RELATIONSHIP

Do you score high on passion, intimacy or commitment? Here’s how to work on your relationship to keep the romance alive.

Find out if being one half of a couple is the right move for your sanity with this quiz. You’re welcome.

Love can be beautiful, and desire serious. But, romance? Romance is a wonder spell. We all enjoy seeing the hero get the girl. Happy endings make for happy evenings. But the real work in a relationship begins after the credits roll. In this age of ghosting (thanks to Snapchat) and ‘swipe right’ (as in Tinder), romance is often postponed. Well, almost.

Romantics, like me, would still vote for that famous line from Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s Love in the Time of Cholera, “Love, no matter what else it might be, was a natural talent… You are either born knowing how, or you never know.”

But to love in the age of social media is a tad complicated. The other day I was with a girlfriend in a coffee shop and discussing relationships. Technology buzzed all around us. Romance, she said, was boring, adding that she had stopped seeing her partner.

I told her it was her wired overstimulated brain that was to blame. Maybe if her boyfriend came with a Facebook share button, she would like him?

‘I guess,’ she said, ‘to love and lose in our Insta lives is so much of a hard work.’

So, here we are a week before Valentine’s Day, trying to help you figure out what kind of a romantic you are. Are heart-shaped chocolates boxes your thing or do you believe romantic love is reserved only in books and theatre?

Tanuka Gupta, a consultant clinical psychologist with 25 years of expertise in helping clients to build emotional resilience, says, ‘while romantic love is the one we think of when we think of Valentine’s Day, The Triangular Theory of Love proposed by psychologist Robert Sternberg in 1985 proves there is more to love than only romance.

‘According to Sternberg’s theory, love has three components: Intimacy (feelings of closeness, connectedness); Passion, (feelings and desires that lead to physical attraction) and Commitment (feelings that lead a person to remain with someone and move towards shared goals).’

The three components go on to generate seven possible combinations, but remember, no relationship is likely to be a pure case of any one of them:

1. You rate high on passion: When you are attracted to your partner but do not feel very close to each other enough to plan for a long term future. This love can be called “love at first sight.” It is difficult to sustain this bond once passion wanes off.

2. You are high on passion and commitment: When you have the fire of passion and need to feel committed without deep liking for each other. This love could be termed as “fantasy love” where the zeal to commit is based on passion rather than mature emotional closeness. This love can result in much chaos and emotional turbulence in the relationship.

3. You rate high on commitment: When you see it as a form of duty to preserve a relationship. The passion and intimacy are missing here. Most often seen in the beginning of arranged marriages or year-old marriages where “staying together” becomes the main element rather than passion or emotional bond.

4. You rate high on intimacy and passion: When you believe in the unbelievable meeting of body and mind without a care in the world and no fear of the future which means the commitment aspect is missing. You prefer to live in the now with the constant heady feeling of “being in love.” This is mostly seen in young adults or in teenage years.

5. You rate high on intimacy and commitment: When you share powerful emotional bonds as best friends and unparalleled commitment to each other’s welfare but lack of passion makes it a chaste arrangement. This love is usually found in older relationships, and can be a very satisfying relationship.

‘Impulsive romantics might be more inclined to surprise their partners in a way that suits their lifestyle, for example: a trip to a foreign country’

6. You rate high on intimacy only: When you are friends with your partner without the passion. You end up liking the person and being comfortable around him/her. You want to stay together but are not connected by passion, body or mind. This is found in friendships as well.

7. You rate high on all three components: When you believe in consummate love. The seven-year itch has not impacted you as you are deeply in love, connected, committed to each other’s physical and emotional needs. This is blissful love.

Sternberg had once said “Love is a verb” and Gupta echoes him when she says, ‘We have to keep working with the three elements of intimacy, passion and commitment in a relationship even if you are in the most satisfactory consummate love.’

Dubai-based Evelyne L. Thomas, trained in Emotionally-Focused Therapy, says, ‘Impulsive romantics might be more inclined to surprise their partners in a way that suits their lifestyle (for example: a trip to a foreign country, rather than a romantic candle-lit dinner). However, the needs for safety and security remain the same. We are happier when we are in a safe relationship, when we know our partner will have our back. We feel safer when we can rely on each other and trust each other. We feel happier when we know we feel connected. The need for connection has not changed.’