Love: Defining the Three Essentials
What love is and how to put it into practice
“Love is blind.”
“Love is in the air.”
“All you need is love.”
While some of these could be true, it’s difficult to define love. Love can’t be reduced to simple one-liners. We recently asked a couple who had been married for over 60 years what the key to their longevity was. In unison, they both said, “Love.”
We agreed but wondered, what does love look like? How do you put love into action in day-to-day life?
We asked ourselves this question about our 30 years of love and discovered some basics—some foundations to healthy love in marriage. As we were processing our own love journey, we listed a variety of aspects, attributes, and actions. And in researching, we found a scientific understanding of love called The Triangular Model of Love, introduced by Robert Sternberg in 1986.
We modified it slightly, but this model provides a solid structure for understanding the essentials of love shared between a husband and wife. After all, you can’t develop what you can’t define.
The big idea is that these three are not independent of one another, but the strength is in the connection of all three. There are seasons where one side may be stronger than the other. But the ideal is they would all grow and develop equally.
- Commitment
The first component is commitment. Commitment is established on the wedding day, but it is a choice that has to be maintained every day following. Practice keeping those promises every day, and stay committed to each other through the worst. That’s why commitment is the foundation of the triangle. Without commitment, a marriage cannot thrive.
In the English language, we only have one word for love. But in the Greek language, there are seven words for love. The best Greek word for the kind of commitment that builds a strong marriage is agape, characterized by unconditional, positive regard, acceptance, faithfulness, and commitment. And this is the kind of committed love that Jesus Christ demonstrated for all of us—self-sacrificial love.
In Ephesians 5:25, the apostle Paul writes, “husbands should love their wives just as Christ loved the church, and He gave Himself for her.”
The word he uses here is husbands should agapeo your wife, just as Christ agapeo the Church and gave Himself for her. There are three things about this kind of love that we see in this verse.
- Agape love is divine. It originates from God Himself.
- Agape love is self-sacrificing. It’s oriented to someone else.
- Agape love is one way. It’s a love that’s given whether or not love is returned.
We see the perfect model of agape love in Christ’s sacrifice, which demonstrates full surrender, giving up for the sake of something else—us. His death on the cross made a way for us to reestablish a relationship with God. Romans 5:8 describes this aspect of love through his commitment to us: “God demonstrates His love for us in this While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” Christ’s commitment to us sets the standard for us to pursue.
2. Emotional Intimacy
The next part of the triangle is emotional intimacy. Again, if we were to pull from the Greek understanding of love, there are two aspects of love; affection and friendship. The word for affection is storge. This word describes familial affection and care. Storge is an expression of love that holds meaning to the spouse on the receiving end (like the five love languages). But to fully understand the emotional intimacy side of the construct, we combined storge affection with a Greek word phileo, meaning friendship. And this is the aspect of knowing and being known, with the freedom to share dreams, desires, and hurts.
3. Passion
The final piece of the triangular model that can be experienced is passion. The Greek word here is eros, which means passion, lust, or pleasure. It is an appreciation for your spouse’s physical being or beauty and is driven by attraction and sexual longing. It describes the desire and is most similar to what we think of as romantic, passionate love between spouses. This component of love drives romantic and sexual love, which involves the heart, soul, mind, and body of a husband and wife.
Passion is dependent on commitment and emotional intimacy. All three build and strengthen one another. But every couple’s triangle is going to have times when it’s shifting and changing in shape and size. So sometimes commitment may be stronger than emotional intimacy. Sometimes emotional intimacy may be stronger than passion. It’s going to take different shapes through different seasons of life. Balance is a solid goal. However, life does not always allow for complete balance. So there’s going to be struggle, hurt, and damage. And any side impacts the whole, so it’s important to work and grow your commitment to one another continually.
Practice your promise every day. Weed selfishness and feed service. Be intentional in developing your emotional intimacy. Don’t get comfortable being with each other because comfortability leads to complacency. Familiarity breeds contempt, so work on your friendship and affection constantly.
About James & Lisa
James and Lisa Duvall share truths and lessons learned from their 29 years of marriage and over a decade of teaching, coaching, and speaking on marriage.
