Love, Friendships, and Relationships

Love is at once immediately understandable, you know it when you see it, but also maddeningly enigmatic. Where does it come from? How does it sometimes arise when we least expect it? Our culture both elevates the idea of Love – it is something to which we aspire, we chase, we acquire, we honor, and we cherish but it is also so commonplace, marketed, commodified, fetishized, and so often used in language so as to lose its meaning: just consider Valentine’s Day or McDonald’s tagline “I’m lovin’ it.” What does love even mean? It is fascinating to note that there is only one word for love in English, three in Spanish, seven in Greek, and at least 96 in Sanskrit!

What is Love? Why does it exist? Why does it matter? Perhaps it is something akin to a spiritual or religious awakening. It’s proof of a higher power. It’s a force to which we must surrender. Or is it a powerful, mind-altering surge of dopamine, norepinephrine, and oxytocin? Maybe it’s just a chaotic burst of hormones designed to get us to procreate, maintain families, and keep the evolutionary train running. Could it be both?

What are the kinds of Love? How I love my brother is different than how I love my friend or how I love a romantic partner or even how I love myself. How does Love change throughout our lives? The Greeks defined seven different types of Love, which might be helpful to think about in the context of your own lives. Where does each type of Love show up in your life? What are the different ways each Love can be practiced?

Ludus – playful, flirtatious love

Philautia – self-love

Storge – unconditional, familial love

Eros – romantic, passionate love

Pragma – committed, companionate love

Philia – intimate, authentic friendship

Agape – empathetic, universal love

Love has also been compared to a drug or an intoxicant. The same receptors that cocaine acts upon in the brain are stimulated while “in love.” It can cause us to act in ways that might be surprising to our friends, family, and even ourselves. We have all had embarrassing, hurtful, and fantastically joyous experiences with love. Months or years later, I still can’t explain what I was thinking.

How do you kindle, nurture, sustain, or extinguish Love? Is it really better to have loved and lost than to have never loved at all? How has Love changed throughout history? How have our expectations of Love changed in the modern era? How has technology, especially dating apps, influenced our understanding of it?

The great artists and thinkers had a variety of feelings about Love. Shakespeare made Romeo and Juliet give their lives for it, Rumi bared open his soul and found God in it, Nietzsche considered it an animal instinct, and Simone de Beauvoir believed authentic love began with two independent individuals. It has been a subject of intense interest for as long as history has been recorded and it is safe to say that we will continue to grapple with it.