Components of love and types of love

Abstract

Introduction. Love, especially the erotic love, is one of the most important events in a person’s life; every person may experience it differently and surely dependent on her/his personality traits. The aim of this work was to explore the relations between the elements and the types of love, experienced by young people.
Material and methods. The study population consisted of 687 studying young people (mean age: 20.05 years); the polish versions of the Intimacy, Passion and Commitment Scale and the Love Attitudes Scale were used.
Results. As an outcome of the conducted researches it was found that the height of the individual elements shapes a gradation in the form of a declining line: the largest intensity is of Intimacy and the smallest of Commitment. Amongst all the love types, the most intensively experienced by the study population is Eros and Agape (Agape is the connection of Eros and Storge), and the less intensively experienced is Ludus and Pragma (Pragma is the connection of Storge and Ludus). A number of statistically significant correlations was found between the elements and the types of love, amongst which the strongest relation was between Commitment and Agape and also between Passion and Eros.
Conclusions. Amongst the elements of love, the largest intensity in the study population is of Intimacy, and the smallest is of Commitment. Persons in the study population most intensively experience Eros and Agape. The strongest relations are between Commitment and Agape also between Passion and Eros. Ludus has negative correlations with the elements of love.