Valentine’s Day is fast approaching. There’s going to be cute stuffed animals holding hearts, romantic cards, boxes of assorted chocolates, and red wine. This is a celebration for lovers to demonstrate their love for each other.
Although it now incorporates other kinds of love and affection, Valentine’s Day still triggers the aching for romantic love if you don’t have it.
I remember in the fourth grade where my teacher set up a mail box a week before Valentine’s Day and told us we could write a note to someone in class and on Valentine’s Day they would be delivered to each of our desks. I promptly wrote one for my best friend as a friendly Valentine’s Day card.
When the day arrived everyone got a card, my friend got multiple (a lot of guys liked her) and I got none.
It turns out my fourth grade classmates thought that if you send a card to someone it should be because you like them. So, this celebration can be a painful reminder of how lonely you are because you don’t have a romantic love in your life.
People talk about finding your soul mate as if it fills in the other missing part of you and makes your life ten times better. However, is romantic love the only kind of fulfilling love? Can you still have meaningful love when you don’t have the traditional romantic kind of love?
The different kinds of love
Just like the perfect body, the perfect romance doesn’t truly exist in that there are many different forms it can take and still be great. Much of what we expect from romantic love is a modern construct.
We long for true love but we don’t realize that our idea of it has been influenced by novels1. The idea of lovers going through trials and tribulations to have their love stand the test of time is what we have in our mind for modern day romance and love.
If we only consider one kind of love, that being romantic love, we would be missing out on all of the other types of love in our life – loves that can be just as fulfilling, more stable, and more available.
Other posts that discuss different types of love will go through the seven types of love from classical readings1. These types have Ancient Greek names like eros and philia which can make learning about these different loves un-relatable and unmemorable so I’ll go through them in today’s terms.
Sexual of passionate love
The Ancient Greek name for this kind of love, which is sexual, or passionate is eros. Think of this love as the act of falling in love. It is the madness and the rush that comes from falling for someone. This is the type of love that is most commonly thought of in regards to modern day romantic love1.
It is exciting and interesting so no wonder it is the type of love that is portrayed in novels and romance stories. In real life, this is the type of love that helps with reproduction and survival of the species.
However, this love is removed from reason and if you’ve ever known your friend or yourself in this kind of love, it’s pretty close to madness. So, it’s not that stable of a love and when it’s over, if you don’t have one of the other loves with that person, you might find yourself no longer attracted to them; hence, the idea of the chase or having a crush.
When you fall in love, it is temporary madness. It erupts like an earthquake, and then it subsides. And when it subsides, you have to make a decision. You have to work out whether your roots are to become so entwined together that it is inconceivable that you should ever part. Because this is what love is.
Captain Corelli’s Mandolin by Louis de Bernieres
Friendship
Friendship, or philia, is a love that you probably already have in your life hopefully. This love is mutual or equal between two people where both people have goodwill toward one another.
There can be many reasons for a friendship, but according to Aristotle, the main ones are that the person is useful, pleasant and good. If one person is using the other person for mental or physical gains, then this is not a true friendship and will usually dissolve over time.
For most friendships, they will start and stay friendships. As mentioned with sexual or passionate love, that kind of love can fade, but hopefully, a friendship was formed so the two people can continue to have love for one another.
Friendship love is more stable and beneficial compared to eros because it involves companionship and trust. This kind of love is based on a person’s qualities and character rather than an intense but fleeting sexual desire.
Typically, a good friendship allows two people to live better lives by having each other in their lives.
Familial love
This kind of love is between family members, specifically between parents and their children. Depending on your circumstances, you may or may not have this kind of love in your life. The Ancient Greek name for it is storge, pronounced “store-jay”.
Familial love can be due to familiarity or dependency1 because family is usually the people we are most surrounded with and at a young age when we depend on others. It’s easy to take this love for granted if you have it.
Hopefully, the familial love you had in your life demonstrated unconditional love to you. Ideally, you would want your passionate love to morph into this familial love.
Universal love
You may find this love, universal love or agape (pronounced “aga-pay”) more abstract because it deals with a bigger, more connected kind of love. It is the love for God, strangers, or nature for example1.
Perhaps, you are not religious but you have an appreciation for nature and all that it provides or you have a general regard for humanity and human kindness. Modernly, this kind of love is akin to altruism or “the belief in or practice of disinterested and selfless concern for the well-being of others”2.
If you want to experience this love, then volunteer or help someone out4. People who help others feel better about themselves and their life. It can even give people a “helper’s high”1.
Do something even though no one is asking you to or expecting it. It’s not volunteer hours that you need to check off for school or because your church or community is pressuring you to. And don’t expect anything in return for your favor.
By being involved and helping out at a community level, you will feel more connected and will possibly encourage reciprocation from others.
Although this is a looser and broader idea of love, it is nevertheless important and beneficial for your wellbeing.
Playful or uncommitted love
You may automatically cringe and want to label this kind of love as bad because it brings up the idea of players and people who mess with your heart but there is an innocent version of this, which consists of harmless flirting.
Also known as ludus, playful or uncommitted love can involve teasing, dancing, flirting, conjugating, and seducing1. It is a lighthearted kind of love that can make people feel good without any of the gravity of a more serious relationship. Again, I think this kind of love can have a bad rep so oftentimes, it can get one or both people hurt unless both people are mature and know what they are getting into when they get involved.
