One word for too many things
French uses a single term where other languages had four. This economy of vocabulary produces part of the misunderstandings attributed to people.
What Greek distinguished
Ancient Greek had several terms that French has gathered together. Eros designated desire and attraction, philia the bond of affection between equals, storge the attachment born of habit and shared life, agape the gift given without expectation of return.
These words did not form a hierarchy from the less noble to the more noble, contrary to what a later reading made of them. They named different relationships, which might or might not coexist between the same people.
The effect of the single word
Gathering all this under a single noun produces a practical consequence: two people can assert that they love each other and designate distinct things, with no phrasing allowing them to notice.
The question that follows, do you love me, is then badly put: it calls for a binary answer about a composite object. What one wanted to know generally bore on one of the components, and the answer bears on the whole.
Contemporary typologies
Psychology has tried to restore these distinctions with other tools. Robert Sternberg proposed in 1986 breaking love down into intimacy, passion and commitment, whose combinations produce distinct forms. John Alan Lee had described as early as 1973 six styles, borrowing moreover from the Greek vocabulary.
These constructions are not discoveries in the sense in which one discovers a mechanism. They are proposed frameworks, evaluated afterwards by their capacity to account for answers to questionnaires, and their interest lies in making nameable what language conflated.
Practical use
Without summoning any theory, a conversation gains from separating what is expected. Expecting intensity, expecting reliability and expecting practical compatibility are three different requests, which a single word rendered indistinct.
Two people who discover they do not expect the same thing have not settled their difficulty, but they finally know what they are talking about. That is the real benefit of these distinctions, and it depends on no figure.
A caution
These typologies are sometimes used to classify people, which none of them allows. The scales built to measure them show, on the contrary, that styles accumulate within the same person, and that they vary from one relationship to another.
Used as labels, they produce the opposite of the intended effect: they serve to explain in advance what one does, and therefore to stop examining it. Used as a vocabulary, they make a conversation possible.
Key points
Greek distinguished with four words what French gathers into one, which renders different expectations indistinct.
The question do you love me calls for a binary answer about a composite object, and therefore misses what it wanted to know.
Contemporary typologies are a useful vocabulary, not a system for classifying people.
This article describes documented mechanisms and disagreements. It recommends no position, no party and no vote, and commits to no reading other than that of the work it cites.
And you, where do you stand?
The Civix test situates your convictions on six dimensions and matches you with one of the twelve profiles, without ever telling you what to think.
Start my test