vice versa, just the closer they match to each other.
Jase: Right, maybe they don't have to match perfectly but the closer they are, okay, yes.
Dedeker: This triangle multiverse is, I think, my favorite part of this whole theory, because I feel like this is the most actionable, this is the part that I think carries the most weight in the real world, a little bit, almost like a diagnostic tool. I mean, of course, there's no empirical diagnostic tools necessarily for relationships, but I think that knowing this can be really helpful for taking the temperature of the relationship for yourself. You can think about, is there a discrepancy between my ideal version of this relationship and where it currently is. Do I feel like it's missing passion or missing intimacy or missing commitment? Or that it has too much of any one of those things. Is there something specific that I could ask for? I think this is a great question to think about, especially when starting out a relationship. I think it's a good question to just constantly check in with yourself as time is going on.
Jase: Yes, it's a good prompt for a check-in to just, especially if they've also listened to this episode, or maybe read this research, is to just kind of check-in and be like, "Hey, what does our relationship triangle look like? What has it looked like in the past? What do we want it to look like?" and just checking in about it. Now, the qualification I want to make here is that I could also see this conversation being really stressful and going really bad. If they answer what you don't expect, and you're upset by it. I would encourage you to, this is something, though, that I think would be really good if you're able to go into it from a place of, we're doing this to just explore and learn, and maybe it's not actually that the relationship is very different for each of you, but maybe just that you think on a different scale of it, right? There's not like an absolute 0 to 10, if 10 means exactly this. It's all kind of relative to who knows what, maybe what they think other people have, what they think they want in their life, versus what it is right now. There's a lot of factors, but I do think it could be really useful as a conversation starter, or as just sort of a way to check-in and talk about that and see how it's going.
Dedeker: I think this is also a great conversation to sidestep into if it feels a little bit too intense to dive right into, hey, partner, let's sit down, let's sit down and see how we measure up on this triangle. It can be a really interesting conversation to talk about, like, what was your perception of your parents' relationship growing up? What did their triangle look like? What about past relationships that you've been in? What about relationships close to you that you feel are really high functioning and that you look up to? What are the things that you notice? What does that triangle potentially look like, that if it's too intense to dive straight in, it can be helpful just to look at the relationships around you or from your past?
Jase: Well, and Dedeker, as you mentioned earlier in the episode for things like commitment, that our culture has different ideas of what commitment really means. That also could be a way to start that conversation of, what does this part of the triangle mean to you. When you say commitment, what does that mean? When you say intimacy, what does that mean? That could be interesting, too, of just exploring what's in those, possibly because it relates to whatever, our parents or other relationships we see around us.
Emily: If the two of you have differing opinions on what your relationship looks like and what your triangle looks like, then you can ask and cultivate, "How can I express my intimacy or my passion for you or my commitment to you in a way that you would feel as though this is something that you're getting from me? This is something that is more along the lines of how you want this relationship to look and vice versa, what are the things that my partner can do in order to move the relationship in the direction where the two of you have more of a melding of the minds, as it were?
Jase: Yes. Something we've mentioned before on the show that we wanted to recommend, again, is the book Eight Dates by the Gottmans. I would say, from what we found and what Dedeker learned also talking with some of the people from the Gottman Institute, that it's very much best as a tool for a relationship that's already pretty good. It's not a tool for repairing a relationship that's super disconnected. If you've already got a pretty decent foundation, the Eight Dates book is, each week, you go on a different date where you theme the date and also talk about a different topic, a different area. It definitely overlaps with a lot of this stuff that we're talking about in this episode here. Definitely worth checking out.
Dedeker: Yes, in conclusion, triangles, do you got them? I got them.
Jase: How many do you have? I don't know. It's a multi-verse.
Dedeker: So many. It's a multi-verse of triangles. This is a really, really interesting theory, and it's one that I definitely want to chew on for a little while longer. Sternberg also went on to develop-- He turned this into a whole new theory as well. He developed this theory of love story, which is something that I've only barely scratched the surface on. We might do another episode on that sometime in the future. There's even progressions from here. There's even more geometries to be uncovered.
Emily: More triangles to be had. Oh, boy. Wow. Cool.
Dedeker: My goodness. Okay. For those of you who are patrons, we are going to do a bonus episode where we're going to be getting all polysemous, if you know what I mean, and I know you know that word.
Jase: No.
Dedeker: I know you know what exactly what it means. Well, if you don't know what it means, then you better listen to the bonus episode.
Emily: Seamus who's polyamorous?
Dedeker: No, no, no, I didn't say polyseamus. I said polysemous. Thank you very much.
Emily: Yes, but sometimes I look at the words "Seamus" and it looks like "semous" so that's vague.
Jase: True. That's right. It's true.