The following is the final installment of a three-part blog post.
In all of the articles, books, and stories I’ve read while trying to elucidate romantic love, each author distinguishes romantic love from some other form of love. Some simply call this counterpart “love,” others “real love,” “true love,” “Eastern love,” “friendship,” or “charity.” All agree, however, that this other form of love is the selfless counterpart to the selfish romantic love. Johnson says that this love “affirms and values another human being as he or she is” (1983, p. 191). He says that romantic love isn’t really its own separate emotion, but “a complex of attitudes about love—involuntary feelings, ideals, and reactions” (p. 45). Our love biologist, Helen Fisher, agrees with him on this when she says that romantic love is not an emotion, but a drive, like hunger or thirst (2006, p. 93). There is something in romantic love that echoes real love, but romantic love is not itself a form of love. It is a vehicle for love. It is a drive, a shadow.
In Plato’s allegory of the cave, he describes a group of men who were born and raised in the same dank cave, bound so that they could only face the wall. A fire burned behind them, and every so often objects passed in front of the fire, casting their shadows on the wall. To these men, those shadows were reality—not the objects themselves. When one of the men was finally loosed, he was so uncomfortable to discover the true nature of the world that he wanted to return to the familiar shadows of the cave. The people of our culture are so confused about love because they, like the sorry souls in Plato’s cave, are trying to make sense of something by studying its shadow instead of the thing itself.
So what is love—in its truest form?
“Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends” (John 15:13). Whether or not you agree that he was the Messiah, Jesus Christ was certainly one of the greatest philosophers in the history of the world, and he defines the greatest love within the context of friendship. Why friendship? Christian theologian Paul D. O’Callaghan said,
Giving one’s life for a stranger might be heroic and valiant, but it does not arise from the bosom of love as such would for a friend. There is no ‘greater love’ because no other act of self-giving would carry the same abundance of love. Giving one’s life for a friend embodies the force and dynamism of love in a way that could not be for a stranger or enemy. (2012).
Friendship could also be considered the least binding loving relationship, having no contracts, set duties, or obligations—so dying for your friend is more voluntary than dying for your spouse or child. By this definition, love is characterized by voluntary giving and self-sacrifice within the context of an intimate relationship—a relationship with someone whom you know, understand, and care about. Another word for this greatest love is “charity.”
The apostle Paul, in his epistle to the Corinthians, describes charity in these famous verses:
Charity suffereth long, and is kind; charity envieth not; charity vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up,
Doth not behave itself unseemly, seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil;
Rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth;
Beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things. (1 Corinthians 13:4–7).
This charity is the love that Paul encourages the Church to adopt; it is the bond of fellow Christians. “These bonds go deeper and demand more of us … than any others, even than those of family,” writes Paul Griffiths, professor at Duke Divinity School (2006). By practicing charity, we can experience love that goes beyond that of natural, familial ties.
But does this love only apply to friendship? Can it not exist between—for lack of a better term—“romantic” partners?
While many aspects of romantic love are characterized as selfish—especially those that have to do with the neurochemical drive—we can sometimes see charity shining through the vehicle of romantic love. Charity can work through the drive of romance to help us truly love a person, instead of objectifying the person as a means to propagate the species. Other romantic displays that are used to win the favor of the beloved then become heartfelt instead of selfish. Romantic partners can definitely experience this charitable, friendly love, and the romantic drive can even lead them to it. Romantic partners can even be friends, though perhaps in a deeper way than your typical friend. People of our culture aren’t altogether ignorant of this either—I’ve heard many newlyweds describe their spouse as their “best friend.” Whether or not that’s true isn’t as relevant as the fact that they recognize the overlap between friendship and romantic relationships.
Authors like C. S. Lewis wouldn’t like that sort of overlap. In his book, The Four Loves, Lewis attempts to categorize human love, saying it has four different forms: affection, friendship, Eros (romance), and charity (1960). Skipping simple affection, Lewis describes friendship as a chummy, shallow sort of love (p. 85); Eros as selfless romantic love (p. 95); and charity as the love that God inspires us to attain (p. 126). Many scholars disagree with Lewis’s categories, so I know I’m not alone in my surprise at Lewis’s definition of friendship. It directly opposes Christ’s references to friendship, and it mostly just shows us Lewis’s own cultural situation. His definition of friendship speaks “to a specifically English male experience of friendship—taciturn, understated, indirect, shy—which in some other cultural spheres would seem peculiar at best, barely worthy of the name of friendship at worst” (Williams, 2012). As human beings, we tend to want to organize and simplify things, but I don’t think that Lewis did friendship justice.
Don’t get me wrong—I do find some of Lewis’s divisions accurate, I just don’t think his divisions are divisions in love, as he intended. I believe they are divisions in relationships. Once again, I think we’re looking at the shadows produced by love as it dances by an open flame. The shadows move so much because relationships are dynamic. Gay Christian author Wesley Hill gave a good example of this when he stated the following:
Many of us don’t find ‘love’ and ‘friendship’ easily distinguishable, nor—even if we’re straight—are we always able to tell where longings for same-sex closeness and desires for companionship and company begin and end. More often, these realities shade into one another, coloring and texturing our experience of friendship in complex ways. (2015, p. 76–7).
As gay Christians committed to following biblical commandments, Hill and I often find that our sexuality can blend into our friendships in interesting ways. My close, same-sex friendships don’t always fit into one of the neat little boxes Lewis tried to build, and neither do many other types of relationships.
That is yet another reason why I don’t think there are many types of love, but one type of love with many vehicles. My friend, Ty Mansfield, BYU religion professor and author of In Quiet Desperation, strongly believes that “charity is the only kind of love, but there are many ways in which love can be expressed.” I agree with him completely. He continued, saying that “the goal is to transcend the limiting expressions of temporal love and to cultivate godly love, or charity” (personal communication, September 29, 2015). To me, this means that we must use earthly vehicles—be they romantic, friendly, or familial—to practice charity.
I believe the reason charity, a strong expression of love, is so often confused with romantic love is that romance is the easiest vehicle in which we can practice charity. There’s such a drive to cultivate romantic relationships that we usually learn charity while trying to care for the person we’re obsessing over. Charity can be applied to so many other types of relationships though, so it doesn’t have to be learned within the romantic vehicle. I consider myself an example, since I still practice charity with Allison, even though I don’t have the neurochemical drive that supports the romantic vehicle most couples use. I can also express many of the selfless behaviors that are typically ascribed to the romantic vehicle with Allison, so these may have more to do with charity than romance itself.
To quote psychoanalyst Robert A. Johnson one last time, “We analyze romantic love, not to destroy it, but to understand what it is and where it belongs in our lives” (1983, p. 49). I believe it is charity, and not romantic love, that should take the lead when two people are considering marriage. Romantic love is a vehicle—a drive and a set of behaviors. It is not the state of being that is charity. If a relationship were to be based on so transient an experience as romantic love, without charity to guide it, it would be doomed. Neurochemicals and cultural expectations are not enough by themselves to sustain a relationship. There is a place for romantic love, and it can be a thrilling experience, but it is charity, and not romantic love, that “never faileth” (1 Corinthians 13:8).
On the evening of December 20, 2014, I took Allison by the hand and stepped out onto the hardwood floor, surrounded by the cobalt and pink hues of our wedding reception, ready for our first dance as husband and wife—a waltz. We rose and fell with the flowing melody, cheered on by our family, friends—and our gay entourage. It wasn’t quite as graceful as my old dream, and romance didn’t seep from the floorboards, but something even better happened.
Each and every person in that room filled me with an inexplicable and permeating sense of love.
References
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