What Is Your Love Style?
Six ways of loving that psychology has measured since 1986 - and the one you did not know you had
The word love covers things that have almost nothing in common. The passion that arrives in a week, the friendship that becomes something else over years, the sensible match, the game, the obsession, the giving without account - people mean all of these and assume everyone else means the same one. A sociologist sorted them into six styles in the 1970s and two psychologists built the scale that measures them in 1986. Most people run on two, and the arguments in a couple are often two styles disagreeing about what love is supposed to feel like.
Before you start There are no right answers. Pick what is usually true for you, not what sounds best.
Eighteen questions about how you love, in general - across relationships, not just the current one. If you are not in one, answer from the last one that mattered.
What it measures
The six styles of the original scale, with their Greek names kept because they have no clean translation: eros (passion), ludus (the game), storge (friendship first), pragma (the sensible match), mania (possessive intensity) and agape (selfless giving). Everyone has some of each; the shape is the result.
Based on: Love Attitudes Scale (Hendrick & Hendrick, 1986)
Possible results
Eros
Passion, chemistry, and knowing early.
Ludus
Love as a game, kept light and kept open.
Storge
Friendship first; love arrives later and stays.
Pragma
The sensible match; head before heart.
Mania
Possessive, anxious, all-consuming.
Agape
Giving without keeping score.
Common questions
How is this different from the love languages test?
Love languages are about how you express and receive affection once you are in a relationship - words, time, touch. Love styles are about what you think love is and how you enter it - as passion, as friendship, as a sensible decision, as a game. Two people with the same love language can have completely different love styles, and it is usually the style, not the language, that explains why one of them wanted to move in after a month and the other did not.
Can two different styles work together?
Most couples are two different styles, so yes, and the research finds similarity helps but is not required. What helps more is knowing the difference exists. An eros partner and a storge partner will read the same quiet Tuesday evening as either a warning sign or the whole point, and once both know that, the evening stops being evidence of anything. The pairing that genuinely struggles is ludus with mania - one keeping it light while the other needs it to be everything - and it struggles for reasons neither person can fix by trying harder.
Sources
- Hendrick, C., & Hendrick, S. (1986). A theory and method of love. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.
An honest note The six styles come from John Alan Lee's typology of the 1970s, and this scale is a short adaptation of the questionnaire that operationalised it, with three questions per style instead of seven. The six-factor structure has held up in later samples and translations, which is why it is marked as science, but two limits matter. The styles describe attitudes towards love, not behaviour in a particular relationship, and people's profiles shift noticeably with age and with who they are with - eros and mania typically fall over time, storge and pragma rise. And the findings about which styles go with satisfaction are correlational and come mostly from students: they tell you which attitudes tend to accompany happy relationships, not that adopting one would produce one. If the fifth bar is far above the rest, that pattern is associated with real distress, and the attachment test here is a better next step than this one.
Try one of these next
How Easily Do You Move On?
Missing them, losing yourself, and not letting go - three different things
How Strong Is Your Need to Belong?
How much you need to be part of something - and what you do to keep it
What Is Your Parenting Style?
Warmth, rules and how you hold them together on an ordinary Tuesday evening