Another Look At Love

Intro.

In June, two thousand and eighteen, I posted on this blog a post entitled “Love.” Also, in that post I said, “there are three words in Greek that better explain the depth of love, however, we still have to go beyond that, which I will explain later.”

My last two posts on “Coming of Age,” was in a way laying the ground work for this post, although that was not the original intent. This photo is a picture of unconditional love, albeit between two animals, this post is meant for unconditional love between two people.

Many of my previous posts have been vague or as some will say “deep.” That was never the intention, each post is meant to get a person thinking, “about themselves.” There is within me an acre of diamonds, if the time is taken to mine them.

The same applies to you. 

Each post written in the past has a diamond, the diamond will vary in size and clarity according to you, just has mine has for me. A promise was made in my first post on “Coming of Age?” how what is written came about, that puts pressure on me to be transparent on my experiences. It is our experiences that is our truth, because naturally, we have experienced it.

For me, there is very little looking to the past for nostalgia but rather to learn from. There has been good and not so good and bad experiences from the past. All were related to the choices I made, if I didn’t like the experience, it was because I made a wrong choice. All was not lost if the experience helped me to grow up.

The Three Aspects Of Love.

While the English language has one word for love, Greek has three, each describes succinctly the love we can experience in day to day living.

In the post on Coming Of Age? (contd) the fact of growing up began in my sixties but could have begun, when I was fifteen. That was my first experience with Agape Love, but I did not realize it. It was many years later before I began to understand it from the aspect, where it began to bring about a ripple effect in my life. At that point my understanding was coming from the fact of my experience, which is powerful.

Mine and Norma’s relationship was built on a relationship with each other. Eros, quickly became the foundation of our relationship, especially for me.

Eros is the lowest or weakest form of love, it centers very much on sex.

With the arrival of children, Norma’s love elevated to Phileo which is a higher love that centers more on family. This left me on the outside.

Later in life I would sometimes say to Norma, it feels to me as if you are in a room with the children and I’m on the outside looking in. She did not get that or even accept it, in many ways I did not get it either. I was expressing a feeling I had, without understanding it.

In the early years of our marriage I had the distinct feeling that Norma was stronger than me and I was suppose to be the strong one. This caused me to bury myself in my work and set about to prove myself, by being a good provider for the family and getting involved in all kinds of community activities.

That was not a bad thing, but there was still a void. Some people are seekers and some are not, as for me I was a seeker. I was trying to reconcile, I did not know what, with myself, those activities kept me from dwelling on this seeker mentality.

I helped in the home when I could, was fair at cleaning and cooking, but never really rose to the occasion as Norma did.

It was years later, studying Greek and looking at the three aspects of love that I began to realize that my natural gravitation in love was Eros and for my wife it was Phileo.

I can now accept and appreciate that my wife was stronger than me when it came to love. This made her a stronger person. This also took a load off me, because now I did not have to prove myself, just accept the fact I’m weaker. That opened up a new set of questions that I wanted answers too. Love is the strength of any person and it centers in the heart.

I knew that I did not have too, nor could I, prove to her that I was stronger. The moment I tried to prove to her that I was stronger, my weakness was exposed. We are energy fields and what we do speaks volumes, what we say is like sounding brass and tinkling symbols, just a lot of noise.

So I head down another path, the religious path, that proved to be a dead end as well. It was a necessary path for me, all the paths I travelled were necessary. It was the result of those dead ends that got me on my Camino in my sixties.

For me that journey of growing up began when I experienced “Agape” love and rather than discount or rationalize, it was embraced by me.

It took time communing with myself and asking questions, but gradually the realization mostly through experience of day to day living and the understanding of the “power of agape love” and the impact it had on me and my relationships became more of a reality. It changed how I saw myself and how I saw others as well.

The understanding of “Soulmate” took on a whole new meaning.

Eros centers on the sexual side of love, it did not mean with Agape love there was no sex, there was better sex, this time considering the woman as much as myself. In a recent survey of women it was found that eighty-five percent of women never experienced an orgasm when having intercourse. When Agape love is the predominant love, sex becomes a journey rather than a destination, if the destination is not reached there is always another day. It also became important that the woman reach the destination as well.

Phileo love is the family love, this allowed me to see the strength of family and why Norma was stronger than me. Phileo love is more unconditional whereas eros is more conditional. My helping in the housework and doing things around the house did not give it the Phileo energy, that was still conditional. We both had a responsibility on the phileo side, again because it is an energy it had very little to do with what we did, the greatest impact was with who we are.

The basis of Agape love was myself, my inner self, my higher power. It meant embracing myself and setting out to grow up in that love, that is what happened in my sixties, and is not complete as of yet. However, the questions I had are no longer there, it is time that will finish the journey. It has enabled me to truly love myself without being arrogant or self serving.

Agape love is unconditional love.

It centers around the heart, that is why we never give our heart to anyone.

My next post is “The women in my life.” will expand on the heart relationship more than in previous posts.

If you have questions or comments,  I am happy to respond.