Romantic Love

                                                                        
A romantic relationship is one where you have a deep feeling of connection to the other person. You accept them as they are, want them to feel good, and deeply appreciate who they are. They fit in with most of your preferences in a life partner, i.e.; personality, life goals, beliefs and value systems, etc. One of the ways you desire to express your love for them through your sexuality. Sex is the one key element that distinguishes a romantic relationship from all other types.

Different Types of Love Relationships

We establish relationships with many different types of people. Our family members, neighbors, co-workers, friends, spouses, significant others, etc. We've been taught that the love is different depending on who we're loving. We even have different names for it such as Agape for spiritual love and Eros for sexual love.
The emotion of love is the same regardless of who you feel it for. You want them to be happy, you accept them as they are, and you appreciate some aspect(s) about them. So if love is the same, why does it feel so different depending on who you love?
The distinctions in the loving experience are apparent when we look at how we express our love. The emotions are the same, but how we express and the degree in which we express it are different depending on who we are loving. You may want to spend more time with your friends than your family members. You might enjoy different activities with your co-workers than you do with your spouse.
When and how we express love is determined by preferences. You may prefer to spend more time with someone who is outgoing, rather than quiet, or more serious rather than silly. You may be more physically attracted to someone who is short rather than tall, or older rather than younger. There are an endless number of qualities that we might prefer over others. And those preferred qualities determines who, when, how, and to what degree we express our love.
The focus of this site is on romantic relationships, since this seems to be the area of most interest and concern. This is not surprising since these are the people who we’re choosing to share most of our lives.

Infatuation or Love?

There are some feelings we have when infatuated that we don’t have when we’re feeling love. Some of the “symptoms” of infatuation are; feelings of panic, uncertainty, overpowering lust, feverish excitement, impatience, and/or jealously.
When infatuated, we are thrilled, but not happy, wanting to trust, yet suspicious. There are lingering, nagging doubts about our “partner in infatuation” and their love for us. We’re miserable when they’re away, almost like we’re not complete unless we’re with them. It’s a rush and it’s intense. It’s difficult to concentrate. And most infatuation relationships have a high degree of sexual charge around them. Somehow being with them is not complete unless in ends in some type of sexual encounter.
Do any of these “symptoms” resemble feelings of love? Hardly. So why do we become infatuated? Where does it come from? Perhaps it’s biological.
When infatuated we experience a surge of dopamine that rushes through the brain causing us to feel good. Norepinephrine flows through the brain stimulating production of adrenaline (pounding heart). Phenylethalimine (found in chocolate) creates a feeling of bliss. Irrational romantic sentiments may be caused by oxytocin, a primary sexual arousal hormone that signals orgasm and feelings of emotional attachment. Together these chemicals sometimes override the brain activity that governs logic.
The body can build up tolerances to these chemicals so it takes more of the substance to get that special feeling of infatuation. People who jump from relationship to relationship may be craving the intoxicating effects of  these substances and may be “infatuation junkies”.
When the chemical flood dries up, the relationship either moves into a loving romantic one or there is disillusionment, and the relationship ends.

Is Love Painful?

“The pain associated with relationships has more to do with fear, than love.”

Who hasn't experienced the pain of love? Or is it the pain of rejection? The pain of self doubt? The pain of fear? It's important to distinguish between love and totally separate feelings.
When it comes to pain surrounding love, we're more likely referring to the “add-ons” of love. The love baggage, we might call it. For some reason, many people assume negative emotions are a part or element of love. But experientially we know this isn't true.
Love is not painful, it feels incredible. The pain and hurt we feel doesn’t come from love, it comes from our doubts, fears, anxiety, perceived rejections, broken trusts, anger, jealousy, envy, etc. So why do we as a culture lump all those other feelings in with love?
Perhaps its because we feel these uncomfortable emotions most often in association with our love relationships. Our primary relationships are important to us, so we assume these doubts and fears are all part of the loving experience. But is this really true?
When we are fearful, angry, anxious, unhappy, or jealous, are we truly experiencing a state of love? They sure feel different, don't they? Love feels warm, open, joyous and filled with a deep sense of appreciation. Pain steps into a love relationship when you switch it from a "wanted relationship," into a "needed relationship." You don't NEED any one relationship. Want? Yes. Need? No.
If you go into a relationship not feeling terribly good about yourself, you're more likely to become dependent on your partner to help you feel good about yourself.  If we felt empty before they appeared in our lives, we fear the emptiness returning if they leave, so their staying with us becomes paramount. That dependency can create all kinds of fear and unhappiness when there's a perceived threat to you staying together.
If we aren’t giving ourselves the acceptance we crave, we look to those around us to provide it for us. Again, none of this has a thing to do with the love you feel, but everything to do with the fear you feel.
If you really want to remove the love baggage of fear and unhappiness, the first step is to improve your self awareness and self acceptance.

