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Key insights from
The Art of Loving
By
Erich Fromm
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What you’ll learn
For all the movies and
songs about love, most of us fail to love well. Social philosopher and
psychoanalyst Erich Fromm (1900-1980) argues that, since love is a basic
human need and we cannot remove the longing for it even if we wished to, we
would do well to discover the damaging assumptions beneath our failures to
love, learn what love really involves, and begin to practice the art of
loving. Love is an evergreen subject, and though originally published in
1956, Fromm’s essay retains its incisiveness.
Read
on for key insights from The Art of Loving.
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1. We fail at love
because we assume that we already know what love is.
Everyone knows love
matters. We all hunger for it. But few think there is anything new to learn
about it—nothing that the songs, shows, and movies have not already
disclosed to us about what does or does not lead to love. There are a
number of factors that blind us to our need to learn about love and to our
habitual failures in our relationships.
One factor is that when
people think about love and how to find it, they think more in terms of
being loved than their own capacity to love. They begin with the assumption
that making oneself lovable is the best path to love. Men and women in
their own ways try to prove that they are lovable, whether that’s through
competence in one’s profession, becoming fit, dressing a certain way,
adopting certain mannerisms or hobbies, becoming a better
conversationalist, and so on. In Western culture, quintessential lovability
is a blend of popularity and sex appeal. Advice on how to be lovable and
how to be successful cover the same ground, more or less.
Another cultural feature
that dampens our curiosity about love is the assumption that the real work
is in selecting the object of love, as opposed to cultivating the capacity
to love. We think that love is easy once we have found “the one,” the
object of our love. It is a thought process as flawed as it is common.
In the Victorian era, where
love was a more contractual strategic arrangement brokered by third
parties, love grew after the wedding—not before. Romantic love has become
increasingly common in the West, and as such, has put an unprecedented
weight on the object, and the selection thereof. We ask, “Who is the one I
will fall in love with?” Not “Am I capable of loving well?”
A culture of consumerism
also feeds into the emphasis on objects. We want someone who is “the whole
package”: attractive, with positive qualities x, y, and z. We talk of love interests in much the
same way we talk about any other commodity on the market. He or she is a
competing good that we assess and measure against others in the same niche.
In a market-obsessed culture, it should not surprise us that we sell
ourselves and strategize about which person presents the best value to
match what we ourselves bring to the table. The influence of consumerism is
deep enough that we don’t feel its influence at all, but it is present and
influences our beliefs about love.
Yet another mistaken
assumption that makes us less curious about love is the conflation of
falling in love and being in love. When two people who had been strangers
begin to let down their barriers and feel they have still been received and
accepted by the other, it is a euphoric experience. Especially if it’s a
new experience, or if the moment is coupled with a sexual experience.
Unfortunately, these euphoric episodes tend to be short-lived. The spark
fades and disappointments, annoyances, and complacency set in. The couple
started as strangers and now they move back to feeling like strangers
again. Oftentimes, the intensity of the initial enchantment does not
reflect a depth of love in the relationship as much as a depth of
loneliness leading up to the ill-conceived relationship.
In any other endeavor where
we have experienced so much failure we would have given up a long
time ago. But it is impossible with love. We instinctually know we need it
and will continue to hunt for it. If we want some result other than
continued failure, we would do well to examine what goes wrong and explore
what love truly is about.
Most people believe love is
a happy accident one falls into, but love is more like an art, and like any
art, love takes understanding and practice to master.
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2. We are
determined to eradicate the pain of separation we feel through experiences
of union.
The story of Adam and Eve
in the Garden of Eden represents an era of instinctual animal innocence and
unknowing, an era that was ruined when they rebelled against authority. The
rupture introduced reason and true freedom with the ability to judge
between right and wrong, but what was lost was a perfect harmony between
people and their animal instincts. Some of those instincts remain, but
humanity is blocked from returning to that harmoniously instinctual state
of nature ever again.
Human reason brings with it
the ability for man to become aware of himself and who he is, but the brute
facts of existence into which man is thrown are grim. Because he is no
longer one with nature as he was in the garden of instinct, man must
confront his separateness to which reason has awakened him. He is an
individual, unique from any other, and his life is finite. He will leave
loved ones when he dies or loved ones will leave him behind. His
helplessness against the forces of nature, society, and ultimately death is
an experience of separateness. To be separate is to be helpless. It is the
root of all our anxiety.
Thus, man seeks union to
resolve the distressing experience of separation and reaches out for others
to realize that union. We see the quest in romantic love, in the bond
between mother and infant, and in our herd instinct. Separation is at the
heart of our problem of human existence. To find union is the deepest
hunger we have.
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3. We have many
tactics to resolve the distress of our separateness, but they are partial
solutions at best, and false solutions at worst.
