332. The triangular theory of love

Summary

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The Psychology of Your 20s (Episode 332)

"The Triangular Theory of Love"

Host: Jemma Sbeg
Date: September 14, 2025
Duration: ~15 minutes (content)

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Overview

In this shorter, "Psychology Bites" bonus episode, host Jemma Sbeg explores Robert Sternberg's influential Triangular Theory of Love. Sbeg breaks down the three core components at the heart of Sternberg’s model—intimacy, passion, and commitment—explaining how their combinations form different kinds of love. The episode also covers the theory’s strengths, its real-life applications (especially in your 20s), its limitations, and how newer models like the Quadruple Theory of Love add nuance to our understanding of relationships.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Introduction to Psychology Bites & Episode Theme

[02:47]

• Sbeg introduces "Psychology Bites" as a new series for shorter, focused coverage of psychological principles.
• The inaugural theme: Robert Sternberg's Triangular Theory of Love—exploring the psychology of love in all its forms.

Quote:
"For our inaugural Psychology Bites bonus episode, I wanted to talk about one of my favorite favorite theories... we are talking about the triangular theory of love."
— Jemma Sbeg [03:38]

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2. Background and Competing Theories

[03:57 - 05:55]

• Sternberg’s theory aims to explain how love forms, lasts, and changes.
• It applies not just to romance, but to platonic and familial relationships too.
• Brief mention of related concepts:
  • Attachment Theory: How childhood experiences affect love
  • Reward Theory of Attraction: We're drawn to those who fulfill our needs or desires
  • Lee's Color Wheel Theory of Love: Different “flavors” and categories of love (e.g., pragma, ludos)

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3. The Triangular Theory of Love: Core Components

[06:39 - 09:50]
Identifies and explains Sternberg’s "three ingredients" for love:

• Intimacy: Emotional closeness, familiarity, shared values (the "shared hobbies cake")
• Passion: Deep desire, attraction, physical longing (“swept off our feet")
• Commitment: Staying power, loyalty, shared goals, trust

Memorable Metaphor:
"I like to explain this theory as a theory that likes us to think of love like a recipe for a cake. Depending on how much of each of these ingredients you put into the cake, you're going to get a different flavor..."
— Jemma Sbeg [07:34]

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4. Types of Love: Combining the Ingredients

[07:56 - 11:50]

Describes how different combos of intimacy, passion, and commitment create distinct relationship types:

• Infatuation: Passion only (one-sided, fleeting attraction)
• Empty Love: Commitment only (staying together after romance fades, e.g., for the kids)
• Friendship: Intimacy only (closeness, but no romance or lasting commitment)

Combinations:

• Romantic Love: Intimacy + Passion (the dating/early-stage relationship)
• Companionate Love: Intimacy + Commitment (e.g., lifelong friendships, elder couples without sexual attraction)
• Fatuous Love: Passion + Commitment (whirlwind courtships, rare due to lack of true intimacy)
• Consummate Love: All three components—the “ideal” or “complete” love

On Consummate Love:
"Having it for a certain period doesn't mean you're entitled to it forever... maintaining consummate love may be harder than just achieving it."
— Jemma Sbeg [11:35]

• Even with all three components, relationships require ongoing action—love is a verb, not just a passive state.

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5. Real-World Application: Stages and Types of Relationships

[16:09 - 18:55]

• Sternberg’s model matches many real-world relationship phases; relationships move through stages (passion, then intimacy, then commitment).
• The Triangle helps analyze different situations—situationships, affairs, friends, “just for the kids” marriages, brief encounters.
• Supported by a 2020 multi-country study: The triangle holds up across many cultures and types of relationships.

Quote:
"This is a great way of kind of analyzing our relationship and saying, okay, but do we have intimacy? Do we have passion? Do we have commitment?... The thing is, you probably do have some kind of love, but is it the kind of love that you expect and that you want?"
— Jemma Sbeg [18:25]

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6. Critiques & Limitations of the Theory

[18:56 - 22:32]

• Missing context: Ignores cultural, religious, practical, or circumstantial factors that shape relationships.
• Not polyamory-friendly: Doesn’t account for multiple overlapping consummate loves.
• Asymmetry not addressed: Doesn’t answer if both partners must have identical feelings (one could have consummate love, the other only passion).
• Emotional complexity: Real relationships are more multidimensional than the 2D triangle suggests.
• Everyday doubts: The model doesn’t clarify where anxieties, doubts, or practical impossibilities fit.

