Love styles are modus operandi of how people love, originally developed by John Lee (1973, 1988). He identified six basic love styles—also known as "colours" of love—that people use in their interpersonal relationships:
- Eros – a passionate physical and emotional love based on aesthetic enjoyment; stereotype of romantic love
- Ludus – a love that is played as a game or sport; conquest; may have multiple partners at once
- Storge – an affectionate love that slowly develops from friendship, based on similarity (kindred to Philia)
- Pragma – love that is driven by the head, not the heart; undemonstrative
- Mania – obsessive love; experience great emotional highs and lows; very possessive and often jealous lovers
- Agape – selfless altruistic love
Clyde Hendrick and Susan Hendrick of Texas Tech University expanded on this theory in the mid-1980s with their extensive research on what they called "love styles". They have found that men tend to be more ludic, whereas women tend to be storgic and pragmatic. Mania is often the first love style teenagers display. Relationships based on similar love styles were found to last longer. People often look for people with the same love style as themselves for a relationship. These styles are akin to the Greek types of love.
Read more about Love Styles: Eros, Ludus, Storgic, Pragma, Manic, Agape, Measurement, Biological View
Famous quotes containing the words love and/or styles:
“And what is Genius but finer love, a love impersonal, a love of the flower and perfection of things, and a desire to draw a new picture or copy of the same? It looks to the cause and life: it proceeds from within outward, whilst Talent goes from without inward.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Can we love our children when they are homely, awkward, unkempt, flaunting the styles and friendships we don’t approve of, when they fail to be the best, the brightest, the most accomplished at school or even at home? Can we be there when their world has fallen apart and only we can restore their faith and confidence in life?”
—Neil Kurshan (20th century)