Lovers as Friends

Account-making has generated considerable interest among relationship researchers and was employed in the present research. In Study 1, 41 college student participants generated freeform accounts of a romantic love relationship. When coded for love themes, based on Lee's (1973) six love styles, the most frequent theme was Storge (friendship-love). Results were similar for Study II (n = 18), and in addition, there was good correspondence between love themes in the freeform accounts and love style scores on the Love Attitudes Scale. In Study III, 25 participants generated freeform accounts of their closest friendship relationship. Some 44 percent of the participants named their romantic partner as their closest friend. Results of the three studies confirm the importance of friendship as well as passion in young adults' romantic relationships. These results also suggest the importance of freeform accounts as methodology for studying the meaning of love.