Roses are red. Violets are blue. Turns out there are nine ways I can love you.
What is love? A team of psychologists from Britain's Nottingham Trent University and University College London has determined that the most popular view of love is one based on mutual trust, recognition and support, reports the BBC News.
But that's just one view. There are other ways to think about love. Eight other ways to be exact.
The research team asked a group of 50 volunteers to sort a set of 60 statements, each of which offered a different view of love. From these results, they were able to identify nine specific types of romantic love ranging from pure sexual attraction to a love that is so powerful it is as if the two people merge into one.
"People down the ages have always tried to capture and pigeon-hole love. The evidence suggests, however, that love is historically and culturally variable," Dr. Simon Watts, senior lecturer in psychology at Nottingham Trent University told the BBC. "There is no one true or definitive account of love, rather there are a limited and interconnected variety of love stories at work in any particular culture." He hopes people will realize there is more than one way to think about love.
Which one describes your relationship? The nine types of love:
1. Trust, Recognition and Support: Described as the "central story of love in our culture."
2. Cupid's Arrow: Love that is rooted in physical attraction.
3. Hedonistic Love: This is little more than the pleasant and self-gratifying feelings of excitement.
4. Love as the Ultimate Connection and Profound Feeling: A belief that love is the most profound of human feelings.
5. Demythologized Love: The romantic myth of love is rejected in favor of hard work and compromise.
6. Love as Transformative Adventure: This is an unpredictable love that brings much pleasure but can easily go wrong.
7. From Cupid's Arrow to Role-Bound Relationship: Love begins as an uncontrollable passion and eventually the couple settle down.
8. From Cupid's Arrow to Friendship: Initial intense feelings give way over time to a relationship that is based on friendship.
9. Dyadic-Partnership Love: Involves "the merging of two people" where both partners put their relationship before their own individual needs.