Quote:
"What kind of love is occurring then? Do both people have to be experiencing the same combination for the love to be that thing? Or could you have consummate love on one end, fatuous love on the other, and does that still count as a kind of love?"
— Jemma Sbeg [21:45]

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7. The Quadruple Theory of Love: An Update

[22:33 - 24:13]

• A newer model (2020): Love is built on four factors—attraction, connection/resonance, trust, and respect.
• Quadruple theory aims to address some original theory gaps; it recognizes more diverse relationship types and emphasizes resonance and trust over mere commitment.

Quote:
"This model, I think, describes how love develops over time much better. It also allows for more types of love to be analyzed, since it has that fourth factor."
— Jemma Sbeg [23:08]

• The host suggests blending both theories may offer a fuller picture, but also asks if love can truly ever be “fully explained” by theories and models.

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8. Reflections and Takeaways

[24:14 - 26:30]

• Theories can only ever be simplifications of the nuanced reality of love.
• Sbeg finds the triangle useful for “giving words to a feeling,” and for evaluating relationships' strengths and weaknesses, especially in our 20s when so many relationships feel uncertain or “half-baked.”
• Invites listeners to reflect: Should love be studied and modeled, or is it ultimately “just to be experienced”?
• Teases future Psychology Bites topics (personality tests, narcissism, sociopathy) and invites listener feedback.

Quote:
"I also know that when I was in my previous relationships, this model did help me understand what was missing. So it does really help in those ways, and it does give words to a feeling."
— Jemma Sbeg [25:15]

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• "Love is a verb. This is something that we act on... You have to work for it." [11:38]
• "This theory is very one dimensional, right? It is literally a 2D triangle... But the feelings we feel towards someone at any given moment are multidirectional and they are 4D, 5D, 6D and they are complex." [21:22]
• "Are researchers and psychologists just trying too hard to categorize something that can't be categorized?" [24:20]

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• Introduction & Purpose – [02:47]
• Theory Overview & Competing Models – [03:57 – 06:39]
• Core Ingredients Explained – [06:39 – 07:56]
• Types of Love by Combination – [07:56 – 11:50]
• Applying the Theory / Relationship Stages – [16:09 – 18:55]
• Critiques & Limitations – [18:56 – 22:32]
• The Quadruple Theory of Love – [22:33 – 24:13]
• Reflections and Listener Qs – [24:14 – 26:30]

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Episode Tone & Style

Warm, conversational, and educational. Sbeg uses metaphors and real-world examples to make theory relatable, speaking directly to 20-somethings navigating the often confusing terrain of modern relationships.

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Summary Takeaway

Sternberg’s Triangular Theory of Love remains a valuable lens for understanding the components of love—intimacy, passion, and commitment—and their myriad combinations. While the theory is not exhaustive and doesn’t account for all modern relationship complexities, it offers a useful framework for self-reflection and growth, particularly in one’s 20s. Newer models like the Quadruple Theory push the conversation further, but as Sbeg notes, love’s full mystery may never be captured in a single triangle or diagram.

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For feedback or topic suggestions, listeners are invited to comment or connect via Instagram (@thatpsychologypodcast).

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Transcript

[Host (Psychology Podcast)]

This is an iHeart podcast.

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[Host (Psychology Podcast)]

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[Host (Psychology Podcast)]

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Hello everybody and welcome back to the.

[Host (Psychology Podcast)]

Psychology of your 20s, the podcast where.

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We talk through some of the Big life changes and transitions of our 20s and what they mean for our psychology.

[Host (Psychology Podcast)]

