People tend to express consistent, characteristic ways of loving that reflect childhood, personality, goals, and cultural context. Current thinking moves beyond isolated love-style variables toward person-centered love profiles that capture the naturally occurring complexity of love. Traditional six love styles include eros, ludus, storge, mania, pragma, and agape, each correlating with distinct relationship outcomes; eros and agape relate to stability and satisfaction while ludus often associates with less positive outcomes. New profiles identify common patterns such as Unfriendly Non-Player and healthier patterns like Friendly Non-Player. Future research should reproduce these profiles across cultures.
Are you consistent in how you love people? Probably! Maybe you're aware of it or maybe it's known only by the people you love, but chances are you tend to love people in a certain way. We all do. Our ways of loving might echo how we moved through childhood and early adolescence; they may align with our personalities and goals; they might respond to our cultural context. Critically, the way you love is no accident. It is a reflection of who you are.
Recently, how the field of psychology is thinking about love is changing. New evidence (García del Castillo-López et al., 2025) suggests that if we want to understand the way people love, we need to move beyond thinking of the variables that are used to characterize love styles, and instead honor the naturally occurring complexity in how people love. New love profiles offer nuanced insight into critical relationship dynamics.
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