Practical love
Practical love or pragma is about duty and responsibility1. This is also a stable love because the two people are “making it work” with the idea that they have shared long-term goals and interests.
Usually, there isn’t a lot of sexual attraction or passion in this relationship but there is compatibility and mutual qualities or appreciated characteristics. This is practically the opposite of romantic love and while it’s seen currently as unfashionable, it still exists in many relationships1.
Again, like some of the other types of love, this practical love can coexist with other loves in the same relationship or even become this love over time in a relationship. This means that love can start off as passionate or uncommitted and end up being a combination of both familial/unconditional and practical love1.
Self-love
Finally, we get to loving yourself.
This is a loaded love in that on one hand it can be a healthy love and on the other it can be unhealthy. We know a lot more people could use some more self-love in their life including ourselves. We are often very hard on ourselves with high expectations and negative self-talk.
Unhealthy self-love is when you overinflate yourself either through status, abilities or accomplishments1. You know the ones who are arrogant and full of themselves or are narcissistic. There may even have been a time when you verged on this side of self-love.
Lately, due to how some people act on social media, accusations of narcissism are common. However, behind the scenes, there actually may be more of a lack of healthy self-love going on and so people post to look for fulfillment, love, and acceptance. Focusing on attaining healthy self-love, which will be more beneficial in the long run, is basically working on your self-esteem. This means you have to appreciate and have a good appraisal of your worth. If you have low self-esteem or worth, you are more likely not to reach your full potential, not to contribute, to lash out at others, etc.
Plus, I met someone else
We’re havin’ better discussions
I know they say I move on too fast
But this one goin’ last
‘Cause her name is Ari
And I’m so good with that
Ariana Grande3
Self-love will be the most difficult love to get because you will have to get if from yourself and we can be our own worst enemy. But if you can get it, in a healthy way, then you will have the strongest, most beneficial, and stable love relationship you can ever get.
With self-love, you will have no need to compare yourself to anything or anyone and allow outside sources to determine your happiness. If you feel stuck in your life, work on this type of love first. Your relationship with yourself will impact all other relationships in your life.
Finding fulfillment
All of these different kinds of love interconnect with and yet are distinctly separate from each other. You can have multiple types of love within one relationship or just one type of love and it doesn’t make that relationship any less than.
Now that you know love can come in all different types, you know you don’t need to just draw happiness from one source. Romantic love is nice but it is not the end all.
So, look to your other sources of love and make sure to appreciate them not just on the upcoming Valentine’s Day but with every chance you can get throughout the year.
You may be feeling unsatisfied with your love life and that may lead you to believe your life is not whole and won’t be fulfilled until you have that passionate, romantic, true-love-above-all kind of love but take a step back from all those romance novels and movies that have led you believe this.
You know life is never that simple, and although you should still enjoy your entertainment, you should appreciate the kinds of love you do have in your life.
If you don’t feel you have enough of these relationships, then it’s time to start working on cultivating them. This can be difficult to do during this pandemic but it never hurts to start with being open to the idea.
I believe you’ve got to first give love to get love back. And you may not always get love back – it’s not guaranteed. But know that your love is not limited and the more you work on giving, the deeper you will have to draw from in the future.
Love is love
Rather than trying to remember all these different types of love and dissecting your current and future relationships by which type it is, Focus on the simple idea of whether or not there is love in the relationship.
You’ll know the difference between real love, whatever form it is, and fake love if you’re willing to clearly look at your relationships.
Happiness and fulfillment don’t have to come from just one type or one idea of love. Hopefully, you can start or further appreciate the love you have in your life and expand it.
In the end, it doesn’t really matter that you had a romantic love or not. It matters that you did love and had others that loved you. These loves also stand the test of time and are very consequential to your happiness and wellbeing.
For Plato, love aims at beautiful and good things, because the possession of beautiful and good things is called happiness, and happiness is an end-in-itself.
Neel Burton, M.D.1
If makes you happy, buy yourself the box of chocolates and treat yourself.
Live happier,
Nicole
Other posts you might like:
- Home Alone for the Holidays: How to Deal with Loneliness
- Change is Inevitable: Why You Should Adapt to Rather than Avoid Change
- Start a New, Better habit to Improve Your Life
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References
- Burton, Neel M.D., These are the 7 Types of Love. Psychology Today, 2016 Jun 25. Retrieved from https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/hide-and-seek/201606/these-are-the-7-types-love.
- Altruism. Oxford Languages. Retrieved from https://www.google.com/altruism.
- Grande, Ariana. Thank U. Next. Musixmatach. Retrieved from https://www.google.com/search?q=ariana+grande+thank+you+next+lyrics&oq=ariana+grande+thank+you&aqs=chrome.3.0j69i57j46j0j46j0l5.8918j0j9&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8.
- Douglas, Nick. Where to Find Fulfillment Without Romantic Love. Lifehacker, 2017 Oct 25. https://lifehacker.com/where-to-find-fulfillment-without-romantic-love-1819839752
- Stylist Team. The top 50 most romantic quotes from books, poetry and plays. Stylist, 2020. Retrieved from https://www.stylist.co.uk/books/quotes/most-romantic-quotes-from-literature/124468.
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