The Meaning of Love on Valentine's Day

If there was one issue I would place top of my discussion topics (and St Valentine’s Day would seem to be a good day to start) it would be the meaning of love. And if you want a happy marriage (heterosexual or gay) or a happy relationship (hopefully long term), we could do worse than revisit CS Lewis’ book The Four Loves – and rediscover the riches of the word in Greek ethics.

Eros – creative and procreative love. Eros has been forgotten in our culture which confuses the erotic with a fantasy, usually of male power. As I write this the petition to remove page 3 topless models from the Sun newspaper gathers pace – but at the same time so does the surfing of dubious internet sites. What they represent is a new puritanism – a puritanism that takes the fig leaf off one part of the human frame and places it over the face which becomes devoid of warmth, personality and humanity. Eros is the creative element that exists in all of us, which in the right relationship reflects itself in play, mutual exploration and yes, ecstasy (ek-stasis – the real out of body experience of loving release). Where the other person becomes an object, eros dies. Creativity withers. Emotion sterilises. Lovers stray.

Agape – beloved of Situation Ethics, agape is unconditional love for the stranger best illustrated by the parable of the Good Samaritan. The people who should have cared (Priest, Levite) hurried on and the man who shouldn’t have cared (the Jew from Samaria who had intermarried with a woman from another faith and was thus unclean, unsound, dubious) paid the hotel bill and took the risk. Actually, I think agape is alive and well in our society – whenever I have been in real need I have found a stranger has been very willing to help (including a young man in a modified four wheel drive who pulled me out of the snow last week – I shall never pass judgment on these vehicles again)…

Storge – family love. It is said blood is thicker than water and to some extent I think this is true. Although I occasionally fall out with my twin brother – usually about something like dividing the spoils of inheritance – nonetheless I do have a key to his London flat and an open invitation to stay any time. And when I was unemployed some years ago he did put £100 in notes inside my Bible (in those days I used to read my Bible regularly). Family love has a quality of the last resort that it’s hard to find anywhere else.

Philia – friendship love. What it is to have friends who are good friends. I don’t really mean facebook friends – you can’t have 123 friends of the depth we need. I mean friends who stick by you and are sensitive to seasonal changes of mood. We need people we do things with and above all, those who can bring out the sense of humour which (according to the internet dating site I was on a while back) is the one thing we all seem to claim to have. I persecute my best friend endlessly with my own brand of banter – which he returns in good measure – it raises the mood, brightens the sky, lightens the heart.

So do you want a happy life and a happy relationship? Build all four loves into your attitudes and into your key relationships and the secret of happiness will be yours.

Image: a new dawn, Lake Windermere