Hello everybody. Welcome back to the show. Welcome back to the podcast. New listeners, old listeners, wherever you are in the world, it is so great to have you here back for another episode. As we of course break down the psychology of our twenties today, I am introducing a new kind of episode to the show, a shorter episode than what you are probably used to, where we are going to cover some core psychology principles, theories, concepts or studies that I think are interesting, that I think will help us understand our 20s better, but which don't necessarily have enough to say about them to be made into a full 45 minute to an hour long episode. And you guys know I love to yap. I can talk, I can talk until the sun goes down. But these episodes are just gonna be a little bit more bite sized, a little bit smaller for your 15 minute commute, for your 15 minute, I don't know, arm workout for whatever you're doing. This is just gonna be like a more bite sized taste of our longer episodes. Talking about concepts that I still think DEs deserve to be in the psychology of your 20s universe, but which just don't have enough research to them quite yet. For our inaugural Psychology Bites bonus episode, I wanted to talk about one of my favorite favorite theories that I've been trying to make into a full length episode for years. Finally, she's having her time to shine. We are talking about the triangular theory of love. Let's start with some very basic factual information. This theory was developed by the psychologist Robert Sternberg. And it's not just about romantic love. This theory is about how love forms, how it lasts, how it changes. And it's about Platonic intimacy, it's about familial intimacy, it's about commitment and the foundational reasons why we feel drawn or connected to certain people. And what makes a relationship consummate. Love. What makes a relationship a kind of love that lasts. It is one theory in a long line of theories trying to synthesize, explain, simplify, categorize the thing that fascinates us more than anything else. It's just one of many theories trying to get to the bottom of what does love really mean? What is this thing that we all experience or hope to experience? Some other theories of note which you are maybe familiar with include things like attachment theory. Basically, that theory states that how we love and are loved is based on the love we received as children and how we are how we were raised. There's also the reward theory of attraction, which basically States that we are drawn to people who make us feel good about ourselves and that reward inherent drivers within us or inherent desires or needs within us. Another particularly famous theory around love love is John Allen Lee's color wheel theory of love, which defines three primary, three secondary, and nine tertiary types of love based on different combinations of feelings. For example, ludos love, which is primarily driven by desire to have fun and to tease. Pragma love, which is a convenient kind of love, kinship love, friendship, love. There's a whole list that you can look up. We're not talking about that today. It's just another one of many theories in this kind of space. But the real one that kind of shines through and that a lot of people talk about is the triangular theory. This is probably my favorite of all, which is of course why we are.

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[Host (Psychology Podcast)]

So this theory is almost 40 years old now. I think it's over 40 years old, sorry to say. And. And it suggests that we can describe nearly all types and forms of love based on three ingredients and their combination. The three ingredients for any type of relationship are intimacy, passion, and commitment. Let's break these down. Intimacy involves feelings of familiarity, closeness, connectedness, a sense of similarity, shared hobbies, shared values, that kind of thing. Passion involves deep desire, attraction, romance, feelings of being swept off our feet, and commitment. Commitment means staying. It means trust. It represents shared goals and unity even in hard times. I like to explain this theory as a theory that likes us to think of love like a recipe for a cake. Depending on how much of each of these ingredients you put into the cake, you're going to get a different flavor, A different flavor of cake that represents something different. It's still a cake. You're just influencing the recipe so that something different comes out. Basically this theory, it describes love as a recipe. And you can make dozens of different things with just a few variations of ingredients. This is my. My own kind of metaphor for this theory. But the way Sternberg represents this is as a triangle, obviously. It's called the triangulate the of love and intimacy. Passion and commitment are all points on the triangle. Each point represents one type of love, but so do the lines connecting those points and the center point of the triangle as well. I know it's quite visual, but I think giving you some combinations might help you understand this a little bit easier. On one side of the triangle, at one point we have passion. And if a relationship only has passion, it's a very simple kind of cake. And it's infatuation. It's limerence. It's one sided. Perhaps it's purely sexual in nature. It's driven by feeling, longing, and you know, the thing that we want the most in the present, which is this other person. But it doesn't have intimacy, it doesn't have commitment. It's the simple cake. It's the passionate cake. If you only have commitment on the other side of the triangle, you have empty love. Yes, you are loyal to one another, but romance and passion and intimacy have faded. You don't have that organic closeness, thinking, you know, people who have stayed married for the kids, even when all else has faded, you know, there is still a kind of love there, but it's not the same as what they had. We also have purely intimacy. So intimacy is the other kind of part of the triangle and that is like friendship. If you're just intimate with someone and you just have closeness or familiarity, but you don't have romance or commitment, you guys are just friends. So three different kinds of love. Now for our combos. You guys ready? If you have intimacy and passion, you have romantic love. You're dating. It's like the early months or the early maybe years. You don't know if you're going to go the distance, but you're having a really great time and you feel really close and comfortable and in love with this person. If you have intimacy and commitment, you have companion love. And this can also be platonic. Think those lifelong friends who live with each other in their 60s. Think people who are older and they no longer have the same sexual feelings for each other, but they're still all in on their relationship, their love. These kinds of love is. They're just as real as any other kind of love. It just doesn't have that other ingredient to the relationship that Sternberg says creates consummate love. It doesn't mean it's any less meaningful. Fatuous love is when we have passion and commitment. It's incredibly rare because it doesn't have intimacy, which you think would be needed to connect those two things. Think like whirlwind courtships, people who get married after a few weeks, they have Rome, they have passion, sorry. And they have commitment. They don't have intimacy. There's no real bond there yet, but we would hope it would develop over time. Again, super rare, probably the most rare version or combination. And finally the one we've been talking about this whole time, consummate love. This is described by this theory as the complete form of love representing the ideal romantic relationship that we are all striving for we have intimacy, passion, and commitment combined. This is the center of the triangle. Now, some things to dispel about consummate love. It's wonderful. It's beautiful. It's what we all strive for. It might not always last. This theory is not saying that once you have this thing, you have the perfect relationship. Having it for a certain period doesn't mean you're entitled to it forever. In fact, it's. There's actually this urban myth going around that the reason Sternberg was so obsessed with theorizing about love was because he kept getting divorced. And he wanted to know why the triangle kept collapsing in for him. But yes, it is a little bit of an urban myth. But, you know, based on his own personal experience, he does caution in his papers on this subject that maintaining consummate love may be harder than just achieving it. You know, he really does stress that these are just. All these components are important. Having intimacy, having passion, having commitment are important, but they are just the beginning. You have to translate those components of love into action. Without expression, even the greatest of loves can die. And I think that's a really important message, not just for people in their 20s, but of any age. If you have a love that you want to last, you have to understand that love, especially the triangular theory of love, makes it so that this is also a verb. This is something that we act on. I think there's this idea that, like, when you meet the right person, you just know, and it should feel easy. And this theory says that, yes, you may have everything you need to experience consummate love in the beginning, but it is not just the sum of its parts. You have to work for it. And the reason I really love this theory is because it doesn't think of love as stationary. It actually allows us to explain how love goes through many stages. We're going to take a short break, but when we return, I want to discuss what these stages actually are.

