Romantic Love is Not Only “Romantic”: A Grounded Theory Study on Love in Romantic Relationships

Abstract

With romantic love having long been studied with a focus on the romantic component and how it is expressed, little is known about what love is as a feeling in romantic relationships from the recipient’s perspective. This study aimed to understand love as a feeling in romantic relationships by analyzing open-ended responses about what makes people feel loved by their romantic partner in a college sample of 462 undergraduates (age: M = 18.93, SD = 2.86; 77.92% female) and a community sample of 75 adults (age: M = 32.36, SD = 16.53; 93.18% female) using grounded theory methodology. Findings indicated that Positive responsiveness (to needs), Authentic connection, and A sense of stability were three core elements of love in romantic relationships. By comparing these three core categories (and their underlying categories and concepts) across both samples and demographic characteristics (i.e., gender, race, and household income), this study also provided preliminary evidence on the generalizability of this three-component framework: (1) all (core) categories were overlapping across two samples, and all concepts generated in the small community sample were a subset of those generated in the large college sample; (2) all categories and core categories were overlapping across gender, race, and household income, with “positive responsiveness” being the most common component across demographics consistently. This three-component framework of romantic love is consistent with love’s multifaceted nature, serves as an initial step toward integrating existing theoretical frameworks about love, and, if replicated, would inform relationship-focused interventions.

Keywords:

• Romantic love
• romantic relationship
• qualitative method
• grounded theory
• feeling loved

Acknowledgement

The authors thank Allison Freud, Isabelle Kyle, Hannah Sliman, Alana Enright, and Taylor Connelly for their help with qualitative data coding, Boden Roberts on for his support with qualitative methods, and all the participants whose support made this study possible.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Gender “other” group n = 6 is too small for this and following analysis.

2 Race “other” group n = 8 is too small for this and following analysis.

Additional information

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Notes on contributors

Yi Chen

Yi Chen is a doctoral student in the Department of Educational Studies in Psychology at the University of Alabama. Her research interests include love, moral psychology, mental health, and time perception.

Mengya Xia

Mengya Xia is an assistant professor in the T. Denny Sanford School of Social and Family Dynamics and the director of the DREAMS lab at the Arizona State University. Her research focuses on individual positive development in complex family dynamics, interpersonal processes, and other ecological contexts.

Shannon Dunne

Shannon Dunne is currently pursuing a Master of Education in Clinical Mental Health Counseling at Auburn University and works as a therapist intern on the in-patient psychiatry unit at East Alabama Medical Center. Her research interests include social relationships and associated feelings, cognitions, and behaviors.