One Love

To me, love feels like the same “thing” whether it’s toward my friend, family member, or partner.

• I think there are absolutely differences in the way that I feel my love and show my love to my friends, family members, or partners, but that difference simply lies in the associated depth, expectations, and expression.
• In this article, I will argue that this follows from my non-attachment to most social scripts about relationships, which allows me to interact with love in a more direct manner.
  • I know this sounds like “I am right and everyone else must be wrong!” but I promise I have reasoning!

What if there is only one kind of love?

• I think there is one aim of love; to be involved in helping someone flourish (live their best life). This conception, coined by Carrie Jenkins is called eudaimonic love in her book Sad Love.
  • With multiple types of love, you have to maintain the idea that they aim at different things, otherwise they would be the same thing.
    • This would mean that familial love aims at family things, platonic love at friend things, and romantic love at romantic things. But what are friend, family, or romantic things? Are there any actions that strictly conceptually belong to only one group?
• If there are no types of love, then the question of “Am I romantically attracted to my friend?” becomes moot.
  • You know you have love, or at the very least the precursors to such, so the real question becomes, “What are you going to do about it?” or maybe “What do you want to do about it?”

Some people have distinct feelings of different types of love. Why is that?

• This is paradigmatic dictation; in an adaptation of Jessica Fern’s initial concept in her book Polywise.
  • Conscious awareness is shaped by our beliefs; what is possible, what is valuable, what is right/wrong. This forms a sort of perceptual filter that shapes how we perceive things and create meaning from it.
  • Paradigmatic effects depend on how deeply you’ve consciously or unconsciously internalized norms about the “types of love”.
• Everyone has differing subjective experiences of emotion depending on individual biology, culture, etc. It’s kind of similar to how we think of color: Is My Blue Your Blue?.

Are relationship types real if types of love aren’t?

• Well, yes and no.
  • The types aren’t real in that they are not some fundamental truth of the universe, but they are real in terms of social construction (like the law for example).
• The social scripts surrounding the depth, expectations, and expression of love, especially toward people who you may or may not be attracted to in some way.
  • It is completely understandable (and perhaps preferable) for you to love your family member and partner for different reasons, but these reasons shouldn’t and don’t have any bearing on what type of love it is except for matching it to social scripts.
• I actually think that it can be quite dangerous to treat relationship types differently like this, especially when it comes to relative importance.
  • I’ve argued before for a non-hierarchical view of friendships, but I think the idea can (and maybe should) be applied across all of your personal relationships.