When we talk about ‘storgic love,’ we often reduce it to a simple label: love based on friendship. But sociology pioneer John Alan Lee’s original 1970s theory was far richer, framing Storge not as a simple dimension but as a complex style of love. In this article, I revisit the empirical foundations of Lee’s typology of love styles and his methodology and trace how Lee’s Storge style is different from what the Love Attitudes Scale measures. I also illustrate why Storge as companionate love remains one of the most popular styles of love in interpersonal relationships.
Introduction: Revisiting Lee’s Love Styles
Numerous researchers interested in the psychology of personal relationships have investigated the love styles identified in the 1970s by Canadian sociologist John Alan Lee (1973, 1976). His theoretical conceptualization of love styles—along with the innovative methodology he created to study them—made significant, lasting contributions to the field of relationship science (Karandashev, 2022).
Over decades of subsequent love research, Lee’s original conceptualizations of his six love styles have frequently been reduced to oversimplified summaries. These truncated descriptions have, to a degree, distorted the original depth of Lee’s typology. The purpose of this article is to restore that original richness by synthesizing Lee’s theoretical foundations, his qualitative and quantitative empirical findings, and subsequent psychometric adaptations regarding the Storge love style (Karandashev, 2022).
The Historical and Conceptual Foundations of Lee’s Typology
In the 1970s, North American scholars advanced the systematic understanding of individual typological differences in the way people love (Lasswell & Lasswell, 1976; Lasswell & Lobsenz, 1980; Lee, 1973, 1976). Among these frameworks, John Alan Lee’s (1973) categorization emerged as particularly influential.
Lee conceptualized love across multiple phenomenological planes, including:
- Love beliefs and ideologies
- Attitudes and values
- Personal identity within a relationship
- Concrete behavioral interactions
Notably, Lee (1977) observed a “puzzling contradiction between the opinions which subjects said they held about true love and the behaviour they reported enacting when actually in a love relationship” (p. 176). To resolve this gap, his typology sought to map real-world behaviors and lived experiences alongside abstract beliefs.
The Color Wheel Analogy
Storge is one of the three primary love styles identified by John Alan Lee.
To illustrate his taxonomic system, Lee (1973, 1976) introduced an analogy based on the color spectrum:
- Primary Styles: Eros (erotic, passionate attraction), Ludus (playful, uncommitted game-playing), and Storge (companionate, friendship-based affection).
- Secondary Styles: Formed by blending primaries, such as Pragma (Storge + Ludus), Mania (Eros + Ludus), and Agape (Storge + Eros).
- Tertiary Styles: More complex compounds (e.g., manic storge, storgic eros) (Lee, 1973, 1977).
While the primary colors themselves do not carry literal emotional meanings, the analogy highlights how distinct behavioral “pigments” merge into complex, recognizable patterns.
Theoretical Description of the Storge Love Style
John Lee grounded his theory of love styles in the context of the socio-cultural frameworks and explained how cultural ideologies framed modern styles of love.
In Lee’s taxonomy, Storge (derived from the Ancient Greek word for natural, familial affection) represents companionate, solid, and slow-burning love.
“Individuals with the Storge love style tend to avoid self-conscious passion, slowly disclosing themselves and gradually building up affection and companionship, with the expectation of long-term commitment.”
— Karandashev (2022, p. 78)
Unlike Eros, which relies on immediate physical fascination, or Mania, which thrives on obsessive intensity, Storge grows out of shared activities, mutual trust, and deep friendship.
Methodology: How Storge Was Empirically Identified
Lee’s empirical identification of Storge rested on a rich, qualitative-to-quantitative methodology known as the Love Story Card Sort (Lee, 1973, 1976, 1977).
The Love Story Card Sort
Recognizing that standardized surveys often missed emotional nuance, Lee designed a structured interview procedure using 1,500 cards arranged across 170 consecutive sets. Each card contained a concise description of an idea, emotion, event, or action that could occur in a relationship—spanning physical sensations, anxieties, conflict styles, and self-disclosure.
| Category | Example Assessment Item |
| First Date Intimacy | “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 kiss • (d) cuddling/embracing • (e) making love |
| Data Scope | 120 in-depth interviews producing ~100,000 discrete data points |
| Analytical Yield | Factor analysis on Guttman-type scales yielded 32 distinct factors isolating the 6 primary/secondary love styles |
This technique allowed participants to reconstruct their unique relational histories while breaking complex emotional phenomena into discrete, recordable units. Independent verification using Guttman-Lingoes Smallest Space Analysis confirmed that these six love styles represent mutually exclusive behavioral profiles (Lasswell & Lasswell, 1976).
Empirically Identified Characteristics of the Storgic Lover
From the coded data of the Love Story Card Sort, Lee constructed a comprehensive profile of individuals exhibiting the Storge style (Karandashev, 2022):
- Developmental & Family Background: Storgic lovers typically report secure childhood environments, positive relationships with parents, and the presence of several siblings. They view their current lives as satisfying and stable.
- Selection Criteria: They generally lack a rigid “ideal physical type.” Mutual affection, shared interests, and companionable activities are far more important than sudden physical chemistry.
- Emotional Temperament: They exhibit low levels of mental preoccupation or anxiety regarding their partner. Temporary separations are tolerated easily without fear of infidelity or abandonment.
- Communication & Disclosures: Storgic individuals avoid dramatic, self-conscious deliberations about “where the relationship is going.” Emotional and sexual self-disclosure occurs gradually over time.
- Sexual Intimacy: Sexual involvement emerges naturally in later stages, almost always after a foundation of mutual commitment and deep friendship has been established.
