Question 1

Why do I feel empty despite being in a relationship with someone I love?

Robert Sternberg · Accepted Answer

There are multiple possibilities.  One is that you are experiencing, literally, "empty love, " which is commitment in the absence of intimacy and passion.  Perhaps whatever intimacy and passion you once felt is gone.  Another possibility is that you are so busy with the business of life that you lack the time to maintain a meaningful connection--your relationship is essentially on hold while you navigate life's challenges.  A third possibility is that you are feeling generally emotionally depleted.  You have been so challenged by the relationship or by life in general that you just feel like your emotional tank is running on empty.  In every case, a solution is to commit yourself to restoring what you feel has been lost from, or suppressed in your relationship.  At worst, the relationship has run out of fuel, in which case you have to decide whether there is any hope of, metaphorically, refilling the fuel tank.

Question 2

What do you mean by "non-love" in the triangular theory of love?

Robert Sternberg · Accepted Answer

Non-love is simply when you feel no intimacy, passion, or commitment toward an individual.  It is the absence of any of the three components of love.  It is what you may feel toward acquaintances or very casual friends with whom you have no meaningful relationship.

Question 3

Is hate part of passionately loving someone?

Robert Sternberg · Accepted Answer

Usually not.  There is no need to hate a person we passionately love.  But when we passionately love someone, we are in the throes of an addiction, and hence are hyper-sensitive to perceived slights, disputes, and betrayals.  I say "perceived," because often they are only in our minds.  So we are more likely to feel the passion component of hate, at least fleetingly, because we are so volatile.  We have to recognize this in ourselves and try to cool down what can be seriously maladaptive emotions. Feeling hate only impairs relationships; it never helps them.

Question 4

What are the different types of love?

Robert Sternberg · Accepted Answer

Liking (intimacy); infatuation (passion), empty love (commitment), romantic love (intimacy + passion), companionate love (intimacy + commitment), fatuous love (passion + commitment),  complete love (intimacy + passion + commitment). In addition, there are different stories of love, as described in my book, Love is a Story. Some examples are the travel story, the business story, the fairy-tale story, the horror story, the recovery story, the cookbook story, the police story, the collector story, and the religion story.

Question 5

i know that i should hate my ex for what he has done, but i still love him. How can i move on?

Robert Sternberg · Accepted Answer

You might look at www.lovemultiverse.com, where we address some of these issues.  Instead of impairing your psychological and physical health by hatred, other things you can do are (a) find someone else; (b) find a hobby; (c) use your new free time to engage in a totally new activity, like playing a musical instrument, creating artworks, collecting something, or whatever; (d) focus on the ex-partner's negative traits and how maladaptive it is for you to love him (but don't ruminate); (e) meditate; (f) engage in increased physical activity; (g) think about how lucky you are that you are done with him.

Question 6

Are people who fall in love more easily, less likely to hate?

Robert Sternberg · Accepted Answer

Not necessarily.  Hate is partly a decision.  One can decide that hate is not something one wishes to experience and combat it within oneself.  People who fall in love easily because they are limerent--susceptible to feelings of passion--may actually be more likely to succumb to hate if they allow passion in hate to get the better of them.

Question 7

Hi Robert, Do you have any tips for helping people deal with and move through feelings of hate towards another person or group?

Robert Sternberg · Accepted Answer

Yes. Remember that hate hurts you as much as or more than it hurts those it targets.  Try other strategies instead.  Try communication--is there something you all could do to come to some kind of mutual understanding? Try negotiating restitution if you can--is there something they could do or you could do that would set things right?  Try forgiveness--can you forgive the person or group?  Try wisdom--is there some way of achieving a common good that would benefit everyone in a bad situation?  Try love--can you find it in yourself to realize we all screw up and nevertheless should love our neighbor as ourselves?  Or just try moving on in your life and focusing on different things.

Question 8

What is the triangular theory of love?

Robert Sternberg · Accepted Answer

The triangular theory of love states that there are three components of love: intimacy--how close, connected, and cared for you feel toward a loved one; passion--how excited, infatuated, and obsessed you are with the loved one; and commitment--how firmly you wish to stay with your loved one, for a long period of time, no matter what happens, and no matter how many obstacles present themselves.

Question 9

Is it true that the opposite of love is indifference, not hate?

Robert Sternberg · Accepted Answer

That is how many theorists of love see it, including me.  Hate is definitely not the opposite of love.  Like love, it potentially can instigate feelings of passion and commitment.  If it has characteristics of an opposite, it is in feelings of negation of intimacy--that rather than experiencing feelings of closeness and attraction, one experiences great distance and repulsion.  People can at times simultaneously experience love and hate.

Question 10

What do people mean when they say they are in a 'love-hate' relationship?

