Love and Dating: How Passion, Intimacy, and Commitment Combine
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When swiping through apps or dancing at the club, have you ever felt like you didn’t vibe with the dating scene? A lot of factors contribute to this feeling of displacement, like beautyism, sexism, the focus on youth culture, or just a lack of shared interests. Yet what if there’s something deeper at work? What if our unique need for love changes our expectations of courtship?
Sternberg’s Triangular Theory of Love is perhaps the most prominent in psychology, making his 45-item Triangular Love Scale (TLS-45) one of the most widely used in the field. To balance the heart, Sternberg suggested a harmony of Passion, Intimacy, and Commitment.
When we hold all three, our relationships feel whole, becoming what’s known as Consummate Love.
Yet we usually don’t begin with all three, and the truth is not every relationship needs all three since we look for self-expansion, vulnerability, and interdependence at different times in our lives for a variety of reasons.
Taken together, Passion, Intimacy, and Commitment yield seven different kinds of love. So instead of looking for hot singles in your area, it may be time to examine what kind of romance you’re looking for, and how to foster these different kinds of connection.
To visualize this, imagine a temple. The temple to love itself! Imagine three doors leading to three inner chambers. Passion, Intimacy, and Commitment are invaluable, as each unlocks a whole new part of this temple, yet where do you begin? Which door do you unlock first? Which door do you unlock second? And what does this say about the kind of dating scene you’re looking for?
Passion: Infatuation
Entering the temple of love through Passion’s door, we find a room full of sound and color and sensory stimulation. Passion makes us feel alive, so we’re paying close attention to desire and chemistry. There may not be clear words for this feeling, or even a clear path forward, but there is undeniable intensity. Fireworks.
Yet passion, sans intimacy or commitment, is called infatuation, and it’s easy to spot in the dating scene. During first contact, people may try to gauge sparks with short coffee dates, yet this can backfire as passion requires more than a cappuccino. If you’re looking for passion, you may need to go big or go home with adventurous nights on the town you’ll never forget. Just remember, there’s no commitment here. Kisses flutter away, and some may fall in and out of bed just to test things out. Others may text a lot or find ways to stay proximate, not to say anything deep or personal, but to flirt, smile, wink, and insinuate.
Passion feels very exciting but ludic, so as things progress, infatuated couples may avoid labels or any inference of commitment. This makes everything an implicit vibe check. You may find this a very natural expression of affection, especially if you’re good at reading body language and implied cues. If not, this lack of explicit communication can be very confusing. Some may go through a “situationship” where no one’s saying what their relationship status is because the lack of intimacy means they can’t trust themselves, the other person, or even the feeling of love itself.
This is the kind of scene we find in bars, clubs, and raves where it’s honestly too noisy to talk. While people may look down on infatuation as lustful or purely hedonistic, there is a time in many people’s lives where fun, excitement, and spontaneity may actually be a healing step in their growth. Infatuation is hot, not just because it’s short-lived, but because it’s a bodily experience. Intoxicating pheromones turned up to ten.
Intimacy: Liking
Entering the temple of love through Intimacy’s door, we find a cozy fireside perfect for a good conversation. Intimacy begins by liking someone. This is often where you’ll find demisexuals, since their sexual attraction for someone only deepens with their trust of a person. This chamber of love is often the most occupied, as it’s also where our friends live. Unfortunately, because Western culture showers love with rose petals, many people mistake their desire for intimacy as a desire for sex or romance, which may not be so. When we crave intimacy, without passion or commitment, we desire understanding, authenticity, and genuine emotional connection. We’re craving a friend.
If this sounds like you, it may be time to pivot away from dating apps to focus on friendship and community building. Join a sports team, or a hiking group, or trivia night, or even a support group that fosters vulnerability. Reach out to old mates from school or ask your coworkers out for a drink. These activities may not be instantaneously satisfying, since it takes time to build trust and become vulnerable, but they’re worth it.
Commitment: Empty Love
Entering the temple of love through Commitment’s door, we find a rather straightforward room with very detailed architecture. When Commitment stands alone, without passion or intimacy, we’re left with a pragmatic list of wants and needs. This is evident in arranged marriages where people are wed for functional reasons. While traditional, ceremonial, and religious practices spring to mind, money is often the most common motive, as people pool resources and share responsibilities for practical reasons.
This is not to say there is no warmth in such a structured, transactional relationship, as people don’t need to be amorous or vulnerable in order to be amiable or kind. As long as everyone’s honest about the nature of the relationship, and all parties involved can meet their needs elsewhere, some can be quite agreeable to Empty Love. Consider the number of dating apps that align prospective partners by credit score, socioeconomic status, or to match sugar babies with sugar daddies/mommies.
Also, no room in love’s temple is a dead end, which means starting with commitment doesn’t automatically result in Empty Love. It just means you know what you want out of life. Speed dating can be useful for people who don’t want to waste time, because they know what they’re looking for in a partner, whether it’s marriage, or kids, or retiring to the Bahamas. And for many people, it’s only after they meet someone with shared goals that they begin to unlock emotional intimacy or let themselves feel passion.
Intimacy Plus Commitment: Companionate Love
In Companionate Love, emotional intimacy and reliable commitment are central. Many of us feel Companionate Love for our best friends, yet we can also feel this way for long-term life partners. After all, not everyone falls in love; some descend into it slowly, and for many the lack of passion isn’t a bug, it’s a feature. Being platonic or not is beside the point, for while sex and romance are nice, have you ever trusted someone so deeply they became your foundational rock?
