Image by A.Mando
If you can’t be with the one you love,
Then love the one you’re with.
So said Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young in their song “Love the One You’re With”.
In some ways this song is making a joke at the expense of fidelity and monogamy. But I’d like to use it as a jumping off point for thinking about two kinds of love.
It seems to me that the love in the first line can be seen as a different kind of love to the one in the second line.
The “love” in the first line we all value. There are people we ‘fall in love with’ that we just ‘click’ and who it is no effort to like and love. This includes those we ‘fall in love with’. All these experiences are delightful and pleasurable.
The “love” in the second line is tougher. It speaks of doing for others. Sometimes even when our affection isn’t around. This sort of love – doing kindness to others that we may not (at the moment, or even longer) like particularly much – is much less pleasurable.
The weakness of the “love” in the first line is sentimentality and transience. By sentimentality I mean that this love, based on our spontaneous affection, is unwilling to look at other than the nice parts of our experience. Here the second kind of love, with its willingness to “put in the hard yards”, shows its value. The transience of the first kind of love is it’s other problem. It is hard to base any kind of permanent relationship on such a shifting foundation as our emotions. This may not be such a big problem for mature adults, but for relationships involving children it is a major problem. Here again the commitment to do something we may not feel like doing is important.
There are problems with the second kind of love too. It can become a kind of cold duty – doing because we should, with no feeling involved at all. A relationship like this is not an attractive prospect. A relationship with the warmth of spontaneous affection is a far more delight-filled proposition. And while this second type of love can embrace a commitment to the future it doesn’t know when to quit. At some point we would want to leave a cold and affection-less relationship. This second type of love can be persistent, but without much intelligence.
For our relationships to be delightful and lasting I think we need both sorts of love.
Questions to consider:
Which relationships of mine are based on the first kind of love?
Which relationships of mine are based on the second kind of love?
Which relationships of mine started with one and changed to the other?
Would I like to change the balance in a relationship of the kinds of love involved (more of the first or second type of love)?
Again, nicely done! I like the 4-pronged analysis – Love 1 (good or bad) Love 2 (good or bad). Or two continua, perhaps. This makes for the possibility of one having mixed combinations of these at any one time (and changing over time?).
Thanks DrSteve.
I do think we move from one to the other and mix them over time.
Thanks for taking the time to comment.
Evan,
As I hear the CS&N song repeating in my head, I realize I’ve heard it many, many times which were not on the radio. One of those messages that stuck.
I had a different interpretation of what the lyrics meant when it was first popular. That was, if I did not have someone that I genuinely felt love for, I should just love the person that was available. Kind of, whether I wanted to or not. Or creating a situation to have love, then settling for the creation of some “love”, rather than a void of love. Or maybe even an attempt at altuistic, love of all.
I realize getting stuck in these messages could be very influential. And I think it has.
You had a good way to look at it. Now that you say this, I’m not sure I ever appreciated or experienced two kinds of love working hand in hand or as a balance to one another.
Barbara
Hi Barbara,
Yours may be the right interpretation – I’m not sure.
I think the real challenge is to get the two loves working together. I don’t find this easy.
Thanks for taking the time to comment.
Evan
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