A Structural Heuristic and Conceptual Ontology of Interpersonal Bonding

Conventional relationship models and social discourse routinely conflate static institutional status functions with the continuous, multidimensional reality of interpersonal bonding. This category error fosters contractual reification, mistaking inert administrative containers for active connection and leaving decoupled partnerships—colloquially termed "hollow marriages"—systematically undiagnosed. This paper introduces a structural state-space framework that maps interpersonal connection across three core domains: Cognitive, Affective, and Somatic, decomposed into six distinct sub-dimensions. Within this architecture, Commitment is reclassified from an experiential coordinate into an applied vector field operating against natural relational decay. Interpersonal tension is formalized as a vector differential between latent attraction and the actualized relational state, isolating romantic tension as the specific case where a localized gap exists strictly within the erogenous Sub-Dimension. Furthermore, set-theoretic formulation demonstrates that deep platonic friendship is a strict subset of complete romantic partnership, with erogenous intimacy serving as the sole distinguishing complement. This hierarchy diagnoses the acute instability of casually intimate (“passion-only”) bonds formed without foundational friendship scaffolding. Benchmarked against Robert Sternberg’s Triangular Theory of Love, the framework offers a higher-resolution conceptual alternative to static combinatorial typologies, providing a structured diagnostic vocabulary for evaluating dyadic health, stability, and trajectory.