Saint Luke Brotherly Love

Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you,
Bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you.
To him who strikes you on the cheek, offer the other also; and from him who takes away your coat do not withhold even your shirt.
Give to every one who begs from you; and of him who takes away your goods do not ask them again.
And as you wish that men would do to you, do so to them.
If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners love those who love them.
And if you do good to those who do good to you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners do the same.
And if you lend to those from whom you hope to receive, what credit is that to you? Even sinners lend to sinners, to receive as much again.
But love your enemies, and do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return; and your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High Bible, Luke 6.27-6.35

Decidedly, Saint Luke asks us too much. To love those who hate us, when we are clearly incapable of loving the poor we meet, or the unfortunate gathered on the edges of our societies? To love those who hate us, when our daily life is full of indifference towards the unknown people we encounter? To allow others to rob us without reacting, and manage what we lend as if we were giving?

Decidedly, we don’t behave and love in the terms proposed by Saint Luke. We love in much more restricted and conditioned terms.

«Why do I love my own children so much and other people’s children so little? », asks Sponville, peeping into our hearts in a much more realistic way than Saint Luke. And the same Sponville answers: «Because my children are mine, and in loving them I love myself».

Egoism is in fact at the bottom of our hearts – even in our loves. And we can’t expel it. On many occasions we can sympathise, or be capable of generosity and solidarity with other people. But we shouldn’t have any illusions: we aren’t the saints that Saint Luke demands us to be, and we will never be able to love in the terms he asks for.

We are sons of the world’s cruelty. We are descendants of beings who have struggled and killed to survive. In order to survive our ancestors had to practise solidarity, indifference and aggressiveness.  From our distant fathers we have inherited parental and kinship love. We haven’t inherited – because there wasn’t such love in their hearts – the brotherly love proposed by Saint Luke.

We can ask: isn’t it possible to raise ourselves ethically, and to extend our sympathy and love beyond the inner circles considered by our instincts and animal nature? And shouldn’t we face the required love of Luke as a poetic and desirable metaphor?

Certainly. Appeals to brotherly love are always welcome. They can be exalting, and Saint Luke’s words are a good metaphor, in a sense. But we should also be realistic. In defending them, we also incur the inevitable risk of being ignored and our arguments compared to void words and mere rhetoric.

Love Cycles

Time To War And Time To Love on Our Daily Lives

One can read in Ecclesiastes:

To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven:
A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted;
(…) A time to love, and a time to hate; a time of war, and a time of peace.

This vision of life as a cycle can be distorting and wrong. There are many other views in which life doesn’t spread out as a cycle but as one damn thing after another, or as an erratic snake, or as the coloured joy of a bird in spring.

But there is in fact a certain angle where life and its elements show up to us in a circular way, where love and war follow on from each other with regularity along time. There is a view in which the Ecclesiastes author is right.

Think of our everyday life, and its wars: the work war, the survival war. Isn’t there, in the interval of our daily wars, a space – perhaps brief, too brief – for a smile, for a calm conversation, for a kiss? There is indeed always an hour, a minute, to love. There is a cycle of war and love in our lives. And Ecclesiastes is right, in this view.

Even those responsible for wars, in the strict sense of the word, aren’t excluded from this cycle. Even those whose hands are dirty with blood – as the Nazis – need a space for loving their children, their spouses, their lovers (yet it may be considered as wretched and insignificant in face of the space dedicated to war and hate).

We all are involved in these cycles. In fact, what varies within the repeating cycles of our lives is the duration of the spaces they contain. In the better of us the space for the superior or for the good acts may be bigger. But in them there is also a large space for repetitive daily things, and for the evil present in the roots of every being. And that’s another perspective of seeing human’s lives as cycles.

Love, Egoism, Competition, Private Profit

Economic Liberalism and Communism

What commands our society? Love? Competition, market forces and private profit?

According to Adam Smith, the father of Economics, love has little or no importance in economic life:

 

It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker, that we can expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest. We address ourselves, not to their humanity but to their self-love, and never talk to them of our own necessities but of their advantages.Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations. 

More than a hundred years after Adam Smith, John M. Keynes, one of the top economists of twentieth century, classified in harsh terms the nature of the regulating rules praised by Adam Smith: «gluttony». It’s gluttony that commands our economic life. It’s not love.

Surely there have been some alternative experiences to the market system vindicated by Adam Smith, namely the communist experiences, and to a lesser degree the social-democratic experiments. But they have failed, or are in regression…

And we may ask: why have communism and other projects of collective love failed so clearly in their application to society and to economic life? Why does liberalism and the market system, with its profit motive and egoistic viewpoint, appear as incontestable winner?

Adam Smith gives himself the answer:

 

By pursuing his own interest [people] frequently promote that of the society more effectually than when [people] really intend to promote it.  Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations. 

In other words: the promotion of the society’s interests within the principles of love fails because we are intrinsically egoist. Without constraints and our egoistic engagement, the economic system falls asleep.

But does this picture correspond to the entire truth? Does this mean that our societies can or should work merely or basically according to the economic market principles of profit and competition?