Love styles are modus operandi of how people love, originally
developed by John Lee (1973, 1988). He identified six basic love styles also
known as "colours" of love that people use in their interpersonal
relationships:
Eros – a passionate physical
and emotional love based on aesthetic enjoyment; stereotype of romantic love
Ludus – a love that is
played as a game or sport; conquest; may have multiple partners at once
Storge – an affectionate
love that slowly develops from friendship, based on similarity Pragma– love
that is driven by the head, not the heart; undemonstrative
Mania – obsessive love;
experience great emotional highs and lows; very possessive and often jealous
lovers
Agape – selfless
altruistic love
Clyde Hendrick and Susan Hendrick of Texas Tech University
expanded on this theory in the mid-1980s with their extensive research on what
they called "love styles". They have found that men tend to be more
ludic, whereas women tend to be storgic and pragmatic. Mania is often the first
love style teenagers display. Relationships based on similar love styles were
found to last longer. People often look for people with the same love style as
themselves for a relationship. These styles are akin to the Greek types of
love.
