Recently, I was at my book club, and Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin was the book of discussion. The main character, Sadie, was interested in the fact that she loved more than one man at one time, the father of her daughter and her long-time friend and co-owner of their computer video company. During our book discussion, the question of how many kinds of love there are was brought up. Since Valentine’s Day was only a few days away, I thought I would write about love – a firsthand emotion.

February 14 is called St. Valentine’s Day, so where did that come from? Several Christian martyrs have been named St. Valentine, but the one that stands out is Saint Valentine, the priest and physician. He secretly married couples to spare husbands from war and, in defying the emperor Claudius II Gothicus, was said to have been executed on February 14, 270. When he was in prison, one story says that he fell in love with the jailer’s daughter, whom he cured of blindness. On the night before he was executed, he wrote a farewell message to her and signed it: Your Valentine.

The ancient Greeks, such as Plato and Aristotle, studied love and often spoke of seven types of love:

1. eros (passion, lust, sexual attraction, or romantic love);
2. philia (deep bonds of friendship where each is there for each other);
3. storge (family or unconditional love that parents have for their children and vice-versa);
4. agape (universal love of strangers, nature, or God);
5. Ludus (playful; flirting or teasing love);
6. pragma (practical love between married couples or long-term love), and
7. philautic (healthy or unhealthy self-love).

Touching base with psychologists, Z. Rubin’s theory comes to mind. According to Rubin, love is made up of three basic elements:

1. caring (where you help others),
2. attachment (where you need to be with the other person), and
3. intimacy (where there is empathy and trust with close communication and self-disclosure).

“What has sex got to do with it?” So, let us turn to Robert Sternberg for that. Robert Sternberg’s Triangular Theory of Love covers sex in three components:

• I: intimacy (close to each other);
• P: passion (sexual or erotic); and
• C: commitment (long-term care of one another).

These three combine to form eight types of love, which are the following:

1. non-love, where all three, I, P, and C, are absent;
2. liking, where intimacy (I) exists, such as in friendships, but no passion and commitment;
3.  infatuated love, where there is passion (P), but no intimacy or commitment;
4. empty love where there is commitment (C) without passion or intimacy and the couple stays together, such as for the children or financial reasons;
5. romantic love where there is passion and intimacy (P +I), but no commitment;
6. companionate where there is intimacy and commitment (I + C), such as with strong friendships and close family members, but no passion;
7. fatuous love which is impulsive with passion and commitment (P + C), but no intimacy and is most likely to fail; and
8. consummate love called real love in the Western culture where all three are present, intimacy, passion and commitment (I + P + C).

Some people freely use the term love, but now you can be an amateur psychologist without a license and diagnose what kind of love it is. Even Tina Turner might be impressed that you can know “What Love Has to Do with It” by differentiating between the various kinds of love. (Britannica and Microsoft Bing, 2024 referenced)