Love: an intertwined definition

Frédéric Beigbeber relates love as a feeling with an expiration date in his novel: Love Lasts Three Years. We could play the blame game by admitting that our messed up love stories were inevitably doomed. Personally, I think that we meet people simply because we are willing to open up to them and want to encounter them. Beyond my overwrought thoughts, between free will and making choices or believing in destiny, I prefer to believe that we are always in control. Does that make me a control freak? Maybe, but does love really last three years? I don’t think so since love is much more than a feeling…

After having a chat with my therapist, I asked myself: what is love, really? How can we define it? Love is defined as a vivid feeling that pushes us to love, to want to do good, to help by identifying ourselves more or less. That’s what Le Petit Robert (French dictionary) says and it seems that the guy hasn’t been heartbroken. In a broader perspective, everyone defines it by their desires and expectations, looking for those in someone else. The French have a special way to define words with deepness. You might ask, then, why so many broken hearts and unhappy lovers? Well, the answer is probably that the same patterns of the past will always define the future. A person repeats the same habits in several relationships, that’s what we can understand here through psychology. One has an idea in mind of what love really is, but the past experiences alter the vision. In order to better understand this, I am presenting it from a more human approach and I am sharing with you what has changed after a conversation with a psychologist. 

In this rather personal angle, I will approach the subject from the perspective of the writer that I am. This pushes me towards the origin of the word Love, since all the words we use in our daily lives have their etymology. The Greeks have four distinct words to define love: Agape, universal love; Philia, friendship, the pursuit of the common good and altruism; Storgé, brotherly, loyal, friendly and committed love; and Eros, passion and eroticism. The ancient Greeks wanted to define this complex feeling with several words for each type of love. The four types of love described are linked, one does not exist without the other. Yes, in a love relationship there is Eros, but also commitment, Storge, and also Philia, because you always look for the common good in a healthy love relationship. Yes! Relationships have to be healthy, because toxic has never been sexy, sorry not sorry! This may sound like nonsense, but there is some truth when we are looking for love. Love is only truth after all.

We all go through situations where we question our own ideology, our lifestyle, or even the way we eat, and that is perfectly natural. In fact, when we put on a few extra pounds and we want desperately to lose them, we go for sports and dieting. But when it comes to ourselves and our relationships, it is hard to go on a diet. Therefore, it is necessary for us to know who we are. Let’s stop lying to ourselves, for nothing is wrong with us or with others but often we repeat what we have seen and experienced. A story told by my therapist that struck me was that of a woman who was being abused by her husband. When the therapist asked her how she defined love, she had no problem talking and getting her definition of love out. Every person has a strong thought when this word is mentioned. Nevertheless, love is not a person, but the experiences that make a person feel loved.

When the person had finished describing how she saw love and how she defined it, she realized that her husband’s actions conflicted with what she could define in herself. They say that actions speak louder than words, but with love both are blurred at times in our heads. Love is within us, and is an expression of who we are. A hurt person will express their hurt just as a joyful person will express their joy. So is it that simple? Nope, because it costs a lot to love… In my other works, I talk about this feeling, this state and choice that is love in the form of poetry. My poems often turned out to be contradictory, as I had not found my words to define love. At the same time, it was difficult, as I went through some questioning. Calm down, I won’t recount my life, no worries! I think that we should take love more as a choice than anything else. A choice that is often difficult, as it means stripping off oneself and dressing up in truth and honesty.

So is love hard to deal with? Well, no! But that doesn’t mean it’s easy. After all this rhetoric, how are we going to define love? I would say that it is a choice we make for ourselves. To love ourselves and to be honest and true to each other. My relationships have not always been glamorous at times, because I am not perfect, and no one is. I have learned to be myself and do what I love without having it defined by another person. If someone else defines my choices and who I am as a person, it’s dead! You have to see yourself through your own eyes and not through the eyes of others. Yes, love is beautiful, but it also gives a distorted image of the other person.  We place them on a pedestal and when reality catches up with us, it’s an assured breakup. 

A friend after a breakup told me, « I’ve done everything I can do, but if you keep getting rejected, one day you have to make a decision and walk away. You need to respect yourself!“ Rejection is felt when someone has been placed on a pedestal and the downfall hurts, rejection. We dont have to give a person too much significance in our life.

« He likes long hair, I like short hair, so I chopped it off after so many years, it’s a way for me to say, I’m over you now. When I took my long hair and threw it in the trash, I was like, ‘now it’s over,’ and I closed the book of my past, » she also shared. That’s when she realized she was suffering and not living. You’d think that love would have an intertwined definition. The first part would be knowing how to love the other person, knowing that we can love and knowing how to balance it all out. Often, we love without measure while precisely, love is lived on the long term and it is often necessary to know how to manage and make it last. Why not make a little mystery last too? From my experience, I think that this is what worked for me. Now, this depends on each person’s personality – each person has their own unique relationship needs. « Some couples are fusional and others complementary while each having their own space, » a great friend of mine made me understand.

The second part of the definition would be: how you would like to be treated by the person you choose to love. After all, it is two people who want to complement each other and who at some point have crossed paths in unique circumstances. When I said that we choose who we love, it also means that we choose how we are treated. I believe that love is proportional to respect. For me, respect and honesty are fundamental in a relationship and it is precisely because I lacked them that it became a cornerstone. 

The person who completes us, we meet him or her and we fall in love. Maybe fate has something to do with it. The rational and logical person that I am would say that I don’t believe in fate, but I enjoy having faith to let myself be guided by life… So finally love with a big L? It lasts as long as the definition we give it; three years or a lifetime… 

In ten years, my definition will certainly change and this does not mean that what I understand today has no meaning, but only that I will have grown. This is only my vision and everyone has their own way of seeing love. One thing is obvious; in order to love, we must first love and embrace ourselves. Then, others can understand how to love us.