His original paper on the theory analyzes the works of Freud and other well-known psychologists to come up with the theory of his own. We asked him how he came up with it, to which he replied, “I was at a point in my life in which a relationship I was in was not going all so well. I thought about different relationships I had been in and came to the conclusion that there were three elements that dominated the relationships, at least in terms of love.” And as a matter of fact, his theory was just proved universal through research on over 7,300 people1 across 25 countries. As marriage therapist and certified sex educator Lexx Brown-James, LMFT, recently told mbg, “A relationship without intimacy and passion that solely has commitment is called empty love. These relationships can survive; however, partners might look more like roommates than lovers.” The combos people could have according to the triangular theory of love gave rise to Sternberg’s idea of love as a story2, or “the idea is that we all have a set of stories of love.” According to him, these ideas we have of love tell us what we think a relationship should be and thus govern how our relationships play out. “Examples of stories are the fairy-tale story, the business story, the travel story, [etc.],” he notes. “Each story has two predefined roles. For example, the roles in the fairy-tale story are a prince and a princess, and in a business story are two business partners.” To figure out which of the eight combinations you have, consider the three components and to what degree they are present in your relationship. How much intimacy, passion, and commitment is there?
