The Failure to Understand Love

To often when we hear people refer to love it is almost always in the romantic sense of the word. At least in the US anyway. It has lead to a bastardization and pigeon holing of the word to a specific sense of an emotion that is much more complex and nuanced than it is regularly given credit for. In such cases as love for family we know it is different than romantic love but the distinction is often lost some in translation. The thought of feeling love for a friend is almost always considered in the romantic sense of the word.

I would argue that love for a friend is not only common but there are varying nuanced differences in the type of love you can feel for a friend. The first I would say is the type of love brought on from familiarity and nostalgia. This would more than likely be the friends we have know the longest and the ties we form are based in the time we have spent together tying us to the person through the feeling of being comfortable. I would equate this type of love to returning to an old family home and feeling at ease while there. The second type I would mention is the one formed with the friends who were there during the hard times in our lives and went above and beyond to support us. This would be a type of love based in trial by fire knowing that even if we struggle the person is there to support us. This is from a feeling of confidence that even when we are at our worst this person is there to accept us and aid us through the rough times. The third broad category I would say is based in mutual enjoyment or passion of something. This is recognizing something you find important to you as important to someone else. It is an intellectual type of love through shared thinking. Not to say these types of love through friendships are mutually exclusive the can merge and mingle based on life experiences to varying degrees.

The one type of love I find especially interesting is the love for a stranger just for their existence. This by far would be one of the less noticed one. You see it through peoples pride in their communities and aiding those they don’t know in it during natural disasters. Through the experiences of jobs such as EMT and social workers taking a career in a lower paying industry to assist those in need through a love based in compassion. This I would say is the most interesting type because out of basically every other type you are gaining something even indirectly. This one people are operating at a loss normally for people they do not interact with outside of work. This kind of love is probably one of the more rare ones as it involves an empathy that sadly is not as discussed or praised as it likely should be.

I bring these things up for one short and simple reason. The idea that love based on romantic love is considered true love or the ideal love falls short of the what the emotion actually encompasses. I’m sure there are types that I have left out or not done proper justice too as there are many varying types that or language sadly seems to not acknowledge. While an all encompassing list with the motivations and reasons behind it are probably more fit for a philosophy doctorate or book than a short stream of consciousness listed here. I will leave tht to the philosophers. I do however hope that when you think of the idea of love you have a slightly different perspective of it than the love mingled with lust that is in the movies and promoted as the ideal. The idea that one person completes you and you experience fulfillment. There are full psychology books about the subject of self love and acceptance I will not broach here. I would instead advise you to take a look at who, how and why you love someone. Who knows it may make you appreciate someone in your life more than you did before.