Lee used this analysis to portray the typical lovers of the following things about the Storge love style:
” Participants with the Storge style typically experience secure family environments in their childhood and usually have several siblings. They feel that their life is good, and they can rely on their friends. They believe that their love gradually extends from their deep friendship to sexual intimacy and commitment. They are not aware of their favorite physical type for a potential partner. For them, being with the beloved who is affectionate, companionable, has common interests and shares activities is more important than the attraction to each other.
They experience low mental preoccupation with their partner. They easily tolerate the temporary absence of the beloved and do not worry about the security of the relationship. A person with the Storge style does not like to engage in discussions about feelings of involvement. They tend to avoid extreme emotions and conscious deliberation about each other’s feelings. They gradually self-disclose themselves sexually. Later, when their relationships of Storge style evolve, they engage in sexual activities. It usually occurs when a lover and their partners feel mutual commitment.”
— Karandashev (2022, p. 81)
Love Style vs. Love Attitude: A Methodological Shift
A critical conceptual distinction exists between Lee’s original theory of love styles and Clyde and Susan Hendrick’s later work on love attitudes (Hendrick & Hendrick, 1986; Hendrick et al., 1998).
The Conversion to the Love Attitude Scale (LAS)
While Hendrick and Hendrick adopted Lee’s nomenclature (Eros, Ludus, Storge, Pragma, Mania, Agape), they transformed Lee’s holistic, multi-plane typology into a psychometric inventory using Likert-type scales.
- Typology vs. Variable: Lee classified individuals into qualitative types based on holistic, multidimensional narratives. The LAS treats love styles as continuous, dimensional variables (attitudes).
- Profiles: Under the LAS, an individual does not simply “belong” to the Storge category; rather, they earn a score on a Storge subscale. A person’s overall orientation is expressed as a profile across all six dimensions, which may shift depending on the partner and context (Hendrick & Hendrick, 2006).
- Loss of Structural Complexity: The color wheel’s original hierarchy—specifically the theoretical blending of primary styles into secondary and tertiary forms—was largely set aside in favor of treating the six subscales as independent variables.
The Storge Love Style is a Love Type. This explanation demonstrates how the Storge love style is a distinctive collection of individual identities, attitudes, and behaviors displayed by men and women in romantic relationships. They describe the perspectives, encounters, manifestations, interactions, and behaviors of lovers. Empirically, these distinctive traits can be distinguished. The way they are connected typifies the typological structure of Storge.
So, the Storge love style is a type of love rather than a variable, how it is measured with the Love Attitude Scale (Hendrick & Henrick, 1986, 1998; Karandashev, 2019; 2022).
Cultural Ideologies and Structural Evaluation
Historical and Cultural Endorsement
Lee (1975, 1977) emphasized that while all love styles exist across human history, specific societal institutions and philosophies elevate certain styles into dominant cultural ideologies:
- Ludus: Promoted in ancient Roman literature (e.g., Ovid’s Ars Amatoria) as playful seduction and entertainment.
- Agape: Institutionalized by early Christian theology as selfless, unconditional duty and care.
- Pragma: Dominant in structured feudal societies through arranged marriages based on social matching.
- Mania / Passionate Eros: Cultivated in 12th-century courtly love traditions, later evolving into modern Western romanticism.
- Storge: Supported in cultural contexts that prioritize family stability, community integration, and long-term companionate partnership.
Cross-cultural applications of the LAS (reviewed in Karandashev, 2019) confirm that cultural values influence baseline scores on these scales. However, these studies primarily measure attitudes rather than the full, multidimensional styles originally envisioned by Lee.
Methodological Strengths and Pitfalls
Evaluating Lee’s original framework reveals several notable dynamics:
- Strengths: By combining qualitative exemplars with quantitative sorting, the Love Story Card Sort captured vivid, real-world behaviors (sleep patterns, conflict styles, self-disclosure) rather than abstract opinions alone.
- Limitations: The categories were partly data-driven and partly theory-imposed, as descriptors were selected to fit pre-existing categories. Additionally, while Lee posited that styles overlap, the card sort procedure forced dichotomous selections, and subsequent empirical tests confirmed the six styles functioned as mutually exclusive categories (Lasswell & Lasswell, 1976).
Conclusion
In an era where romantic discourse often centers on immediate spark and intense passion, the Storge love style offers a grounded alternative. Lee’s research highlights that for many individuals, the most enduring romantic connections are not built on overwhelming fascination, but on shared life, mutual trust, and deep-seated companionship. Re-examining Storge through both historical context and modern psychometric insights provides a vital framework for relationship science. As cultural norms around partnership continue to evolve, understanding the quiet, gradual strength of Storge remains essential to mapping the full spectrum of human connection.
References
- Hendrick, C., & Hendrick, S. (1986). A theory and method of love. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 50(2), 392–402.
- Hendrick, C., & Hendrick, S. S. (2006). Styles of romantic love. In R. J. Sternberg & K. Weis (Eds.), The new psychology of love (pp. 149–170). Yale University Press.
- Hendrick, C., Hendrick, S. S., & Dicke, A. (1998). The love attitudes scale: Short form. Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, 15(2), 147-159.
- Karandashev, V. (2019). Cross-cultural perspectives on the experience and expression of love. Springer.
- Karandashev, V. (2022). Cultural typologies of love. Springer Nature.
- Lasswell, T. E., & Lasswell, M. E. (1976). I love you but I’m not in love with you. Journal of Marital and Family Therapy, 2(3), 211-224.
- Lasswell, M., & Lobsenz, N. M. (1980). Styles of loving: Why you love the way you do. Doubleday.
- Lee, J. A. (1973). Colours of love: An exploration of the ways of loving. New Press.
- Lee, J. A. (1976). The colors of love. Prentice-Hall.
- Lee, J. A. (1977). A typology of styles of loving. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 3(2), 173-182.