Since dating apps swipe left and right too quickly, Companions are more likely to meet online, where they can write like pen pals or exchange playful memes. In real-world settings, Companions find each other in friend groups, which is not without its fair share of complications! It can be tricky to transition from a friend to a partner, but the progression often feels natural. Some may start with intimacy and build enough trust for commitment. Some may start with commitment and build enough trust for intimacy. In either case, it can help to witness each other’s trustworthiness firsthand. Instead of romantic dates, try investing in each other’s interests, sharing each other’s goals, and even traveling together.
Passion Plus Commitment: Fatuous Love
Fatuous love struggles with emotional intimacy, so it doesn’t like to bog things down with too much introspection. The libidinous will favor eye contact and physical touch, whereas the cerebral may info dump, talking for hours without wanting to “jinx how good it’s going.” Why? Because there’s an underlying fear that one’s lover may be too good to be true or betray one’s trust, leading to a hungry, push-pull dynamic. The Hendrick’s love model calls this manic love, while those versed in attachment theory may relate this feeling to disorganized attachment in children and fearful-avoidant attachment in adults.
As you can imagine, Fatuous lovers have a lot of arguments, since combining passion and commitment without the trust of intimacy can foster jealousy and insecurity. The very word Fatuous comes from the Latin Fatuus, or foolish, and it shows up early in relationships as a cycle of arguments and make-up sex, fights, and grand gestures.
Dating scenes that focus on transactions are steeped in Fatuous Love, as they follow a script of behavior that substitutes for actual intimacy. Dress up. Go out. Pay for dinner. Put out for sex. It’s all very formulaic so that no one actually has to say anything too personal.
Yet this works for some people, especially if intimacy is too scary because of their trauma history, or because a patriarchal system represses vulnerability in favor of stoicism. With therapeutic help, it may be possible to cultivate vulnerability, but all parties involved must be willing to do so, and that’s not always the case. Some people prefer Fatuous Love, and even find jealousy sexy. Some prefer hard rules of engagement and even a feeling of possessiveness. Versions of this exist in both traditional dating scenes with clearly defined gender roles, as well as alternative dating scenes with hierarchical power dynamics dressed in leather.
Passion Plus Intimacy: Romantic Love
When both passion and intimacy are unlocked, we feel romantic love here and now. This kind of life-affirming, carpe diem love is most often found in budding relationships that have yet to commit, summer romances that may never commit, free-love movements, or certain non-monogamous circles.
Yet romance isn’t youthful puppy love, as it’s grounded in authentic connection. In fact,
one study of 273 participants, aged 18 to 74, found that age alone didn’t affect people’s felt experience of love. Indeed, people in the second half of their life may seek romance to feel alive again. Not only this, romance doesn’t automatically decrease over the length of a relationship. Cynical readers who have felt passion wane over time may squint at this, but it’s not age that’s the key variable here. Passion is linked to self-expansion, which is why new relationships are full of it and why young people feel it more. But romance only plateaus when we plateau.
When we fall in love with someone, we integrate them into our lives, and vice versa, expanding our sense of self in so many dimensions. Relationships that focus on comfort and consistency may naturally lose some of their romance as they drift towards Companionate Love. Yet relationships that focus on dynamic growth and being each other’s muse of inspiration are more likely to maintain and reinvigorate romance.
To be expected, romantic dating scenes are emotive and expressive which is why they’re so often connected to a story. Even couples who meet online validate their love through romantic narratives, to gas up the relationship and keep this feeling alive.
To increase the odds of a wild encounter, it can help to go to life-affirming events or activities. Sure, dances, clubs, and raves come to mind, but they’re only a small fraction of the possibilities. Classrooms, art galleries, nature walks, and political rallies all hold potential, because romance isn’t just physical; it’s also intellectual, artistic, and empowered. Anywhere you find people actualizing their dreams and life goals, you’ll find people moved by self-expansion, and with it? Romance.
Yet more to the point, you can hear it in social groups where people tell romantic stories about their lives and, most of all, about falling in love.
Passion, Intimacy, Commitment: Consummate Love
Relationships that only value passion burn out in half the time. Relationships that only value intimacy feel connected but not romantic. Relationships that only value commitment become pragmatic and empty. Yet when we have an equilibrium of all three, we unlock the whole temple, reaching Consummate Love.
It takes time to cultivate, revealing itself progressively through all the highs and lows a relationship experiences, so we’re unlikely to start with Consummate Love on the first date. Even if you’re jumping into a relationship with both feet forward and your eyes open, people are multifaceted, and certain aspects of your partner may only emerge in certain contexts. This is why it can help to try a variety of experiences when dating someone for the first time. This is not to say you should contrive tests or run your lovers through a gauntlet. Not at all. Just be mindful of each other as you naturally find yourselves in new situations.
Consider how online love interests take a big step when they meet face-to-face. Or how we learn a lot about our lovers when we introduce them to our friends and family. How do they react when the car bursts a tire on the road trip? Do they pout or help out? Do they clean up well for the ball? Do they shuffle their feet or come to life? While we can all enter the temple of love through different doors, a balanced relationship requires us to fully understand our partners.
To reach consummate love at the heart of the temple, we have to go beyond the artificiality of dating and see each other holistically.
Alex Stitt, LMHC
Writer & Contributing ExpertAlex Stitt is a nonbinary author, queer theorist, and licensed mental health counselor living in Hawaii. As a proud Queer Counselor, they work to educate professionals in the mental health field interested in working with LGBTQ+ populations. Their textbook, ACT for Gender Identity: The Comprehensive Guide, demonstrates how to apply Acceptance and Commitment Therapy to gender self-actualization.