Vulnerability and care theory of love

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).
Synopsis
According to the vulnerability and care theory of love, romantic love 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. 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 and social exchange theories of interpersonal attraction. 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 desires for reciprocal vulnerability 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, 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 (both common responses to vulnerability), in terms non-reciprocal desires for vulnerability and hostility. A necrophilious orientation occurs when the last vestige of love, namely, the desire for vulnerability is cancelled and just the desire for harm remains.

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