“When I fall in love,” the old song goes, “it will be forever.”
But don’t count on it! Our society, tutored by a dreamy mass media, tells us falling in love is the soaring pinnacle of human relationship, the dazzling fulfillment of our emotional existence. Yet social science (along with many of us) has discovered the condition is only temporary.
Psychologist Dorothy Tennov, surveying 1,600 people, measured the statistical time span of romantic relationships as between eighteen and thirty-six months. One study of brain chemistry suggests even less: that intense romantic love lasts between twelve and eighteen months. And then what? When “the feeling’s gone and I just can’t get it back,” (to resort to a couple more pop songs) then “Where is the love?” The society prescribes that we recuperate for a while then dive back into the love market and do the same thing all over again. Meet, mate and break up again, marry and divorce again, in an endless round of hope, failure, broken hearts, broken marriages and broken children.
Something better
So how about something better? Pop songs, movies and cultural myth have it that standardized romance—win or lose—is the only game in town. Yet history, scripture and much of modern psychology hold out other kinds of love as far more promising. Take the ancient Greeks, for example. The master psychologists of their time used multiple words to show love’s diversity.
Three of these words are especially useful for us: eros (acquisitive romance) philia (devoted friendship) and agape (giving, serving, sacrificial love). They represent not only different types of love but also progressive levels. They climb an emotional scale: from falling in love to rising in love, from self-seeking to generous, from infantile to mature.
The descent of cupid
As early as the eighth-century BC, Eros was a Greek god of creation, a winged youth bearded and virile, who flew over a dead earth shooting arrows that sprouted into luxuriant vegetation. But Eros didn’t age well. As the culture of Greece declined, he shriveled into a chubby tot who flitted about shooting barbs of emotional and sexual passion into unsuspecting people. This mischievous Eros was passed down to ancient Rome and then to us as Cupid—cupido meaning desire in Latin.
In its fullest definition, eros represents the yearning people feel for wholeness or completion. As probably the earth’s only insatiable species, we forever long to grow, to reach out, stretch and expand. Eros propels us forward toward new goals, fresh possibilities and higher ideals.
On a still more exalted plane, eros is the impulse that draws humankind to God. As the fifth-century theologian St. Augustine wrote,
Our hearts are ever restless until they rest in thee.”
Less mature people, on the other hand, try to fulfill themselves not by growing inwardly but by reaching outward to get, take, acquire and consume. Trying to fill a hole rather than to become whole people, they grasp for money, material goods, fame and status. In the same way they look for love.
Eros dominates love relationships today. “I want, I need, therefore I love,” plead present-day lovers. Seeking love more as consumers than producers, they long to get love but think less about giving it. Their hopes are fixed more on being loved than loving.
The rise of love
As eros-romance is mainly focused on the self and its desires, the second level of love begins to shift the spotlight to the wants and needs of others. What the Greeks called philia represents brotherly and sisterly love at its best. We also can see it in deep friendship or devoted camaraderie.
Psychologists have noted the “chum stage” of childhood, when boys walk down the street with arms draped around each other’s shoulders and girls link up as inseparable companions. This is the natural beginning of the human ability to feel the needs of someone else to be important, and to love without immediate reference to oneself.
As eros is gimme-gimme beginner’s love that strives mainly for self-fulfillment, philia is a give-and-take love natural to the child’s level of emotional development. As eros seeks to acquire, philia exchanges, aiming toward fairness, an interplay of rights and duties, a more or less equal balance of self-seeking and self-giving. In philia, “I” and “You” approach a shared existence of “We,” with mutual support, help and service.
This is my beloved, and this is my friend,”
sings the Old Testament’s romantic Song of Songs (5:16), showing love rising from personal pleasure to camaraderie. Psychologists tell us that most wedded couples whose marriages endure have succeeded in replacing passion-love with companionate love, giving as well as trying to get, promoting each others’ welfare. As sociologists Elaine and G. William Walster explain,
Passionate love is a fragile flower; it wilts in time. Companionate love is a sturdy evergreen; it thrives with contact.”
The highest love
Agape, the greatest love, rises even further: a pure giving-love, with no strings attached and no return expected. In its highest form, agape is God’s love for his creation. On the human plane, it can be compared to the love of a healthy mother for her baby, which she gives with no regard for what the baby can do for her in return. English writer C.S. Lewis cited this love, saying,
Love is not affectionate feeling, but a steady wish for the loved person’s ultimate good as far as it can be obtained.”
Agape is a love meant only to enrich its receiver. All through the New Testament when we see the word “love,” it often can be translated as “agape.” The Christian faith proposes a whole religion of agape-love, to be bestowed upon family, friends, neighbors, strangers and even enemies—and, yes, girlfriends and boyfriends. As civil rights leader Martin Luther King described his faith’s towering commitment,
Love is not the answer. Love is the assignment.”
An agape-lover’s whole relationship to life is giving, serving love.
Turning love upward
But it doesn’t happen instantly. Growth is the key to success here. We climb the steps of love and grow emotionally—just as we mature physically and intellectually—day by day, one intentional effort following another. What level am I on now? That’s the question to begin with. If it’s mainly less than agape’s unconditional love, which is likely in our emotionally retarded society, then I must live properly at my level of love so I can grow from it.
Take baby-love romance, for example, since that causes the most trouble in our society. While many people seem to be suffering, and even deteriorating, from their romances, how can the experience be turned into something positive? A long time ago, St. Augustine answered that question. He said natural tendencies like eros—which he knew well from his own youthful experience—must be:
- Guided by knowledge
- Combined with virtue
- Kept under control
The modern Christian author C.S. Lewis said much the same thing. He allowed eros-romance a legitimate place in the scheme of love. But he warned against obeying its promptings fully,
for Eros, honoured without reservation and obeyed unconditionally, becomes a demon.”
Growing in love
At first thought, a guided, virtuous, controlled romance seems hard to accept, and even harder to accomplish. And in our licentious social setting, so it is! But what kind of growth isn’t demanding? Emotional maturing is no less difficult than building a strong body or studying for a degree. Yet, in the final analysis, it’s infinitely more rewarding than either.
A kind, considerate, chaste romance—like in the days, when romance was still sweet—lifts lovers upward to true, happy, trusting friendship. I don’t mean the pallid, on-and-off acquaintance that passes for friendship in our cool-hearted time, but the deep, warm, enduring devotion of people who relish one another’s company and help each other live well. When exercise in camaraderie’s generosity, consideration and kindness brings still more emotional growth, the fuller giving of unconditional love begins to flow like grace, with its tender selflessness, noble sacrifices and joy in promoting the highest welfare of others.
So the three levels of love, self-serving and self-giving at opposite ends, turn out to be stepping stones. Love begins as an infant hungry to consume and rises to the largesse of a great-souled grownup. Anyone who follows this course grows from emotional babyhood to maturity, from self-absorption to freedom from the self’s demands, from spiritual poverty to inner wealth. As we come to realize that growing in love also is our highest vocation on earth, we also understand that falling in love is nothing and rising in love everything.
FEATURED CONTRIBUTOR:
Bruce Brander is an award-winning journalist and author specializing in sociological subjects. He worked on the staffs of newspapers in New Zealand and the United States and was a writer and editor for National Geographic. For many years he served as traveling journalist and editor for World Vision Christian relief and development agency. He is author of six books on travel and social issues, including Love That Works: The Art and Science of Giving. He lives in Colorado Springs with his wife Mary, an artist. They have four children.
