This is one of a series of posts on the issues of romantic love. Check out my first post here.
The issue of romantic love is a loaded topic. In the English language, we use the word “love” to describe a number of relationships. We love our families, our friends, our partners, our pets, our ideas, nature, and our religious deities. How do we parse these topics apart from each other?
What defines romantic love as separate from other forms of love? Christian philosopher CS Lewis breaks love into four categories: philia, storge, eros, and agape. Philia describes friendly love; storge describes broad love (e.g., “I love nature”), agape describes selfless, godly love, and eros describes romantic love.
There are a number of features that set romantic love apart from other types of love. These features between lovers are:
- Individual self-esteem
- Reciprocity
- Mutual exclusivity (i.e., monogamy)
- Alignment of ends
I’ll make a case for each of these being necessary conditions for romantic love in forthcoming posts. Of course, these are not necessary and sufficient conditions for love. You can have all of these and not have full romantic love. There is no perfect formula — elements like passion, attraction, and general chemistry can’t be as easily described (though they, too, might be broken down). This is just an attempt at outlining some of the important necessary conditions.
At the core of romantic love is a conscious sharing of core values, which motivates the desire to be with the beloved. This consciousness of values cannot be stressed enough and is directly connected to the awareness necessary for self-esteem. Only a person with self-esteem is capable of romantic love.