Category | Because love is more than just a feeling

Thomas Melendo Granadas is another writer who addresses the topic of love stages in his book, “Ocho lecciones sobre el amor humano”. The first stage is the initial attraction and infatuation - which can be linked to the phase of desire, from the previous article. There is excitement - which is caused by a person, meaning that the stimuli are exterior. And then, there are incentives – the interest comes from the inner world of the person. Desire has complex routes of access and knowledge of the others. Stimulation becomes infatuation: "a fatal reality, that imposes irresistibly its law to those...

R. Y. Stork and A. J. Echevarría speak in their book, “Fundamentos de Antropología”, about the acts of love – and these are: desire, affirmation, choice, creation and oblation. By desire we should not understand something purely sexual, but the things that a man wants to know and to possess, the things that help a man evolve spiritually. Love also means owning, and loving also means enjoying. I say “also”, because love is not only that. I refer to possessing the will and enjoying with the senses. The affirmation of the other is the next step towards love. After the madness...

St. Thomas speaks about the natural love that is derived from the ontological fund of humans, perhaps as an instinct of maintenance or self-preservation. The reference point of this love is you. “Affection is the instinctive love and the need for caring which unfolds naturally in humans, while friendship would be generated, formally, by a spiritual and voluntary decision". But for man there is even a higher love. Next to the natural love, there is love that enhances free will, decision: the elective love. Who has this kind of love, loves because wants to love - he loves the other one due...

Social psychology, along with Robert Sternberg, promotes The Triangular Theory of Love that has key-concepts like passion, intimacy and commitment. Passion is presented here like a sexual attraction. But from my point of view, passion is one of the requisites for happiness. By doing the things that you are passionate about, your whole life perspective will change. By enjoying the things that you do, you will be changed. Intimacy grows out of the desire to communicate and share experiences with the other, says Sternberg. To me, intimacy is essential to a relationship – in order to grow....

“I love you… That was the message that I found in the envelope... You always find a way to surprise me in the simplest mode ever. I love simple, yet profound words. I could never get enough! Every time I see something that you write me, my heart is overjoyed - it startles. And my eyes, together with my mouth, start to smile. It’s an indescribable feeling of inner enjoyment that I just can’t keep for myself - my mimic betrays me. And I shine, and I am happy. And I sometimes cry of joy – yes, tears slip from my eyes reminding me that it is real: my love (for you) is real. I become...

Another interesting classification is described by Ollie Pocs, a sociologist. He distinguishes three forms of love: romantic, blind and mature. Romantic love has some basic traits. One of them is the need for affiliation - from interdependence, which is useful for any type of relationship, it can easily slip into the other extreme: emotional or personal dependency. Another trait is the unconditional dedication - which varies according to the abandonment of oneself and the supreme satisfaction of the other one’s needs - to the negative connotations as the feeling of obligation. And...

In his book titled "Colors of Love", psychologist J. A. Lee speaks about six different types of love - feelings linked to the beginning and evolution of romantic affairs, behavior changes appropriate to situations arising from certain internal and external stimuli. The six types of love are: erotic love, playful love, friendly love, pragmatic love, maniac love and agape love. We are only going to explain what friendly love, erotic love and agape love are - because we have talked about these types before, but from another perspective. Friendly love is quiet, calm, sometimes overwhelming,...

Love manifests itself in so many ways. The human nature has developed a true requisite. The most extensive form of love is the one which the Greeks called storge, and it is nothing but affection: the most authentic example is the parent’s love towards their children and the children’s love toward their parents - the blood connection. I think this kind of love can also be seen as a specificity of friendship, because we do have feelings for our friends and there also is a special bond. Another kind of love is eros: a love more carnal, more sexual, an erotic love. C. S. Lewis explains...

The importance of forgiveness for the health of oneself and for the evolution of the couple is evidenced by Jutta Burggraf in her book named “Learn to forgive”. Essential is not to remain in the painful past that continuously affects the present. Love, in her vision, is feeling (everything that’s related to affection) and consent (the things that have to do with the will). She also says that love lasts forever. Love doesn’t die. Instead, we kill it: with our stubbornness to not forget, our intolerance to the un-forgiveness, our inflexibility regarding the way we see things. I read...

As I have stated before, will has a key role in love - together with intelligence and affection. All these components make out of love something full, pure, eternal. But it takes time for our love to be mature, because we are not prepared to give and to receive love through all these dimensions. The human being can be wrong,  tends to be selfish, wants everything from a situation. Will may be defined as an integral feature of intelligence, which is at an anybody’s service. What do I understand through will is responsibility, capacity to make a decision, reasoning, ability to compare and choose. And...