Jun
30
What Is Love?
Filed Under Main Content, love relationship advice | Leave a Comment
Why do we need love?
It’s understandable why we require air, food, water, and shelter – but why love?
Babies who are fed, clothed, and otherwise taken care of but not hugged will actually die. And while merely being hugged just isn’t necessarily “love,” it seems very clear that one must have love in one’s life or else it is going to be a miserable life.
A loveless life might contain its share of pleasures, but it will in no way be happy in a deep, true, and lasting way. So why is this?
According to bestselling psychologist and humanist Erich Fromm, it is because of the self-reflective awareness of human beings. Our minds are such that we are not only aware, but self-aware – and that initial perception of self inevitably leads to fear and aloneness. Infants tend not to perceive a world outside themselves – indeed, they do not even perceive themselves. But soon enough they perceive that there is a “me” and a “not-me,” and this sense of mysterious otherness frightens them. And so they cling fiercely to mother, generally not able to withstand even a distance of several feet.
It truly is rather the same with adults, though obviously the desire for mother is no longer the case. But a yearning for security, for emotional comfort, for just the kind of feelings which was formerly provided by mother – that still exists, only other forms, namely another person. In a sense, we transfer our continuing emotional requirements onto the beloved.
And yet, this is just not love. This isn’t a lasting concern for the other person’s well-being, as expressed daily in loving acts that promote his or her well-being. It is simply a displacement of desires onto a love object – an idol, even. And we mistake it for love due to the fact we confuse love with desire.
