more thoughts on love and relationships
Sep. 3rd, 2005 10:09 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
erratioi've been thinking about it a lot lately and also discussing it lately with several people.
In my mind there are several distinct types of love. Actually, not just in my mind. The ancient Greeks also recognised more than one type of love. They had eros, agape, and philia, or in order, physical love, love between friends and love between family*.
* EDIT: I've since discovered that these terms are imprecise. For example, agape has been used in the same context as eros. So who knows.
Love between family: I've already written more extensively on this in my post about siblings. To summarise, family love is the love that lets you do anything short of kill and still be able to love one another. Its the love of people who drive you absolutely bloody crazy but at the same time you wouldn't lose them for anything, and if it was really important you would put aside your petty squabbling to help them out.
Love between friends: I originally didn't think this existed, that all love could be considered a lesser or greater form of sibling love or a disguised form of physical love. But now that i think about it, i do have friends who i wouldn't take the shit from that i can and do take from siblings, but at the same time i am not remotely physically attracted to. To me, friends are the people who i care deeply enough about that i would (and have in the past) drop whatever i was doing if they were in need. The extent to which i would do this depends on how close they were, but in general anyone close enough to me who i would call my friend is someone who i would happily lose sleep for if it meant i could help them solve/talk through a problem of theirs.
Partner love: Here i am most likely completely misinterpreting ancient history, but i believe that by eros the Greeks meant more than just lust. Ideally, the love you feel for a partner should be the good parts of both sibling love and family love, magnified and with an extra dimension added. To plagiarise from a friend, "solid and always there but at the same time moving and makes you want to frolic in it". I believe that its impossible to have a good boyfriend/girlfriend type relationship without it being laid on a very solid bed of friendship. As in, if there was a problem you would most likely run to your partner first than to your closest school friends, because your partner *is* your best friend. I think that people who get into relationships just because they have physical chemistry, or because they're lonely are missing out on so much. It seems like you could get a far better, deeper, and long-lasting relationship by picking a friend, who by default already has something in common with you ( or else why are you friends?) and who you've already rubbed shoulders with so that you both know enough about eachother's personality that it won't be doomed from the beginning. And if you weren't good friends before you got together, a good question to ask would be whether you would want to be friends with or hang around the person if you weren't going out with them.
OK, now for a few thoughts on breaking up and dealing with problems in relationships. One of my friends takes the "no blame" approach. It entails a belief in fate, that if you're in a relationship with someone and it doesn't work out, its not because either of you are to blame but rather because it wasn't fated to work out at the time. This doesn't mean you can't get back together in future because you may both be different people by then, but it all comes down to whether something is fated to be or not.
It has the benefit that you don't agonise so much over what you could have or should have done to make it work, and you also don't spend the next three months blaming your ex for being a horrible boyfriend/girlfriend. To me it seems horribly fatalistic. When i talk about blame or guilt, i think of it in terms of responsibilities. As in, if someone is laying blame on you or making you feel guilty its because there were responsibilities that you didn't carry out or that the person laying the blame felt you failed to carry out. So laying blame is a way of recognising what went wrong, which in turn allows both parties to consciously make an attempt to fix those things that they came under fire for. I'm not saying that either partner should hold a grudge at the other one for having failed in these things unless they did it on purpose, because everyone makes mistakes etc, just that in an honest discussion both parties should be able to state those things that they felt the other could have done better, so that they can use it as a learning experience and not end up apart six months later wondering what the hell went wrong.
Of course the other side of the "no blame" approach would be the "all blame" approach.. where both sides spend way too time trying to work out who caused what, who started which fight, and so forth. Ultimately it gets you nowhere unless you can move on and leave the bitterness far behind you
And in a somewhat-but-not-entirely-related link, here is the words to say "i love you" in many laguages :p
http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/I_love_you
In my mind there are several distinct types of love. Actually, not just in my mind. The ancient Greeks also recognised more than one type of love. They had eros, agape, and philia, or in order, physical love, love between friends and love between family*.
* EDIT: I've since discovered that these terms are imprecise. For example, agape has been used in the same context as eros. So who knows.
Love between family: I've already written more extensively on this in my post about siblings. To summarise, family love is the love that lets you do anything short of kill and still be able to love one another. Its the love of people who drive you absolutely bloody crazy but at the same time you wouldn't lose them for anything, and if it was really important you would put aside your petty squabbling to help them out.
Love between friends: I originally didn't think this existed, that all love could be considered a lesser or greater form of sibling love or a disguised form of physical love. But now that i think about it, i do have friends who i wouldn't take the shit from that i can and do take from siblings, but at the same time i am not remotely physically attracted to. To me, friends are the people who i care deeply enough about that i would (and have in the past) drop whatever i was doing if they were in need. The extent to which i would do this depends on how close they were, but in general anyone close enough to me who i would call my friend is someone who i would happily lose sleep for if it meant i could help them solve/talk through a problem of theirs.
Partner love: Here i am most likely completely misinterpreting ancient history, but i believe that by eros the Greeks meant more than just lust. Ideally, the love you feel for a partner should be the good parts of both sibling love and family love, magnified and with an extra dimension added. To plagiarise from a friend, "solid and always there but at the same time moving and makes you want to frolic in it". I believe that its impossible to have a good boyfriend/girlfriend type relationship without it being laid on a very solid bed of friendship. As in, if there was a problem you would most likely run to your partner first than to your closest school friends, because your partner *is* your best friend. I think that people who get into relationships just because they have physical chemistry, or because they're lonely are missing out on so much. It seems like you could get a far better, deeper, and long-lasting relationship by picking a friend, who by default already has something in common with you ( or else why are you friends?) and who you've already rubbed shoulders with so that you both know enough about eachother's personality that it won't be doomed from the beginning. And if you weren't good friends before you got together, a good question to ask would be whether you would want to be friends with or hang around the person if you weren't going out with them.
OK, now for a few thoughts on breaking up and dealing with problems in relationships. One of my friends takes the "no blame" approach. It entails a belief in fate, that if you're in a relationship with someone and it doesn't work out, its not because either of you are to blame but rather because it wasn't fated to work out at the time. This doesn't mean you can't get back together in future because you may both be different people by then, but it all comes down to whether something is fated to be or not.
It has the benefit that you don't agonise so much over what you could have or should have done to make it work, and you also don't spend the next three months blaming your ex for being a horrible boyfriend/girlfriend. To me it seems horribly fatalistic. When i talk about blame or guilt, i think of it in terms of responsibilities. As in, if someone is laying blame on you or making you feel guilty its because there were responsibilities that you didn't carry out or that the person laying the blame felt you failed to carry out. So laying blame is a way of recognising what went wrong, which in turn allows both parties to consciously make an attempt to fix those things that they came under fire for. I'm not saying that either partner should hold a grudge at the other one for having failed in these things unless they did it on purpose, because everyone makes mistakes etc, just that in an honest discussion both parties should be able to state those things that they felt the other could have done better, so that they can use it as a learning experience and not end up apart six months later wondering what the hell went wrong.
Of course the other side of the "no blame" approach would be the "all blame" approach.. where both sides spend way too time trying to work out who caused what, who started which fight, and so forth. Ultimately it gets you nowhere unless you can move on and leave the bitterness far behind you
And in a somewhat-but-not-entirely-related link, here is the words to say "i love you" in many laguages :p
http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/I_love_you
