Love styles are modi operandi of how people love, originally developed by John Lee (1973,^[1] 1988^[2]). He identified six basic love styles—also known as "colours" of love—that people use in their interpersonal relationships:

• Eros – a passionate physical and emotional love based on aesthetic enjoyment; stereotype of romantic love
• Ludus – a love that is played as a game or sport; conquest; may have multiple partners at once
• Storge – an affectionate love that slowly develops from friendship, based on similarity (kindred to Philia)
• Pragma – love that is driven by the head, not the heart; undemonstrative; pragmatic love with the purpose of achieving a common goal, as in a coalition
• Mania – obsessive love; experience great emotional highs and lows; very possessive and often jealous lovers
• Agape – selfless altruistic love

Clyde Hendrick and Susan Hendrick of Texas Tech University expanded on this theory in the mid-1980s with their extensive research on what they called "love styles". They have found that men tend to be more ludic, whereas women tend to be storgic and pragmatic. Mania is often the first love style teenagers display. Relationships based on similar love styles were found to last longer. People often look for people with the same love style as themselves for a relationship. These styles are akin to the Greek types of love.