In the 1970s, Canadian sociologist John Alan Lee (1933–2013) came up with the typology of love styles, which many researchers interested in love have investigated since that time (Lee, 1973, 1976). His ideas about love and how to study it were important and unique additions to the field (Karandashev, 2022).
John Lee developed and empirically validated the conceptualization of six love styles. The original author’s descriptions of the six love styles he proposed have been abridged and reduced to some shortcuts over the years of love research and publication. To some extent, Lee’s original meanings have been distorted by these truncated attributes. Here I present several excerpts from my publications in which I present a more comprehensive description of the Eros love style.
Lee’s Theoretical Description of the Eros Love Style
“Individuals with the Eros love style are very interested in and fascinated by the physical appearance of a potential partner. The lovers see in their beloved the physical characteristics that match their ideal image of the beautiful. Physical romantic attraction is a central tenet of their love.”
(Excerpt from Karandashev, 2022, p. 78).
Lee’s Empirically Identified Characteristics of the Eros Love Style
The “love story card sort” in-depth interviews with 120 participants yielded approximately 100,000 data points. The simple form of factor analysis identified 32 factors that distinguished the six clearly identifiable love styles with their most salient features. Based on this analysis, John Lee described the Eros love style as follows:
“Participants with eros style usually have had a happy childhood, a warm relationship with siblings and parents. They feel content with their life and work. They are ready for love, yet do not look anxiously for it. The erotic lovers typically clearly know which physical type is attractive to them. They can express it verbally, or by quickly selecting that type among a set of photographs (Lee,1973, p. 248). Participants with the eros love style are quite demanding and specific in their expectations that a beloved must conform to their ideal image. They openly and promptly communicate their recognition and appreciation to the beloved which fulfil their ideal expectation of a physical type.
The lovers of eros style are inclined to quickly disclose themselves and expects the disclosure of the beloved. They frequently discuss the topics of involvement with a partner to magnify these feelings. From the beginning of a relationship, they are willing to meet the beloved as frequently as possible. They are looking forward to building up an extensive and deep understanding. They are yearning for sexual intimacy. They enjoy experiencing intensive sensations and emotions. They are self-confident in love, and therefore, neither anxious and demanding, nor obsessively possessive.”
(Excerpt from Karandashev, 2022, p. 81).
The Eros Love Style is a Love Type
As one can see, the Eros love style represents a distinct cluster of personal beliefs, attitudes, behaviors, and individual identity that men and women exhibit in love. They define lovers’ love attitudes, experiences, expressions, actions, and interactions. These individual characteristics are empirically distinguishable. They are related to each other in a typical combination that defines the Eros typological structure.
So, the Eros love style is a type of love rather than a variable, how it is measured with the Love Attitude Scale (Hendrick & Henrick, 1986, 1998).