Theory of Love: Intimacy, Passion & Commitment Explored - Essay Sample

Introduction

The theory of love by Robert J. Sternberg revolves around the context of interpersonal relationship outlining the components of love, which include passion, intimacy, and commitment or decision. Sternberg's philosophy of love depicts the intimacy component entails the feelings of connectedness, closeness, and fondness between two people (Sternberg, 1998). The component of passion denotes the drives of romantic, sexual consummation, or physical attraction related to the love relationship between people. While as the decision or commitment component refer to the choice and will to maintain the love between people. Based on any of the components of love in Sternberg theoretical perspective the arousal, enthusiasm, romantic, excitement, and or attachment towards another person is the primary feeling that is personal or private. The different stages and kinds of love in a love relationship illustrate the nature of interpersonal connection likely to survive the bonds and strengths between people (Sternberg, 1986). This paper will explore the elements of love relationship depicted in the movie "Her" and the story "The Beauty and the Beast" in relation with to the psychological perspectives in line with Sternberg's love theory.

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The Movie "Her"

The 2013 movie "Her" by Spike Jonze is the scariest film on the wake of the deceptive era of technological advancement in human interpersonal relationship. The elements of love are the driving theme where the protagonist, Theodore, to represent a futuristic human relationship. The illusion of relationships results in the experiences infused between interpersonal or infused to technological dependence.

The Elements of Love in the Movie

In the movie, "Her" there are various love relationships between the characters. Initially, Theodore had a love relationship with his ex-wife that is depicted through his narration to Samantha on their encounters. Although, much is not shown on the interactions between the two, understanding the stages of love is displayed in the way Theodore suffers from that relationship. The relationship had gone through the different stages of love, by the way, the three components of love; passion, intimacy, and commitment are shown before their divorce. At the moment Theodore is talking to Samantha about their love with his ex-wife he is defensive at the idea that there was no love between them because there was the absence of intimacy, passion, and commitment of over one year. Theodore snaps at Samantha because it was still hurting to have lost someone he cared for.

The kind of love that can be depicted in this kind of love relationship can be described using Sternberg's perception in the hypothesis of love to show different stages and categories their experiences. Although the love relationship does not have any physical or intimacy connection from the protagonist's point of view the liking and compassionate he stills holds of his ex-wife shows that passion and commitment still exist among them. The ex-wife lacks any commitment towards this failed marriage because of the duration she stays away from Theodore depicting empty love as well as irrational love stages from each party.

Another love relationship in the movie "Her" is the one between Theodore and Samantha. Although, Samantha is an operating system lacking the human body and feel the fascination she is programmed to evoke in Theodore depicts different types of love. Theodore trusts Samantha and can tell her anything but Samantha is not open enough to reciprocate the trust. During their numerous debates, Samantha is judgmental towards Theodore's point of view in most of the things they discuss. This kind of love relationship between Theodore and Samantha depicts infatuation because of the lack of intimacy and commitment. Theodore starts to depict a sexual daydream he is having around Samantha, telling her that he wishes she was genuine which he might hold her. As he depicts what he needs to do to her, Samantha tells him to keep telling her what he needs to do and she makes clamors of joy, groaning, "I need you interior me." They share in a merry shared sexual encounter; "I feel you everywhere!" Theodore moans. We see the lights of Los Angeles and listen to Samantha and Theodore talking in a post-coital marvelous state. "Everything else fair vanished, and I adored that," Samantha says. Theodore looks at his computer the following day, sometime recently turning it on and inquiring Samantha on the off chance that he has any emails. Their discussion has a cumbersome tone the night after they had "sex," and Samantha tells Theodore, "Last night was astonishing. It feels like something changed in me and there's no turning back. You woke me up." Theodore tells Samantha that he cannot commit to anything right presently, and she prods him that she doesn't commit to the relationship.

The empty and infatuated love relationship occur because it turns out, robot computers can have wanted, and Samantha's is too gotten to be more complicated, so she can way better mimic the encounter of being a human. When Theodore wakes up within the center of the night and inquires her what she's doing, she tells him she's perusing exhortation columns in trusts of getting to be more complicated. In this way, Theodore and Samantha are on inverse and parallel ventures; whereas Theodore yearns to be less complicated, to not be so frequented by his possess wants and human quirks, Samantha wants to have the complex internal life of a human. Not as it were that, but she wants to have a body, as she concedes dishonorably to Theodore on their wander into people-watching. Whereas Theodore needs to lose himself and vanish into innovation (video diversions and web porn), Samantha yearns to be a living, breathing human being, with all that involves.