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[Host (Psychology Podcast)]

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[Host (Psychology Podcast)]

So like I said before, the Triangular Theory of Love likes to explain how love goes through stages and it likes to kind of suggest that we begin with either passion or intimacy, then we gain the other and then finally we have commitment. So at any given stage in a relationship you can kind of place where someone is in the timeline of love. By looking at where they sit on this triangle. If they're in the beginning stages, they might just have passion. If they're in the middle stage of their relationship, they might have passion and intimacy. If they're in the consummate stage, they have passion, passion, intimacy and commitment. But then as you maybe go further along in your relationship, you might lose the passion and just have commitment and intimacy and then you might lose the intimacy and just have commitment and then you might lose the commitment and have nothing. It also describes some of the relationships that happen in between, like situationships, like affairs. It describes friendships, it describes people who stay for the kids. It describes, you know, the people that you meet in those brief moments, maybe only for a couple of hours or for a week and you never see them again. You have this brilliant, beautiful moment, basically. I like that it doesn't show love as the static thing or as this, you know, singular kind of thing. I also like that for a theory, and a rather dated one at that, it actually has a lot of real world application in modern day evidence. For example, a 2020 looked at the application of this theory in 25 countries from all inhabited continents. It had over 11,000 respondents and it found that yes, this theory actually does hold up under many different contexts and in many different cultures. This theory of love does represent many of the kinds of relationships that people will experience and go through. Another reason I like this theory is because it's can kind of act as a litmus test for whether the relationship you're in is fulfilling all that you want it to fulfill. I think in our 20s we encounter a lot of half baked relationships and we go back and forth on is this person right, is this relationship right or not, should we stay, should we go? And this is a great way of kind of analyzing our relationship and saying, okay, but do we have intimacy? Do we have passion? Do we have commitment? If I seriously look at my relationship and it's missing one of these things, well, I actually don't have consummate love as much as I might feel like I have some kind of love. The thing is, you probably do have some kind of love, but is it the kind of love that you expect and that you want that will fulfill all three of these needs for you? Now something you may have noticed is that whilst the triangular theory of love is definitely a good start, it is kind of missing some things. It's definitely got the foundations down pat. It's definitely stripped love to its very bare scientific stumps. But some researchers have remarked that it doesn't talk about culture, it doesn't really talk about the context in which a relationship is taking place. It treats the love between two people as if it's occurring in a vacuum. It doesn't include things like family expectations. It doesn't include things like values, religion, money, other circumstances that are keeping people apart. All these things do impact whether love lasts. And where we sit on the triangle, I think favorable or unfavorable circumstances or the practicality of one's love should also be a factor as to whether a consummate love will be achieved or will last. But again, I think this theory doesn't claim to have predictive powers over whether a love will last. You know, so we. It can't ask from it more than it wants to give. It kind of just gives the ingredients which will cause it to form. So again, maybe I'm asking a little bit too much from a scientific theory, but it's still something to think about. Another criticism is that it doesn't specify whether multiple consummate loves can occur at the same time. You know, people in polyamorous relationships, for example, would claim that that can occur. But this is an old model and it doesn't kind of include or represent some of the newer forms of love that we are experiencing or seeing in the modern day. Especially since it was first created, founded in the 80s when there was definitely a lot of love that wasn't socially acceptable or talked about, but was still valid. Finally, and this is the biggest issue I find with this theory, it doesn't cover whether one person can be in consummate love and another person just be in passionate love or fatuous love or empty love at the same time. It doesn't explain or provide an explanation as to whether two people in the same relationship can actually be at different spots on the triangle. What kind of love is occurring then? Do both people have to be experiencing the