Sternberg's triangle still maps romantic love talk
Interpersonal relationships are social associations between two or more people, studied across psychology, anthropology, and communication. Friendships stay non-romantic; intimate bonds add closeness that may include sex or romance. Sternberg's triangular theory remains a common scaffold for love's components.
Relationships differ in intimacy, self-disclosure, length, reciprocity and how power is shared, and they can be governed by law, custom or private agreement. In the 1990s the work of Ellen Berscheid and Elaine Hatfield helped turn their study into relationship science, drawing on fields from economics to linguistics. Sternberg's triangle breaks love into intimacy, passion and commitment in varying proportions, while Hazan and Shaver, building on attachment theory, describe it as seeking closeness, giving emotional support, exploring oneself and feeling distress at separation.
Many counsellors expect passion to fade into companionate love, yet studies of couples find intimacy and sex stay important in long and late-life relationships. Older people are generally more satisfied with their partnerships but find new ones harder to start, especially women: among people 65 and up, men are married at close to double the rate of women, and widowers are almost three times as likely as widows to be dating 18 months after a loss. The phrase significant other spread in the 1990s as a way to avoid assuming a partner's gender or legal status.
Harry Harlow's 1958 experiments showed infant rhesus monkeys preferred a cloth surrogate to a wire one, undermining the idea that attachment was only about food. Mary Ainsworth's strange situation tests, separating infants briefly from a parent, identified secure, avoidant and ambivalent styles, and a disorganized fourth type was later proposed; secure attachment predicts better social and academic outcomes and less delinquency. G. Stanley Hall's storm-and-stress picture of adolescence has proved exaggerated: parent-child relations dip in early adolescence and often recover by its end.
George Levinger's influential model traces relationships through five stages, beginning with acquaintance and buildup. Sibling bonds, though contact usually thins over time, remain among the most enduring ties a person has.
Source: Interpersonal relationship
