Hang on to your hats, this is the intro to a Seven Part Series!
We’re going to kick things off with a series on the seven faces of love according to the ancient Greeks! Ok, that may sound nerdy (and it is), but it has been super illuminating for me to see the relationships in my life through a lens of gratitude. Hear me out – it’s good, I promise.
So what do a bunch of dead philosophers know about love? A lot, actually. It is easy to think of the ancient world as cold and brutal, but the fact is that as long as humans have been human, we’ve been – well, human. We can be cold and brutal, yes, but we’ve also been capable of amazingly deep and nuanced love.
So why the Greeks? They created multiple words to describe love – and they are not synonyms for each other. Rather, they describe different ways that we engage in love, both in terms of action and in terms of state of being.
So what are they? Eros, philia, ludus, agape, pragma, philautia, and storge. In a nutshell, they describe passion, friendship, playful love, altuisism, love that you build, self-love, and familial love.
As an aside, “7” is not a hard-and-fast number – some people say there are four, others say there are eight. I’m consciously leaving out mania because it isn’t often listed, but just so you know, it exists. It’s obsessive love. Because, you know, it’s called mania. *Shrug*.
So once a week, starting today, we’ll take a look at one of seven Greek words for love. Sound good?
Love According to me (aged 12)
I don’t know anyone who doesn’t remember the first time they felt eros. My first experience of eros was when I realized that the Perfect Person existed and that, in fact, he simply must be holding out until I graduated the seventh grade and we could finally be together.
This being in the golden era of 90’s boy bands, it should come at no surprise that this person was Nick Carter.
Yeah. That Nick Carter, the blond guy from the Backstreet Boys.
My adoration was so pure that I was certain that he would outlast his no-talent, zero-charisma adversary, Justin Timberlake. Sorry, Justin who?
I didn’t believe, I knew that one day he would come looking for me, feeling my love from afar, knowing that there, amongst the crowd, I waited for him. He would simply appear at my doorstep and after a short time, after much tension and build-up, we would kiss in an intense and scandalous manner. Having never kissed anyone, I presumed I would fill in the details of that interaction later.
In my pre-pubescent state I didn’t think of anything that could possibly occur after our steamy make-out session. Just the idea of kissing a boy (with tongue!) was nearly enough to give my 12 year-old self a heart attack.
That’s a lie. Of COURSE I imagined what would happen next. We’d go to Disneyland and ride all spooned up in those toboggans on the Matterhorn. Duh. The only protection I thought of was the ride’s safety belts.
I spent hours pouring over the CD booklet for Millenium – but only looking at Nick’s photos, because I’d never betray him by paying attention to the others. I remember distinctly noting the veins on his bare feet on page two.
That’s love.
Right?
According to the Greeks, yes.
I always thought there was one word for love, one that could encompass every thought, feeling emotion, etc. Obviously, what I felt for my friends and family differed from the Special Amazing Nick Carter Love. But I never thought much about those differences, never sculpted them in my mind.
So the Greeks have SEVEN words for love. I first heard this as a high schooler, and to be honest I thought is was sweet and then moved on with my life and sort of forgot about it. Now, as an adult, it’s something I find absolutely fascinating. I appreciate life more now that I’ve been roughed up a bit, lost some people, been through some hardship – and the fruit of all of this has been to experience a deeper gratitude for all the forms of love in my life.
It’a a Huge Mess, and it’s All Good
I have people in my life who participate in each one of the words for love, many without realizing it (including me, much of the time). I have friends who have been with the same person for many years, those who want a friend-with-benefits, friends and family whose kids, grandkids, nieces and nephews are the light of their lives. I know people who live with the intense desire to be in service to others. There are people in my life who invest whole-heartedly in their friendships. With age I see more people in my life engaging in self care and self love, including myself.
The truth is that for most people, the love in our lives is a messy mosaic of those seven words. So why would it be important to understand them all?
Ah, friends. I find that we are taught that there is One Person who should tick off all the boxes. Friendship, romance, being playful, riding that damn toboggan. I say this with a not-at-all-subtle glare at 99% of the romantic comedies out there.
It can be incredibly painful to discover that no one relationship can or should embody each type of love – but over the long haul, this discovery can provide you with infinitely more joy, care, and genuine relationships.
Boom, I said it.
Now what?
Throw Out your Rom-Coms (or don’t, up to you)
It seems like such an obvious realization. Of course one person shouldn’t have to supply everything we need. But in my experience, the concept of the Perfect Nick Carter Partner has been so ubiquitous in our culture that is snakes its way into our psyche and messes with our relationships if we don’t keep an eye on it.
A good portion of the blame goes to those romantic comedies I mentioned – well, not them specifically, but the romantic comedy culture that we live in. There’s an expectation that you find the Love of Your Life and you will run through chocolate fountains holding hands, spill secrets, save puppies, and have total harmony. When you do have that occasional argument (spurred by the unwanted appearance of a jealous ex, of course), you have impassioned make-up sex because that’s the way the world should work.
This topic is so simple, yet so complex, that I’m devoting seven more posts to it. And it’s not just for people interested in romantic relationships who might find this useful. That’s the point – it’s for the whole bag of relationships in our lives, including that which we have with ourselves. What types of love to we excel at, and which types could we grow in?
As with everything in life, nothing sits neatly into one category or another – there’s spillage, there’s spectrum, there are quirks. I have a theory that most loving relationships incorporate at least two different types of love. Let me know what you think!
Returning to Stig and Nick
Back to my Backstreet Boy. Ah, Nick. I believed that I loved him in every possible way. I finally felt what I had seen on TV and heard in music (especially his beautiful, transcendent, perfect music that he sang about me and just didn’t know it yet). I believed that at 12 years old, I had found Perfect Love. His bowl cut ala 1997 I was even willing to forgive.
Oh man, baby Stig! Poor thing! What I was really feeling was eros, just one facet of many, and a superficial level of eros at that. But it was that feeling of passion, infatuation, physical attraction (that, thank God, was never reciprocated, it being … illegal …. since I was twelve, after all), that hooked me. I thought I knew everything there was about that feeling of love. And it was so innocent, lasting a year or two and then fading into a lovely memory. And an eventual acceptance of the supremacy of Mr. Timberlake.
All of that is to say that at twelve I experienced the cultural epitome of love – eros – even if just a celebrity crush. And man, I had so much to learn.
Tune in next week when we’ll be talking more about Nick Carter eros.
Until then!
love
Stig.
