Love=Romantic? Passion? Or Intimacy? (Danny Kojima)

All right, from now on, I will talk in English only for some knowledge that I want to share. For my novel, it will still in Bahasa.

Everybody know what love is. Everybody love what love is. I mean, who don’t love the love?? Some of us love someone…just because we love them. That is the simplest reason. Other than that, anyone can love someone because of money they have, or want to having sex, or pretty face, or many other reason. But when someone truly love another one, they just love the other because they love the other.

So…what is actually love? Well, there are so many theories about love that everyone talk about even in Psychology. I will not tell each of it, but I will tell one of the theory that everyone also know. According to John Alan Lee, there are 6 type of love:
      (1)  eros—romantic love;
      (2)  ludus—game-playing love;
      (3)  storge—quiet,calm love;
      (4)  mania—crazy love;
      (5)  pragma—practical love; and
      (6)  agape—selfless love.

With all of these type of love, we can combine it into 3 major type of love:
      (1)  Romantic Love à there is a sense of ecstasy and anxiety, about physical attraction and sexual desire
      (2)  Passionate Love à only about sexual attraction
      (3)  Companionate Love à where love will grow with the intimacy and attachment.

We now know 3 major type of love, but…which is the real love?? Is it only romantic? Or maybe only passion? Or it’s only about companion—intimacy???

Before we go there, let us see how marriage is. Why marriage? Because marriage is the simplest example for us to know what love is. Everyone marry because they’re love each other. The question is…which love?? As we can see nowadays, there are so many couple who get divorce. Because of what, because they don’t fit with each other, because their partner is like a jerk, because…they don’t LOVE anymore. It will look interesting when we look back how our parents, or maybe grandparents can still be together even they have a very big problems in their lives. What is actually they have that we don’t have right now?

In the past, people get married only for the economic union between parents. So it’s like, “I like your daughter/son, we should get united so that our economy would be bigger. Let us engage our kids so we can be siblings and have more money.” Seems weird, but yeah, this is what actually happened in the past. So they arrange the marriage and so there come husband and wife and they become sibling by blood. Maybe in the west, they’re not doing this anymore, but in the east, some of us still do this kind of marriage. You can see this in Japan where some Yakuzas want to arrange a good relationship with another family. When it comes into kingdom, almost all of the kings also did it to have a good relationship with another kingdom.

The question is, why we need to know about it? The most interesting part is that, even they have their marriage arranged, only a little, I mean very little they have a divorce. Even they had problems, they don’t easily divorce because of things: (1) Husband and wife have enough with what they have, it’s good to be alive for them; (2) There is also financial dependency for wives. They only can get money from their husband; (3) Even there is no commitment with each partner, they have commitment for their children.

It is very different from nowadays marriage that so many of us choose to divorce only because one simple thing. Husband an wife can get divorce only because they fighting with something very simple, is my husband/wife can clean up the dishes or not. Yup, some of them fight because of this simple thing and can get divorce. How ironic is it?

So back to the beginning, what is love? As we already see the example from the past and nowadays, we can conclude that love need commitment and intimacy. Indeed we humans need sex, but that’s normal in marriage. At the first day of our marriage, we want to go to the bed quickly and want to having sex, that’s okay, it’s fine, it’s human nature. We look at our wives and husband, oh, how beautiful he or she is. But remember this, face can change through time, so you can’t have beautiful face forever. When you grown old, your face will have wrinkles, and soon, your beautiful face will disappear. So how can you still love your partner when you see an old man or woman next to you? Intimacy is needed.

Passion for sex and romantic is needed at the first time you married. But when time goes by, the passion and the romantic-ness will disappear, while you growing intimacy to your partners.

So what is Love? Love is like a tree that will grow if you plant it in the ‘intimacy’ soil, and you give the ‘passion and romance’ manure so they will grow rapidly. The roots of the tree, will stuck inside the ‘intimacy’ soil and it will grow until it fruitfull.

“You wives, be in subjection to [your] husbands, as it is becoming in [the] Lord. You husbands, keep on loving [your] wives and do not be bitterly angry with them”
Colossians 3:18,19

Immature love says: 'I love you because I need you.' Mature love says 'I need you because I love you.'
Erich Fromm

25 Agustus 2013