In the 1970s, a Canadian sociologist, John Alan Lee (1933–2013), developed the typology of love styles that attracted the attention of many love researchers (Lee, 1973, 1976). John Lee’s theory and method made important and original contributions to the study of love (Karandashev, 2022).

Love researchers immediately embraced this classification of love styles in their studies. Lee’s love styles have been widely used since then. However, his theory and method are often misrepresented in modern publications. Contemporary researchers interpret these styles in ways that differ from how John Lee thought of them.

They largely used the Love Attitudes Scale (LAS), which Clyde and Susan Hendricks created during the 1980s to measure love styles. So, the theory and method of love styles, originally developed by John Lee, have been mainly known and used in this interpretation and measured with the LAS (Hendrick & Hendrick, 1986; Hendrick, Hendrick, and Dicke, 1998). The Love Attitude Scale (LAS) has been a valid and reliable psychometric scale. However, it was a truncated version of the deeper and more complex method that Lee used in his research.

Looking Back to Lee’s Original Theory and Method

I believe it is worthwhile for modern love researchers to revisit the original version of the method. I think it would be a great idea to try using that original version of Lee’s method. This kind of research might give a richer and more complex picture of the love styles that people follow in their romantic relationships. My previous article presented what Lee’s original theory was. This article describes what his original method was.

This Is How John Lee Came to His Theory of Love Styles

An initial extensive analysis of literature allowed John Lee to develop the typology of love styles (Lee, 1973, 1976). Then, he administered a series of pilot empirical studies and explored their results with an extensive content analysis. A group of judges helped the author describe and check that the sets of valid, mutually exclusive, sufficiently complete, and important features of each of the six different love styles were correct.  The descriptors and indicators he included in this content analysis were

• physical symptoms involved in the lover’s experience of love (e.g., loss of appetite, sleep),
• sexual attraction,
• emotional pain,
• compulsive attention to the beloved,
• the willingness to abase, or alter the self to please the beloved,
• jealousy,
• self-disclosure,
• consciously manipulative behavior,
• the need for reciprocity, and others.

(Lee, 1973, p. 232).

The Method of “Love Story Card Sort”

In the main part of the study, Lee used the “Love Story Card Sort,” which is an interview method for a sensitive and coded systematic investigation of the love experience. On 1500 cards (arranged in 170 sets), a researcher exposed brief descriptions of an idea, event, or emotion that might occur in a romantic relationship. The card descriptions referred to the various facets of love:

• the experience and expression of feelings,
• the expectations of the beloved’s feelings and reciprocity,
• preoccupation with the beloved,
• the feelings of anxiety,
• anticipated troubles,
• the frequency and ways of contact with the beloved,
• the expectations about a love relationship,
• the frequency and matters of conflicts with the beloved, and so on.

Thus, according to Lee’s description, “the whole sort comprises an omnibus love story, from which a respondent can select the relevant cards to tell his or her own story.” (Lee, 1977, p. 176).

While an individual’s experience of love may appear to be unique, it is comprised of a collection of ideas, norms, and behavioral patterns that a culture encourages a person to follow. The modules of experience can combine with each other in a variety of ways. However, the love stories can only use a limited number of these modules and connect them in a limited number of ways. In this card sorting interview method, a person answered each question by choosing one from a set of cards that had possible answers. For instance:

“On our first date, the closest we got to being intimate was

a) just being together, we never actually touched,

b) holding hands,

c) one good-night, or parting kiss,

d) kissing several times,

e) cuddling, holding each other close, embracing while clothed,

(f) close body contact unclothed, without sexual intercourse,

(g) we spent the night in the same bed but did not make love,

(h) making love all the way, (i) other (specify).”

(Lee, 1977, p. 176).

The Procedure of “Love Story Card Sort”

An interviewer shows the cards in succession. Participants choose the most suitable cards to illustrate the points in their narratives. Participants often feel their re-evoked emotions during the procedure. They may shed tears, laugh, experience nostalgia, or lament the events. The method allows a participant to reveal the emotional details of their experiences by dividing their complex experiences into discrete and recordable units. The interviewer records and categorizes the data. Based on the cards that participants choose, researchers construct or reconstruct a participant’s romantic relationship, which could be blissful, relaxed, hectic, or tragic.

The Pros and Cons of the “Love Story Card Sort”

The “love story card sort” method is more flexible and adaptive for the in-depth study of love than a survey with a Likert-type scale. It gives a more comprehensive and complex typological description of the six love styles.

The Likert-type scale method, on the other hand, provides a more systematic and standard way of measuring love styles than an in-depth “card sort” interview. It allows for the identification of distinct patterns of love styles. An independent study on a large sample of participants used a Guttman-Lingoes Smallest Space Analysis. Its results revealed that six love styles are mutually exclusive (Lasswell, T. & Lasswell, M., 1976).