Passionate Love and Sexual Desire - Elaine Hatfield

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2Cultural theorists have long been interested in the impact of culture on themeaning that young men and women ascribe to “love.” Scholars usually distinguishbetween two kinds of love: “passionate love” and “companionate love.” (Hatfield &Rapson, 1993)Passionate love (sometimes called “obsessive love,” “infatuation,”“lovesickness,” or “being-in-love”) is a powerful emotional state. It has been defined as:A state of intense longing for union with another. Passionate love is acomplex functional whole including appraisals or appreciations, subjectivefeelings, expressions, patterned physiological processes, action tendencies,and instrumental behaviors. Reciprocated love (union with the other) isassociated with fulfillment and ecstasy. Unrequited love (separation) isassociated with feelings of emptiness, anxiety, and despair. (Hatfield &Rapson, 1993, p. 5)People in all cultures recognize the power of passionate love. In South IndianTamil families, for example, a person who falls head-over-heels in love with another issaid to be suffering from mayakkam—dizziness, confusion, intoxication, and delusion.The wild hopes and despairs of love are thought to “mix you up.” (Trawick, 1990)The Passionate Love Scale was designed to tap into the cognitive, emotional, andbehavioral indicants of such longings. (Hatfield & Sprecher, 1986) The PLS has beenfound to be a useful measure of passionate love with men and women of all ages, in avariety of cultures, and has been found to correlate well with certain well-defined patterns
3of neural activation (see Bartels & Zeki, 2000, 2004; Doherty, Hatfield, Thompson, &Choo, 1994; Fisher, 2003; Landis & O’Shea, 2000.)Companionate love is a far less intense emotion. It combines feelings ofattachment, commitment, and intimacy (Hatfield & Rapson, 1993.) It has been definedas:The affection and tenderness we feel for those with whom our lives aredeeply entwined. (Hatfield & Rapson, 1993, p. 9)Psychologists have used a variety of scales to measure companionate love. SinceSternberg (1988) postulated that companionate relationships require both commitmentand intimacy, many researchers have assessed such love by measuring those twocomponents.Other Definitions of Love: Scientists have proposed a variety of definitions andtypologies of love (see Hendrick & Hendrick, 1989; Shaver & Hazan, 1988; Sternberg,1988.) According to Sternberg (1988), for example, types of love are determined byvarious combinations of passion, intimacy, and commitment. Possible combinationsresult in Romantic Love, Infatuation, Companionate Love, Liking, Fatuous Love, EmptyLove, and Consummate Love.In this chapter we will focus on passionate love; we will touch upon othervarieties of love only briefly, if at all.III. Theoretical Understandings of Passionate LoveA. Anthropological Perspectives on Passionate LovePassionate love is as old as humankind. The Sumerian love fable of Inanna andDumuzi, for example, was spun by tribal storytellers in 2,000 BCE. (Wolkstein, 1991)
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