The theory of empty love relationships, what are its causes, what are the consequences when you live in a relationship without love, and how to deal with it.
In short: In this text, we deal with the Theory of empty love by Robert Sternberg, The reasons why love disappears (8 reasons are listed), How to recognize that love has disappeared (and how to analyze it), The psychological impact of empty love on a person (empty love will change you), and, of course, How to deal with empty love. Here I’ve listed 8 different things you can do if you’re struggling with empty love that will help you either fix things or move on.
The Theory of Empty Love Relationships
According to psychologist Robert Sternberg, love consists of three components:
- Intimacy – which encompasses feelings of belonging, closeness, and connection. In other words, it can be described as having pleasant, gentle feelings towards another person.
- Passion – which involves a physical desire for the other person and motivates us to engage in sexual activity with them.
- Commitment – the feeling that we will stay with that person and share the same goals.
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Empty love would imply that some of these components were excluded from the relationship.
If intimacy is excluded, it’s quite clear why people do not perceive the relationship as loving. In that sense, we can say that empty love seems almost practical.
If passion is excluded, despite the love the person without passion feels, the partner might not consider it love. “If you love me, why don’t you desire me anymore?”
If commitment is excluded, the partner might recognize it as a lack of love in the sense: “If you love me, shouldn’t you take care of my needs?”
📌 Many couples live in this kinds of love.
- Empty love can be mutual or one-sided.
- It can originate from any type of relationship.
But how does this happen? How does empty love arise?
Causes of Empty Love Relationships:
Redirecting Love Elsewhere
It’s not uncommon for people to redirect their love needs that can’t be satisfied with a partner for various reasons (because they’ve grown distant, failed to resolve some conflicts, etc.) to someone or something else. For instance, a child, a pet, or even someone outside the relationship.
Because of this, the couple or one person in the couple can’t return to the loving relationship because the need for love is already being met elsewhere.
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It may have never existed in the first place
Partners might have entered the relationship for calculated reasons. Can you imagine two individuals (or just one person) who, for some of their deep emotional-psychological reasons, are unable to love, but for practical, life-related reasons, have decided to enter into a relationship? There’s a chance that one or both partners find it unsuitable, but it’s the only possible setup for the relationship.
Yes, sometimes we don’t like what our emotions dictate, but we have to act accordingly. Especially since the second option (let’s say we love someone) seems even more difficult.
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Some people are incapable of long-term love
They are unable to be fond of a person or feel passion for them.
How we love depends on several different factors, such as our character, the culture we grew up in (there are so-called “colder” cultures), upbringing, etc. Because of these reasons, there’s always a chance that one or both partners have a very short capacity for love.
Is it true that if you love someone, let them go?
Personality disorders
I don’t know, maybe you think of personality disorders as something visible. Personality disorders are mostly emotional in nature and are often not visible from the outside.
Certain personality disorders make it impossible for a person to love. Narcissistic Personality Disorder (of course 🙄), Borderline, Histrionic, Schizoid, Schizotypal Personality Disorder, Avoidant Personality Disorder. Some of these profiles are not able to feel love at all, and some can temporarily feel excitement, passion, need, or even love towards someone, but all of this disappears very quickly due to their internal problems.
Some people cannot feel deep emotions
For instance, do you know about schizoids? (No, they are not schizophrenics). Despite appearing highly functional, being able to smile and be surrounded by people, even sociable, their hallmark characteristic is very shallow emotions. Schizoids are a good example of how a person can seem to be someone with whom a beautiful and successful love relationship could be realized, but such a person simply isn’t capable of it.
Besides schizoids, there are other groups of people who have very shallow emotional ranges. Descriptively, they’ve been limiting their emotions long enough to know how to suppress them. They know how to suppress love, excitement, passion towards someone, etc.
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Revenge
Conflicting situations or unresolved issues between partners can lead to one or both partners emotionally shutting down towards the other person, or even becoming disgusted by them. They may not separate for practical reasons and remain in empty love.
However, it’s also possible for one person to punish the other for unresolved conflicts by maintaining the relationship. They don’t give the other person tangible reasons to leave, but they don’t satisfy their need for love and intimacy.
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Lack of energy
Considering that we are all born with different amounts of energy, you can consider the option that your partner (or you) lack the energy to express love. There’s always a chance that your partner loves you (and you love them), but one of you is unable to express love in the way the other expects. They just don’t have the energy for it
Culture that doesn’t allow too much love
There are environments and cultures where expressing emotions is taboo in some way. And no, it’s not Japan (for some reason, people often think of Japan when cultural restraint is mentioned). In some cultures, it’s shameful to be passionate, committed, or express emotions due to age, gender, circumstances, the watchful eye of society, etc.
