The Role Of Love In Romantic Relationships

“Love looks not with the eyes but with the mind”

There is so much more to love than mere physical attraction. There are an infinite amount of factors that are unique to each individual and each relationship that play a role in the romantic love between two people. In this paper I will attempt to discuss just a few of these.

One factor of love is that there are no set boundaries or definitions for any kind of love (Sternberg and Barnes 1988). Love and how it is expressed is completely up to the persons involved in the relationship. Also because there are no set rules to love, some people may value the physical attractiveness of a potential partner much more than someone else may. Jonason (2009) found that this can be affected by the persons environment as if the individual is surrounded by attractive people and most of their candidates for a romantic relationship are attractive than they would be more critical for all factors including physical attractiveness. On the flip side, those who are not surrounded by many attractive candidates may ‘settle’ for someone who may not be considered very attractive. Jonason (2009) also found that those who did not see more physically attractive candidates were happier in their relationship. Not valuing physical attractiveness greatly may also be a result of the

This is an aspect shown early on in courtship but most likely continue throughout the relationship. The idea is that if you feel happy and positive when around someone, you will be more likely to be attracted to them (Sternberg and Byrnes). Oppositely, if someone is negative and makes you feel negative then you will most likely be turned off of them (Sutton and Douglas 2013). While this is most likely primarily affected by if the individual has a positive personality, it could also be affected by environment such as music you like playing while you are with that