LIFEMEDICINEPART 8:
LOVE IN ALL ITS FORMS
Negotiating the different types of love will
help you build better and longer lasting relationships
Words Dr Rupert Whitaker
Image Antonio Maggi
Greeks have four words for four different types of love: eros, philia, stergethron
and agape. In English we have only one word, ‘love’, which can
sometimes cause confusion.
Eros, a sex-based love, is a highly creative energy and starts off most relationships.
It matures into philia, the type of love where you do things for your partner
because you want them to be happy. A lot of people
confuse eros with philia, thinking they like someone because they are turned
on by them, only to later realise they aren’t actually friends.
Erosion of eros
Becoming deep friends in a relationship can be difficult, and often, as the
friendship-love develops, the erotic love becomes less intense: either it’s
no longer the glue that’s keeping you together or the difficulty of
developing a love-friendship can be too hard, so eros goes soft.
This can be a problem for people who are more comfortable with their erotic
selves and don’t know their caring selves. For straight men, their caring
self often comes out when they have a child, but if it doesn’t, it’s
a bit late to try and find it. But in successful relationships, with or without
children, parental love is shown: this is stergethron, the kind of love you
show to your partner when s/he’s suffering, confused or lost. It’s
love that is guiding, reassuring, protective, and we all need some of this
parental care at times.
Showing spiritual love
Over time, with enough security from a loving relationship, we’re strengthened
in our ability to show agape, a spiritual love and compassion for all living
things. It’s this sort of love that’s damaged most when we’ve
had to live too long in difficulty, and the kind of love that’s most
inhibited in people who’ve had a hard time with HIV long-term. It’s
hard to care for other people when you’re struggling yourself and eventually
you can close down. If you can show spiritual love, it shows you’re
still ready to grow. Though growing up is hard to do (and we continue to do
it until we die) and a successful relationship takes effort and work, life
is a lot easier with one.
What exactly is a ‘successful relationship’? It’s best defined
as one that stimulates you to become a better, more loving person. ‘Success’
has nothing to do with how long a relationship lasts, how it looks to other
people, or indeed how it ends. It makes you look forward to growing and learning
about yourself: to living.
Growing and maintaining a relationship
• Take time out together from daily life to nurture the relationship.
• Take smaller emotional risks at first.
• Set time aside to iron out problems together and argue fairly.
• Learn conflict and communication skills, eg, saying clearly what you
want and how you feel.
• Be responsible for the reasonable consequences of your actions.
• Allow your partner to grow and change.
A relationship needs balance in all forms of love: too little eros and you
need satisfaction from outside; too much philia, you become a doormat; too
much stergethron and you end up as a professional carer, with your own needs
not being met, too much agape in your partner and you fail to stand out as
an individual worth loving in yourself. A healthy balance constantly changes
and renews a successful love-relationship.
Make life worth living
We have all four forms of love at all times to some degree, whether we’re
single or partnered. We can express these forms of love to different people
in different ways, but having one person to share them within a successful
relationship is deeply enriching. It’s just that a love-relationship
helps love grow most. Indeed, successful relationships really make life more
worth living, and understanding what goes into a good one can make them more
possible.
This is the last of my regular columns. It’s been a great experience
for me as I’ve tried to give something positive and practical but also
give food for thought. I’m very grateful for the opportunity, and hope
I’ve helped.
Dr Rupert Whitaker is co-founder of Terrence Higgins Trust and has a clinical
practice in psychological medicine.
Dr Rupert Whitaker is co-founder of Terrence Higgins Trust and has a clinical
practice in psychological medicine.
• www.lifemedicine.co.uk
