… ), we define romantic love as a motivational state … love and sexual desire. In the General
Discussion, we address the question of whether romantic love and sexual desire are emotions. …

… In sum, from Hazan and Shaver's perspective, romantic love can be understood in terms of
the mutual functioning of three behavioral systems: attachment, caregiving, and sex. Although …

… Ellen Berscheid discusses the nature of romantic love, attachment, caregiving, and sex
across the seasons of a human life. Finally, Phil Shaver provides an integrative overview of the …

… to emotional well-being. Our second theoretical guide, intimacy theory (Reis & Patrick, 1996;
Reis & Shaver, 1988), derives in part from attachment theory in proposing that emotionally …

… consistently shown that secure individuals score higher on self-report measures of joy,
happiness, interest, love, and affection than do insecure individuals (see Mikulincer & Shaver, …

… ; Fisher, 1998; Hatfield and Rapson, 1996). In fact, I have come to believe that romantic
love is one of three discrete, interrelated emotion/motivation systems that all birds and mammals …

… Following Bowlby (1979), we define love as the positive emotion experienced during
closeness or reunion with an attachment figure. Love differs from compassion and desire in that it …

… of love and affection; in addition, love features prominently in laypersons’ lists of emotions,
and … of the criteria used to define basic emotions (Shaver, Morgan, & Wu, 1996). Third, pride is …

… Based on an extensive review of adult attachment studies, we (Mikulincer & Shaver, 2003;
Shaver & Mikulincer, 2002) proposed a model of the functioning and dynamics of the …

… Although some of the 11 commentaries on our article were supportive (Shaver & Mikulincer,
2002), others were skeptical or critical. Some authors familiar with the AAI tradition (Belsky, …