The Three Loves

(Parts of this blog may gross you out or be offensive. You have been warned. I am giving you fair warning. Read at your risk.)
Wednesday night, I had the pleasure of doing the A/V for David Coleman when he came to Moravian. For those who don’t know who David Coleman is, he is the Dating Doctor aka “America’s Real Life Hitch”. I really enjoyed his presentation, and believe me, I was not the only one. Everyone had a blast. At least, that is how it seemed to me. And he was a really great and nice guy. Completely friendly and personable.

For part of the presentation, he spoke about the three types of love. I found this a very good subject to talk about. However, he went through it too quickly, and I decided to expand upon it. I do not claim to be a “Dating Doctor”. Anyone who knows me knows that I do not have, nor have I ever really had, a girlfriend. So, I don’t really go out on dates. However, I do know a few things about love, and the different kinds of love that exist. With my parents, you can’t avoid lessons in love, all three types of love.

So, what are the three types of love? The answer is Eros, Phileo, Agape (David used Philio, I use Phileo, they are the same thing). These three names come from the Greek. The Greeks believed that they were the only kinds of love around, and that everyone had circles of lovers depending on which type, or combination of types, of love they felt for the person.

Eros love is the simplest to feel and the simplest to explain. Eros love is the raw physical attraction that one feels for another human being. It is the root of the word erotic. Eros, for the Greeks, was the god of physical attraction, and also lust. Eros is the shallowest part of the ocean of love. If you feel Eros love for someone, you love them for their body. They are pleasing to the eyes. Ladies, Eros love is what most men start with. The reason, and I say this as a guy, is that we tend to think with our penises when it come to relations of any kind with a woman. I know that I am saying something most people don’t want to discuss, but it is the truth, like it or not. However, Eros love will not sustain a lasting relationship. For that, you need something deeper. Eros love is not a bad thing, though, it helps people want to break the ice with others or the opposite (or same) sex. I also want to crystal clear on one thing. Eros love is not sex. Sex, and sex alone, is sex. Too many people equate Eros love with sex. Even the Greeks did. It is not. Lust is not sex. I know that in the Gospels (I am a Christian, remember) Jesus tells us that men who look at a woman or man with lust has commited adultery in his heart. This is the Truth. However, if I look at you with lust, it means I want to have sex with you, not that I am having sex with you.

Oh, and please note: EVERYONE FEELS THIS AT SOME TIME IN THEIR LIVES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! (enough exclamation points?)!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! It is perfectly normal for a human being to feel lust and be physically attracted to someone. Hollywood has made a lot of money because of this. Ladies and Gentlemen, you may wish to deny it, but everyone has a Brad Pitt, Matt Damon, Jude Law, Natalie Portman, Angelina Jolie (bleck!), Milla Jovovich, Lacey Chabert, etc that they have found physically attractive in a movie. I know it is true. You know it is true.

Phileo is the next level of love. It the friendly or brotherly love, this is the word which gave us the name of the City of Brotherly Love, Philadelphia. Phileo usually comes after you have met someone and gotten to know them. Phileo is what you feel for a friend. It is the underlying base for the relationships built between two friends. The more love there is, the deeper the friendship. Where Eros is defined by the passions, Phileo is more about trust and respect. It is also about Intimacy. I really liked that David Coleman made a point to distinguish between Intimacy and Passion. Passion is physical desire. Intimacy is the non-physical and it is tied to the faith you have in the other individual. Phileo is actually the most difficult love for me to explain. So, I will sum up with an example. Take your best friend, the one you trust most, the one to whom you can tell anything. How do you feel about them? That is Phileo. (If this is your spouse, then you are truly a blessed individual.)

The deepest level of love is the Agape love. This is the love of the romantics strive for. This is the deep heartfelt love. “I love you with all my heart”-type love. This is the love that you feel and you just want to let everyone know about it. It is usually Agape love that leads the way to commitment. In a way, Agape is a combination of Eros and Phileo. It takes both the passion and the intimacy and the trust, mixes it all together, and it makes you want to commit to the other human being. If you are married, this is love you need to feel, because it the commitment, not the feeling, that counts with Agape. I want to repeat that, Agape is about the commitment, not the feeling, of love. As I stated before, I am a Christian. Since I have provided examples for both Eros and Phileo, I will be consistent and show you an example of Agape love. God’s gift to us of Jesus’s sacrifice is Agape love. He’d loved us so much that he committed his life to us. When Jesus says that “Greater love has no one than this, than to lay down one’s life for his friends” (John 15:13), he is speaking of Agape love.

You do not need to go through a linear progression from Eros to Phileo to Agape. You can start with either Eros or Phileo. You could start with Agape but this is rare, but this is the usual starting between parents and children in their relationships. Eros does not need to precede Phileo or Agape. I will admit that it helps, but it is not necessary. I also want to say that Phileo can be the starting point and it can lead to Eros. I guess Agape could lead to Eros, but it strikes me as counter-intuitive.

I hope that everyone who read this enjoyed the experience. However, if in some way you have been offended, I will apologize. However, I did warn you at the beginning.