same combination for the love to be that thing? Or could you have consummate love on one end, fatuous love on the other, and does that still count as a kind of love? You know this theory is very one dimensional, right? It is literally a 2D triangle. Look it up, you'll see what I'm talking about. But the feelings we feel towards someone at any given moment are multidirectional and they are 4D, 5D, 6D and they are complex. You can have all three ingredients and still not be able to be together because you know it won't work, or because distance keeps Distance keeps you apart or because there is another factor here that isn't being explained by this model. And you know, what about people with relationship anxiety? Where do everyday doubts about our relationship fit into this? Does having doubts mean you can never be in consummate love? I don't think so. I think it's a very natural part of a relationship. And this is just another reminder that a theory is not a full. It's not going to provide the full picture. It's not going to explain everything. It's just a theory. This is where the quadruple theory of love comes in, which has expanded on the triangular theory of love to kind of give it some more texture. The quadruple theory was first introduced in 2020, so we're a long time after the triangular theory. It's much newer, and it proposes that love is built on attraction, connection, slash resonance, trust and respect. This model, I think, describes how love develops over time much better. It also allows for more types of love to be analyzed, since it has that fourth factor. I think it allows for parental love, love between friends, polyamorous love to fitness into this model. And I like that it also includes resonance and trust rather than just commitment, because you can be committed in a very basic way and still not trust the person you're with or have respect for them. So I think that this does go deeper into, like, the complex factors and the human emotion of it all. It also describes the love cycle in a more, I think, a less stagnant way. If you want to look up the quadruple theory of love, it actually has a model and a visual representation for the love cycle it describes, which I think is a lot more comprehensive and beautiful. I think it's less of a black and white model as well, which I love. But yes, this is a very new theory. It doesn't have as much evidence, but I do think a combination of the triangular and the quadruple theory would give us a much more complete version of what love looks like as humans. But I want to know, do you think that with all this conversation about theories, love could ever actually ever be fully explained by a model or by a theory like these ones? Are researchers and psychologists just trying too hard to categorize something that can't be categorized? That's the big question I keep coming back to. At least if we know every and any theory will be an oversimplification in some way or exclude some kind of love in another way, why do we keep attempting to create these models? And is love something that really needs to be studied or graphed or can it only ever just be experienced? And that unique experience is as comprehensive as we may ever make of it? I don't know. I go back and forth. I really love looking into these theories, but sometimes I'm like, you're just never gonna. It's never gonna be the full picture, so why even try? But I guess they would say that trying is what gets us as close as we can be. I also know that when I was in my previous relationships, this model did help me understand what was missing. So it does really help in those ways and it does give words to a feeling. But I want to know what you think. Drop a comment below. Tell me how you feel. Tell me whether you think this is a good theory, a bad theory, and also give me some suggestions for some other theories you think I should cover. I really want to do an episode, another Psychology Bites bonus episode on personality tests. Whether they're a myth or not. I really want to talk about narcissism, sociopathy, all of those things. Concepts that I think are talked about a lot but which you know, we may not have the depth of knowledge on them that we should have. So I would love to hear your ideas. And I want to thank you for listening to this smaller episode. Tell me what you think, Tell me if you like it. Make sure to share it with a friend if you think they would enjoy it as well. And yeah, follow us along wherever you are listening so you get more content like this in your feed. Give us a 5 star review only if you feel called to do so. And I always forget to say this, but follow me on Instagram at thatpsychology podcast if you want to see some behind the scenes scene stuff, some like simplified breakdowns of these topics. If you want to be able to chat more with me about these episodes, I'd love to hear from you. Until next time, thanks for tuning in. Stay safe. Be kind, Be gentle with yourself. We will talk very, very soon.

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