The vulnerability and care theory of love was put forward by the philosopher James Giles in an article entitled "A Theory of Love and Sexual Desire" (1994) and later developed in his book The Nature of Sexual Desire (2004). Giles' theory has been discussed by scholars Dr. Ruth, in her textbook Human Sexuality: a Psychosocial Perspective (2002), and Dr. Barbara Keesling, in her book Sexual Pleasure: Reaching New Heights of Sexual Arousal (2005).

According to the vulnerability and care theory of love, romantic love

Romantic love

Romance is the pleasurable feeling of excitement and mystery associated with love.In the context of romantic love relationships, romance usually implies an expression of one's love, or one's deep emotional desires to connect with another person....

 is best understood in terms of the way it is experienced. The vulnerability and care theory is thus an experiential or phenomenological account of love

Love

Love is an emotion of strong affection and personal attachment. In philosophical context, love is a virtue representing all of human kindness, compassion, and affection. Love is central to many religions, as in the Christian phrase, "God is love" or Agape in the Canonical gospels...

. The experience of being in love depends on a longing for union with the beloved. This longing carries with it the desire that the beloved has similar desires back to the one in love. This much would be predicted by equity

Equity theory

Equity theory is a theory that attempts to explain relational satisfaction in terms of perceptions of fair/unfair distributions of resources within interpersonal relationships...

 and social exchange

Social exchange theory

Social exchange theory is a social psychological and sociological perspective that explains social change and stability as a process of negotiated exchanges between parties. Social exchange theory posits that all human relationships are formed by the use of a subjective cost-benefit analysis and...

 theories of interpersonal attraction

Interpersonal attraction

Interpersonal attraction is the attraction between people which leads to friendships and romantic relationships. Interpersonal attraction, the process, is distinct from perceptions of physical attractiveness which involves views of what is and is not considered beautiful or attractive.The study of...

. But these theories refer not only to love but also to other types of positive relationships such as liking. Romantic love, however, differs fundamentally from liking. The vulnerability and care theory takes account of this and describes love as a complex of desire

Desire (emotion)

Desire is a sense of longing for a person or object or hoping for an outcome. Desire is the fire that sets action aflame. The same sense is expressed by emotions such as "craving" or "hankering". When a person desires something or someone, their sense of longing is excited by the enjoyment or the...

s for reciprocal vulnerability

Vulnerability

Vulnerability refer to the susceptibility of a person, group, society, sex or system to physical or emotional injury or attack. The term can also refer to a person who lets their guard down, leaving themselves open to censure or criticism...

 in order to care and be cared for. That is, to be in love is to desire to be vulnerable before the beloved in order that he or she may show care towards oneself, while at the same time desiring that the beloved be vulnerable before oneself in order that one may care for him or her. This is the essential feature of romantic love and is that which enables it to be distinguished from mere liking.

Locating vulnerability and care as the basic elements of romantic love also helps to explain another central feature of such love, namely, sexual desire. According to Giles' theory of sexual desire

Giles' theory of sexual desire

Giles' theory of sexual desire is an existential theory of sexuality due to James Giles.- Exposition :According to Giles, sexual desire has been mainly accounted for in two principle ways, namely, in terms of social constructionism or biological theories. Giles, however, rejects both these views as...

, sexual desire involves the physical expression of the desires for vulnerability and care. Sexually, these desires take the form of desires for mutual baring (vulnerability) in order to caress and be caressed (care). Unlike love, however, sexual desire need not refer to the other person's desires. That is, to have sexual desire towards someone need not imply that one desires that the other person has similar desires.

One of the benefits of this view, as shown in The Nature of Sexual Desire, is that it is able to explain the diverse orientations that love can often take, while nevertheless relating them all to a common conceptual structure. Thus, dependent, paternal, masochistic, and sadistic orientations in love are all explained in terms of non-reciprocal desires for vulnerability and care or, replacing care with hostility

Hostility

Hostility is a form of angry internal rejection or denial in psychology. It is a part of personal construct psychology, developed by George Kelly...

 (both common responses to vulnerability), in terms non-reciprocal desires for vulnerability and hostility. A necrophilious

Necrophilia

Necrophilia, also called thanatophilia or necrolagnia, is the sexual attraction to corpses,It is classified as a paraphilia by the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of the American Psychiatric Association. The word is artificially derived from the ancient Greek words: νεκρός and φιλία...

orientation occurs when the last vestige of love, namely, the desire for vulnerability is cancelled and just the desire for harm remains.

External links

• http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1468-5914.1994.tb00259.x/abstract
• http://www.iarr.org/images/newsletter_f05.pdf
• http://metapsychology.mentalhelp.net/poc/view_doc.php?type=book&id=5094&cn=400