As children, the words that we hear most conjugated and that we learn to imitate and use are, in many cases, “I love you,” I love you. However, when we later try to obtain such a conjugation in reality, in facts, we find great difficulty in experiencing it in a healthy way. Unconsciously, our emotional relationships are contaminated due to egocentrism, jealousy, domination, passivity and other elements that make it difficult to connect with this verb.
Erich Fromm, in the book The art of Lovingasserts that love is not an easy feeling for anyone, whatever our degree of maturity. “All attempts at love are doomed to failure unless one actively seeks to develop the total personality and achieve a positive orientation.”
We all try to be loved, and not to love, and we fight to achieve that goal. It is inferred that loving is simple if one finds the appropriate object to love or be loved by.
For Fromm, you learn to love as an art, internalizing theory and practice gradually and with the clear awareness that it is a matter of primary importance, on the achievement of which our psychological balance depends.
According to the author, the only valid solution to avoid emotional isolation It is in the achievement of interpersonal union, loving fusion. The inability to achieve it means insanity, destruction of self and others. “Love is the mature solution to the problem of human existence,” says Fromm.
At the same time, Fromm sees the immature forms in “symbiotic relationships” One of its manifestations occurs when we become obsessed with the other and we really convince ourselves that we love, when in reality it is an obsessive process. Therefore, when we say that we are crazy about each other, we are not defining the qualitative or quantitative nature of the relationship, much less the authenticity of love, but rather the degree of loneliness we were in before we met “lovingly.”
In contrast to symbiotic union, mature love implies union on the condition of preserving one’s own individuality. In his actions and future, the human being is free, he is the owner of his affection.
Respect as the foundation of love
Love resides in respect; If there is no respect, there is no love. It is obvious that Respect is born from one’s own dignity, emancipation and freedom To respect is to allow the loved person to develop in their own way and not how I want, to serve me, agree with me, resemble me or respond to my needs.
To have some certainty that we “inhabit” a mature loving relationship, it is necessary for man and woman to achieve integration between their masculine and feminine poles, a necessary and sufficient requirement and condition to achieve maturity in love.
On the other hand, with regard to mature love, the logical fallacy implied by the notion that love of others and love of oneself are mutually exclusive can be highlighted. The truth is that if it is a virtue to love one’s neighbor as oneself, it must also be a virtue for me to love myself, because I too am a human being. Love for others comes through love for me.
Love We discover it only in a free, authentic human being, and it manifests itself fundamentally in the ability to give. “He who has much is not rich, but he who gives much,” says Fromm. Thus, we can distinguish between:
1. Motherly love
Maternal love not only contributes and encourages the preservation of the child’s life but must also instill in the child the love of life, the desire to stay alive beyond instinct The “good mother” gives her happiness, her honey, and not just her milk.
Unlike erotic love, where two separate beings become one, in maternal love two beings who were united will separate and, therefore, a psychologically and emotionally healthy mother will encourage and cement her child’s path towards autonomy, respecting him. his individuality. It is the ultimate test of maturity and maternal love in an extensive form.
2. Erotic love
Unlike brotherly or maternal love, erotic love is a union with a single person exclusive and, if it is also loving, it means establishing it from the essence of being.
3. The selfish
The selfish person does not love himself, He hates himself, has a low self-esteem, and has low self-esteem Egoism and self-love, far from being identical, are actually dissimilar. If an individual only loves others, he cannot love at all; For the same reason, if he only loves himself, he understands nothing about what it is to love.
A reflection on lovers and affection
Satisfaction in individual and social love cannot be achieved without the ability to love one’s neighbor, without concentration, long-suffering and method. “In a culture in which these qualities are rare, the ability to love must also be rare.”
Fromm proposes that we must move on from the universality of economic interest where the means become ends, where the human being is an automaton; A supreme place must be built and the economy is there to serve it and not to be served, where others are treated as equals and not as servants, that is, where love is not separated from one’s own social existence.
