the love triangle

I came across this article in the newspaper which spoke about a particular ‘love triangle’ theory of sorts. Frankly at first glance, the theory looked stupid and in a way funny. Maybe it was because of this belief I had/have that ‘love’ is too complicated and the fact that someone could formulate a theory about it just did not go well with me.

For all of those who remember from their earlier studies, we had studied something called as the fire triangle. Well its basic concept was that unless all the 3 constituents of the 3 sides of the triangle are present there cannot be a fire. This theory also stated something similar.

Let me elaborate. The theory states that the 3 constituents are: intimacy, passion and commitment. It states that you have a ‘perfect’ love if you have all 3 of these in the relationship, but various permutations and combinations of these 3 lead to various ‘kinds of love’. To state a few, if your relationship has only intimacy, you’re only friends. If your relationship has only passion, it’s just an infatuation. If your relationship is made up of intimacy and passion, then it’s a romantic love affair. Unfortunately I cannot remember anything related to the commitment part of the triangle .

Anyways, the point I’m trying to make is…can you really form theories and classifications for something like ‘love’. For as far as I can remember ‘love’ has been an undefinable word for me. Each one to themselves. What is love for me may not necessarily mean love for you and vice versa. I will leave you with this line from a song, ‘I love the way you love me, but I hate the way I’m supposed to love you back.’