Samantha's crave to be more human and complicated unfurls in parallel to Theodore's troubles with his ex-wife, Catherine. Theodore tells Samantha that Catherine is still frantic at him since he "hid" from her and he "left her alone within the relationship." In differentiate to his relationship with Samantha, in which he appears her each portion of himself and welcomes her to connect him in each perspective of his life, Theodore sees that he was more protected in his relationship to Catherine, which the relationship endured as a result. In this way, a portion of Theodore's issue is that he feels more comfortable opening up to a generic gadget, a mysterious working framework, than a genuine, complex human being. Samantha needs to end up more complicated and human, but her remoteness and status as a robot are precisely what pulls in Theodore and what makes him believe her more.

Throughout this segment of the film, Theodore gets to be increasingly joined to Samantha and her capacity to walk him through his life and deliver him the will to live. After his restless discussion with her within the center of the night, Samantha empowers Theodore to induce out of bed, talking to him in an infantilizing maternal tone of voice and calling him "money." Afterward, she strolls him through a swarmed carnival with his eyes closed, much to his enchanting, coordinating him towards the pizza counter to arrange a cut. In this way, Samantha gets to be more than fair a computer or a collaborator; she becomes a kind of surrogate parent, strolling Theodore through the method of getting out of bed and bolstering himself, giving him the capacity to live his life. The computerized companion in Her gets to be a representation of a candidly dispossessed man outsourcing his possess wants onto a more indifferent stage, a voice in his head that can reenact self-care and joy.

The film is eventually most concerned with the address of human association versus distance and human beings' one of a kind crave to combine with others; to know them, get it them, and interface with them. "Sometimes I see at individuals and I make myself attempt and feel them as more than fair an irregular individual strolling by," Theodore tells Samantha as they walk through an open space, looking at outsiders. He needs so gravely to get it, other individuals, to get it what spurs them and why they carry on in certain ways, but he cannot very bring himself to look for out human association on his possess, looking for out Samantha instep. Theodore's companions empower him to spend more time with them, and his ex-wife loathes the truth that he never opened up to her, however, he cannot act on his possess crave for human association, chasing the specter of Samantha.

Application of Sternberg's Love Theory in the Love Relationships in the Movie "Her"

I intend to undertake to analyze everything in lives of the personalities depicted in love relationships in the movie "Her" so I think analyzing the sort of cherish portrayed in adore tunes as we did in the lesson is fun. I looked at American tunes particularly and was inquisitive to see whether most of them would portray the enthusiast side of the cherish triangle since Westernized societies appear to put more accentuation on energy in connections. I began by looking at random songs such as the primary one, the Pulse tune. But at that point to create it more objective to see a more precise slant of what sort of love is portrayed. So after looking at those melodies closely, I don't think that there's any particular sort depicted much more essential than the other. In any case, I feel that liking/intimacy is more often than not implied. I think it would be curiously to test whether melodies depicting a component lost in one's relationship would make somebody feel that their relationship is lost and the grass is greener on the other side.

I continuously felt that enthusiasm is a fundamental portion of "love", so it was curiously to memorize that other sorts of cherishing are moreover considered substantial. I ponder whether that thought has been embedded in my head through the media. Catherine and Samantha are polar alternate extremes, and the truth that Catherine draws consideration to this leads Theodore to reexamine his relationship to the working framework and his estranged relationship to his claim life. Where Catherine was imaginative and enthusiastic, Samantha is steady and judicious. Where Catherine challenged Theodore, Samantha asserts. Within the cutting words she sends her ex-husband's way, Catherine makes it clear that Theodore was not touchy sufficient to her needs and did not attempt difficult sufficient to investigate being a human being with her. As he realizes that she is maybe right, Theodore subsides in his relationship to Samantha and starts to recognize the ways that he is sidestepping being a display and crucial human being.

"The Beauty and the Beast"

The Element of Love in the Story "The Beauty and the Beast"

The kinds of love relationships shown in the story "Beauty and the Beast" are turnaround fairy-tale: rather than the sovereign sparing the princess, the princess spares the ruler. The Beast's internal travel is a curiously one, because of the significance it brings to the concept of love in the story. The story capitalizes on the saying "Love is within the eye of the viewer". In both main characters in the story, Beauty and the Beast, the two least likely individuals drop in love, whereas they are beneath a spell. In the fare tale "The Beauty and the Beast" is a virtue Love may be a common subject not as it were within the excitement industry, but as well as in life. Love offers, and individuals within the motion picture businesses get it this and pick up from the profit. Movies regularly depict love between two individuals who are both excellent, and not continue the finest individual they can be on the interior.

In Disney's story on "The Beauty and the Beast" shows the type of love that the char...