Relationship Love Styles’ Effects on Conflict, Emotional Intelligence, and Sexual Satisfaction: A Latent Profile Analysis

To examine the influence of love styles on specific couple dynamics (conflict, emotional intelligence, emotional flooding, and sexual satisfaction) in romantic relationships from a person-centered approach. Understanding love styles is an essential part of both romantic relationship satisfaction and longevity, but previous research has primarily focused on variable analyses that exclude individual idiosyncrasy without examining whether these styles might interact with specific couple dynamics from a person-centered perspective. The study used a cross-sectional design and recruited 823 Spanish participants through convenience and snowball sampling. Key measures included the Love Attitudes Scale (LAS), the Trait Meta-Mood Scale (TMMS-24), the Emotional Flooding in Couple Relationships Scale, and the Global Measure of Sexual Satisfaction (GMSEX). Latent Profile Analysis (LPA) was used to classify participants into distinct profiles based on their love styles, followed by ANOVA to analyze differences between profiles on conflict, emotional flooding, sexual satisfaction, and emotional intelligence. Four profiles emerged from the LPA: Slightly Unstable Player (SUP), Non-Passionate Selfless (NPS), Unfriendly Non-Player (UNP), and Friendly Non-Player (FNP). The profiles differed significantly on conflict frequency, emotional flooding, sexual satisfaction, and emotional intelligence. Different love styles influence relationship dynamics, with playful and unstable love styles associated with higher conflict and emotional flooding, whereas friendship-based, stable love styles increase sexual satisfaction and reduce conflict. The identification of distinct love style profiles not captured by traditional approaches revealed important differences in couple dynamics, adding new insights to the scientific literature and highlighting its potential for improving relationship counseling.