Is love arduous work — or is it an art? Psychologist/philosopher Erich Fromm focused on the latter in his 1956 classic, The Art of Loving, one of the books that formed the foundation of much of what I believe about life and living (the others were Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl and I and Thou by Martin Buber).
I reread The Art of Loving recently after a friend mentioned it in conversation. What stuck with him all these years, he said, was Fromm’s contention that love is not just an emotion. It’s also a practice.
The art of love, in other words, “requires knowledge and effort.”
On this Valentine’s Day, as many of us celebrate love in its many forms — familial, romantic, platonic, religious — we’re not just celebrants; we’re also practitioners, which requires an outward sign: a card, a letter, flowers, a dinner out or in, or a simple, heartfelt declaration of our affection and bond:
I love you.
But Fromm raises that bar.
“Love is an art, just as living is an art,” he writes. “If we want to learn how to love, we must proceed in the same way we proceed to learn any other art.”
As human beings, we are blessed with self-awareness, but that has its downside, including an acute awareness that we are separate beings. He calls this inherent loneliness “the problem of human existence.”
“The experience of separateness arouses anxiety,” Fromm contends. “It is, indeed, the source of all anxiety. … The deepest need of [humanity], then, is the need to overcome separateness, to leave the prison of [our] aloneness.”
We attempt this prison break in all manner of ways, not all of them healthy, he says. We seek “union” with others through sexual intimacy, drugs, group rituals and conformity, avenues that are transitory or illusory, therefore “insufficient to pacify the anxiety of separateness.” Other approaches, such as throwing ourselves into productive work or travel adventures, are more constructive but these, too, have limits.
“The full answer,” he says, “lies in the achievement of interpersonal union, of fusion with another person, in love.”
Love, he says, is our “most fundamental passion; it is the force that keeps the human race together, the clan, the family, the society. …
“Without love, humanity could not exist for a day.”
But not all forms of interpersonal union deserve the exalted label of “love.” He describes these as “immature love” or “symbiotic union,” relationships characterized by co-dependency, dominance/submission, or pragmatic convenience.
In contrast, Fromm says, “mature love is union under the condition of preserving one’s integrity, one’s individuality. … In love, the paradox occurs that two beings become one and yet remain two.”
True love, furthermore, is active, emphasizing giving. But not the transactional kind, offered in hopes of return.
In the free and unconditional giving that accompanies love, he says, “I experience my strength, my wealth, my power. … I experience myself as overflowing, alive, hence as joyous. … In the act of giving lies the expression of my aliveness.”
And in the mutuality of love’s equation, the loved one likewise overflows with giving.
“Love,” he says, “is the active concern for the life and growth of that which we love.” If the active concern isn’t there, it’s not love.
To sustain love, we must learn, and then practice, the art of loving. In addition to discipline, concentration, and patience, Fromm says, “if one wants to become a master in any art, one’s whole life must be devoted to it.”
This resembles the well-worn advice, “You have to work at it,” which sounds decidedly un-romantic. But it’s only “work” in the sense that when you love what you do, it doesn’t feel like work. The “labor” of our love, then, is effortless effort. It flows naturally from our active concern for the life and growth of the person we love.
The great Buddhist teacher and monk Thich Nhat Hanh described it in a similar fashion:
“Loving-kindness is not only the desire to make someone happy, to bring joy to a beloved person; it is the ability to bring joy and happiness to the person you love because, even if your intention is to love this person, your love might make him or her suffer. Training is needed in order to love properly; and to be able to give happiness and joy, you must practice deep looking, directed toward the person you love. Because if you do not understand this person, you cannot love properly. Understanding is the essence of love.”
I know I’m not the best lover I can be. Maybe that’s because becoming a better lover has not been at the top of my priority pyramid.
Fromm called love “the only satisfactory answer to the problem of human existence,” yet being a better lover is not entirely compatible with the demands and distractions of daily living in an often dehumanizing economic system.
“Those who are seriously concerned with love,” he says, “must arrive at the conclusion that important and radical changes in our social structure are necessary if love is to become [universal], and not a highly individualistic, marginal phenomenon.”
As a society, we may have a long way to go to master the art of loving.
But Valentine’s Day is a good start.