There are definitely colder and more warm people/nations. And what we practice is what we achieve. If we practice being practical, we will certainly become so in every aspect of life. If we practice not expressing affection, we will certainly learn it well.
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Lack of reasons for connection
It’s possible that the reasons for one person to feel intimacy, affection, or passion for the other have disappeared over time. Or that some reasons have arisen making it impossible. For example, a person might have changed physically, psychologically, or emotionally, so the partner no longer has a way to connect with them.
Here, two questions arise:
- Why did the person change in this way and risk being unloved?
- Is it possible that the issue lies with the partner? Do they no longer have the capacity to feel love for anyone?
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Recognizing a Empty Love Relationship
At the beginning of this text, we said that the absence of any component of love can be interpreted as empty love. So the question is, what is missing?
Intimacy? Affection? Passion? And on whose part?
This needs to be analyzed very carefully, considering these four components. We have six different instances:
- The partner lacks intimacy/passion/commitment.
- You lack intimacy/passion/commitment.
You might consider making a small table to assess how this happened. You should really be honest and not put all the pluses (all the blame) in your partner’s fields.
It is very useful for you to understand how you all found yourself in such a love story. Because solving this problem (like every other in this world) requires honesty towards yourself. Really, did you in some way contribute to the emptying of love?
Anyhow, once you determine who is missing what, understand the reasons why it happened, and explore the options for fixing it.
Why Don’t You Give Your Partner What They Want?
Psychological Impacts of Empty Love Relationships
Empty love will obviously have psychological and emotional consequences for both partners.
You need to understand that the influence of our surroundings is highly significant to who we are, and the influence of living with someone (a partner) is practically the most important factor in who we will become.
Our partnership with our partner is a 24/7 relationship—the most intense relationship we have in life. This relationship will change us for the better or for the worse.
If we feel that our partner no longer loves us, desires us, or is affectionate towards us, we will start to feel ___________ (unloved, undesired, and rejected, of course). If this goes on long enough, it will change us emotionally and psychologically.
Imagine receiving the same message every day, 24/7, that you are not loved, not desired, or not attractive. Oh yes, sooner or later, you will start to believe that message.
This message will obviously affect your self-confidence and self-esteem. Because how can you have self-esteem when you are with someone who clearly doesn’t love you? Or self-confidence when it is openly shown and emitted that you are not attractive, interesting, beautiful, desirable, etc.?
Ultimately, this will lead to loneliness. If your closest person, your partner, doesn’t love you, who could possibly love and accept you? Because of this, it might seem best to withdraw from the world, if not physically, then at least emotionally. There is no love for you, and love is a painful subject, so it’s best not to approach it.
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How to Deal with Empty Love Relationships?
The first recommendation is a complete understanding of this entire subject. How did empty love arise on your and your partner’s sides? In fact, the first step is to acknowledge to yourself who initiated the empty love. It’s always possible that you blame your partner for something that actually started with you, Or vice versa
Why is this important? Because it is obviously important that the person who started or is pushing this thing stop doing it.
If you realize that you are the harmed party, you need to do the following to repair the damage:
1. Understand yourself, why you agreed to such love, and why you remain in such a relationship.
2. Work on the damages that have resulted from this relationship.
3. Assess the chances for changes and the recovery of the relationship.
4. Find and try all possible techniques to heal the emotional damage.
5. Focus on yourself. Develop and strengthen yourself. Take care of yourself.
6. Seek professional help.
7. Try to repair what can be repaired with your partner.
8. If nothing can be repaired, gather the courage to part ways (of course, if you want to, not because you have to).
Your partner should do the same if you are the one who caused your love to disappear.
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To summarize:
You are not alone in experiencing empty love. Unfortunately, many partners live this way and harm themselves and others with such coexistence.
Empty love changes you.
Empty love is fixable if the person who is emitting it has the motivation to fix it. The motivation could be the intolerability of such a life, a last attempt to live differently, or the inability to live without some of these components.
If you decide to repair your love relationship, your next reading should obviously be this: How To Maintain Good Relationship
It’s possible that you will have to invite your partner to work on your empty love.
It’s possible that even if the whole thing started with your partner, you will still have to participate in the repair, or even do it alone if your partner currently lacks the strength to ignite that first spark. What I mean is that you may have to be the first to show love.
Everything starts with one decision: Do you want to stay with that partner? If you do, then it’s best to stay in the best possible relationship. A relationship where you will be accepted, feel close to someone, and potentially awaken passion.
If you do not want to stay with that partner, make an effort to heal the damages that have resulted from such a relationship so that you can give your next love (that is, yourself) a better chance.
Love you. Dee