Robert Sternberg · Accepted Answer

Love and hate are not opposites.  The opposite of both of them, if there is one, is indifference.  So you simultaneously can both love and hate a person.  For example, if your partner betrays you and makes love to someone else, you may simultaneously love them (feel, for example, strong passion toward them) but also hate them (feel strong passion against them).  Or you may feel commitment in love at the same time that you feel your commitment is to hate them with all your heart.  Love-hate relationships tend to be unstable, for the obvious reason that the two feelings experienced simultaneously create cognitive as well as emotional dissonance.  You feel that you should not be in such a state.  So most people seek a resolution, either to focus on the love or the hate, or they decide to get the person out of their life as soon as possible.

Question 11

Do you need to respect someone to be able to love them? I work with people who have lost respect for their partners and are disgusted by their behaviors but insist that they still love them.

Robert Sternberg · Accepted Answer

Respect is crucial to the intimacy component. It is hard to feel true intimacy toward someone you do not respect.  However, you can still feel passion and commitment toward someone you do not respect. Hence, someone can feel love based on passion and comitment without intimacy.  The kinds of love are discussed in lovemultiverse.com and in answers to other questions in this series.

Question 12

What does saying "I love you" mean?

Robert Sternberg · Accepted Answer

It means different things for different people.  It could mean you like someone very much (intimacy), that you have fallen head over heels for someone (passion), that you want to stay with someone forever (commitment), that you feel romantically toward someone (intimacy + passion), that you are committed to your deep liking for someone (intimacy + commitment), that you want to commit yourself to someone with whom you have fallen for but hardly know (passion + commitment), or that you fully and completely love someone (intimacy + passion + commitment).

Question 13

Why do my partner and I always say "I hate you" when we argue?

Robert Sternberg · Accepted Answer

Because we all are more careless in our speech than we ought to be.  I have a daughter who does this--except that she is 9 years old.  As adults, we should know better--99% of the time, we do not mean it. It is destructive to say it, and it accomplishes nothing good! Mostly, it shows how little control we have over our emotions.  We can and should do better.  If you say it, then be sure later to say you're sorry. And then don't do it again!

Question 14

What is hate?

Robert Sternberg · Accepted Answer

Hate is some combination of three components.  The first is negation of intimacy, which means that you cannot imagine having any closeness or human connection to a person or group--they may not even seem human to you.  The second component is passion, which means that you have high arousal when you think about or deal with an individual or group--you feel a strong fight-or-flight reaction.  The third component is commitment, which means that you (cognitively) have decided that the person or group you hate deserves your full loathing of them--that they have done things that are wrong or very bad and have earned your hatred.

Question 15

Are there any benefits of hate?

Robert Sternberg · Accepted Answer

I believe there are not.  It is not only destructive toward others, but also to you.  It eats you up from the inside.  It is better to deal with highly charged negative feelings through wisdom, understanding, and where possible, love.  The target of hate loses, but so does the hater.

Question 16

Which is a more powerful emotion - love or hate?

Robert Sternberg · Accepted Answer

There is no single answer to this.  In the triangular theories of love and hate, triangles can be, metaphorically, of different sizes, depending on the strength of feelings of intimacy, passion, and/or commitment.  Which is stronger depends on which has the larger size of triangle--that is, stronger feelings.  In the case of hate, a given level of hate is potentially more dangerous if it leads to actions that harm others or oneself.

Question 17

Can we hate the same person we loved?

Robert Sternberg · Accepted Answer

Love can give way to hate.  You come home from a convention early, you find your spouse in bed with someone else; or you come home from a convention, and your spouse discovers that you were in bed with someone else.  Or you discover that your spouse forgot to mention that their gambling has bankrupted you.  Sure, we can hate someone we once loved.  But who gains from hate?  Not you. Not them. No one.  You need to find better coping mechanisms.  Marital therapy, perhaps.  Or moving on, perhaps.  Understanding perhaps. Forgiveness perhaps.

Question 18

Can hate be a healthy emotion if it is offering psychological protection after rejection?

Robert Sternberg · Accepted Answer

Scholars differ on the answer to this question. My view is that hate is not the solution to rejection.  It is destructive not only to the target but also to the person who experiences it.   It gnaws away at us. The best way to deal with rejection, I believe, is with wisdom--understanding that people are imperfect, sometimes extremely so; that they screw up on a daily basis, which means also us and not just other people; that people have differing points of view and sometimes see things in different ways; and that when a relationship does not work out, the best think is to say good-bye to it, psychologically as well as behaviorally, and move on to new challenges, excitement, and hopefully love in one's life.  Sometimes, one needs to make or receive restitution, but hate has no useful place.  I have studied hate for a number of years, and have yet to see an instance where hate led to anything good. If you look, for example, at some conflicts in the Middle East, or recently, in the polarized United States, hatred of one group for another group only breeds more hatred and misunderstanding.

The Fine Line Between Love and Hate