21 Sternberg 1986, pp. 119-135 came up with a Triangular Theory of Love.
The underlying idea of this theory is that love can be dissected into three main parts: intimacy, passion and decisioncommitment.
a. Intimacy
This encompasses feelings of closeness, connectedness, and boundedness. With passion, there is the initial infatuation, the strong emotions, and the
attraction. It involves a high level of trust between two individuals
b. Passion
This encompasses drives that lead to romance, physical attraction, and sexual consummation. With intimacy, the lovers become closer, inter-dependant,
and psychologically their self-concepts begin to overlap.
c. Commitment
This encompasses, in the short term, the decision to remain with another, and in the long term, the shared achievements and plans made with that other.
Commitment is the most volitional of the three, the decision to take steps to maintain the love and the relationship.
d. Forms of Love
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i. LikingFriendship: is characterizes true friendships, in which a person feels
a bond, warmth, and a closeness with another but not passion or long-term commitment.
ii. Infatuated Love: It is pure passion.
iii. Empty Love: It is characterized by commitment without intimacy or passion.
iv. Romantic Love: It bonds individuals emotionally through intimacy and
physically through passionate arousal, but neither is sustained without commitment.
v. Companionate Love: It is an intimate, non-passionate type of love that is
stronger than friendship because of the element of long-term commitment. The love ideally shared between family members is a form of companionate
love, as is the love between close friends who have a platonic but strong friendship.
vi. Fatuous Love: Its commitment is motivated largely by passion without the
stabilizing influence of intimacy.
vii. Consummate Love: It is the complete form of love. Consummate love is
theorized to be that love associated with the ―perfect couple‖ Sternberg,
1987, p. 341.
C. Theoretical Framework
The theories reviewed in the previous part are very important for the writer to get into the analysis part. In analysing
Paulo Coelho‘s The Valkyries, the writer
