Estimates About Love for Self, Romantic Partners, and Parents

Abstract

Empirical research on love has focused mainly on the love of one person toward another. This study uses a new method to analyze estimates of one’s own and other’s love. Two hundred and twenty-six women estimated their own, their partner’s, and their parents’ overall love and various types of love. Factor analyses of self-reported estimates about love measured four factors: psychological closeness, sexual love, obsessive love, and interpersonal distance. Women estimated their partners as being significantly lower in psychological closeness and higher in sexual love. Daughters rated themselves higher in psychological closeness, sexual and obsessive love than their parents. In addition, the results showed that psychological closeness was the best overall predictor of one’s own and partner’s, and parent’s love.