What is Love?

Today I would like to share a little about love and what it is. Love can be a very confusing, misunderstood, hard to recognize, and often misinterpreted thing. I’m going to cover the different kinds of love we feel as human beings. My source for the information that I’m about to share comes from a book called “Marriage and Family: The Quest for Intimacy” by Robert Lauer.

In this book he explains the different types of love that we can feel. The first type is called “Storge” which is the kind of love that exists between a parent and their children. This kind of love is the least discriminatory because it can exist despite any physical, mental, or emotional maladies an individual may have. This love is not fueled by attraction like other kinds of love are.

The next kind of love is “Philia” which is the love that exists between friends. This love is something that, as Lauer states, the Greeks held to be the most high form of love. I think this is something that is definitely lacking in the world today. Friendships can be very “fake” and unhealthy and can lead someone to become worse than before rather than better. Real, true friendships seem really hard to find because everyone is more focused on themselves rather than helping others. This is bad for both sides of the relationship. On one hand, this idea of individualism causes a person to look for friends more so for what benefit they can get from the relationship in terms of temporal things rather than looking for friends who can lift and encourage them and who they can in turn help and uplift. On the other side of the relationship, individualism keeps the other person from putting themselves out there to help their friend and they also are only looking for personal benefit. This kind of friendship is all too common in today's world, even when the need for true friendship is so vital to our wellbeing.

The next kind of love is “Eros” which is love between a man and a woman, including sexual love. Eros is more than just a desire for sex but rather a desire to be with a specific individual. This desire causes us to prefer unhappiness with that person, rather than happiness without them. This is a really strong kind of love that binds two people together.

The final kind of love is “Agape” which is love that exists regardless of your feelings towards someone. It is a love that exists even if you don't like someone. When I learned about this kind of love, it made me think of something I read about Jesus Christ in the Book of Mormon. “Charity is the pure love of Christ, and it endureth forever.” The kind of love that Christ had for us is this Agape kind of love. It exists regardless of any feelings or circumstances and it led Him to die for us. It can also be practiced by each of us and will lead us to selflessly act for the benefit of others. This kind of love can change the world.

After learning about all of these different kinds of love, I started to think about which one was the most important. I quickly came to the conclusion that they were all important, especially in the context of marriage. If someone can have all of these kinds of love in their relationship with their spouse, their marriage will be full of selfless service and acts of charity that will help their relationship to stay strong.They will have a love that lasts despite changes in physical appearance and despite emotional challenges experienced on both sides. After studying this, I believe firmly that a marriage struggles because there is a lack of love in one or more of these categories, and if we can learn to develop and practice these in our own lives, we can have the happiest marriages possible.