In the primitive chapters
of human history, union in a group was usually achieved through communal
orgiastic rituals that often involved drug-induced trances and
sex-saturated group bonding. These orgiastic unions were intense, even
violently so, and they temporarily alleviated the pain of separation for
members of a tribe, as they blurred the lines between each other and the
world around them—at least until the next ceremony.
Modern society is far more
individualized and has done away with rituals expressly aimed at achieving
union, but we still have to confront our separation and the anxiety that
separation stirs up in us.
In the absence of those
ancient rituals, alcoholism, drug abuse, and compulsive sex have become the
most common modern attempts to bridge the chasm of separateness we all
feel. But of course sex without love leaves us with only a momentary rush
of union before we return to our condition of separateness. A drug can make
us feel “one with the universe,” but that unity, too, will fade into
separateness.
Another strategy society
has developed to cope with our separateness is conformity.
In both democratic and
dictatorial systems, there are high degrees of conformity, even if the
instruments used to keep the herd together vary from place to place.
Democracies prize independence, but we naturally form herds and find a kind
of salvation in being exactly like everyone else. From birth to death, we
are integrated in social and economic machinery, comfortable daily
routines, and a socially acceptable range of activities. If we are like
everyone else, we do not have to confront the disorientation caused by
separateness. Whatever shape a society takes, the hunt for union is
ongoing. We would want to conform even if we were not ordered or tricked
into conforming.
People in the West fiercely
maintain the thought that they are independent-thinking individuals, but
their most strident expressions of uniqueness usually take place in the
shallow pool of consumer preferences: this sweater over that jacket, this
car or that one, this political party over that one. These differences give
us the illusion of difference, but we are all more or less conformed
already.
Unlike orgiastic rituals in
tribal environments, which were communal, intense, and intermittent, the
union through conformity is tame. It lacks the shock and novelty to keep
the anxiety of separation at bay. Compulsive sex, addictions to drugs and
alcohol, and rising suicide rates in Western society all attest to the
general failure of herd conformity.
Society’s use of
conformity, pleasure, and work routine to alleviate anxiety are partial (or
even false) solutions to the problem of separateness. The full solution is
only found in the achievement of love between two people. There is no
deeper yearning at work in a person than the desire for interpersonal
union.
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4. The hallmark of
mature love is giving oneself, and we can only give ourselves when we have
a self to give.
When we talk about the need
for interpersonal union, it is important to clarify what kind of union we
are truly after. We must distinguish mature love from the mere symbiotic
unions, which characterize most relationships.
Symbiotic unions can be
passive or active. Passive symbiosis is an arrangement in which a person
attempts to escape his feelings of isolation and separateness by attaching
himself to the life of another person, and by looking to that person for
direction and protection. The implicit belief here is, “I exist to the
extent that I am connected to this person. Apart from this person, I am
nothing.” The clinical term for this is masochism. A masochist outsources
decisions, takes no risks, has no sense of self.
Active symbiosis is the
other side of the coin, the complement to the symbiotic union. To flee from
his crippling feelings of isolation, he finds someone he can attach to
himself, someone who will admire him, bow to him, even when treated
cruelly. The clinical term for this is sadism.
Masochists and sadists
might sound worlds away from each other, but they are fruit from the same
tree. Neither has a sense of integrity and wholeness; neither knows what to
do with isolation; both rely on someone else to feel themselves.
Mature love, by contrast,
flourishes when both people can hang on to their individuality and
integrity. Paradoxically, the union, that sense of oneness, is deeper in
mature love even as they are able to remain two complete individuals. When
we talk about love, we need to speak of it less as an emotion or an
experience, and more as action.
Central to the action of
love is giving. The most profound kind of giving is not material and
certainly not for the sake of a return on investment; the deepest gift one
can give is the gift of one’s self, of one’s life. This does not
necessarily mean death for the sake of another but to share with others
that which makes one alive.
To act in love assumes a
level of personal integrity or at least an orientation toward cultivating
it. To the extent that those compulsions rule him, he will fearfully hold
himself back, unable to act in love. The extent to which a person has
conquered his dependency, his narcissistic will to be all-powerful and
all-knowing, to dominate or exploit, is the extent to which he will have
the courage to give himself—in other words, to love.
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5. Mature love is
possible only when care, responsibility, respect, and knowledge come
together.
Mature love is dependent on
four components coming together and working in concert: care,
responsibility, respect, and knowledge. If any one of these pieces is
missing, people are not practicing mature love.
Care is manifested in
action, not in sentiment or mere words. If a mother says she loves her
baby, but does not feed him or clean him, we conclude she does not really
care. If someone says he loves gardening but his yard is full of wilting,
dying plants, we would assume he really does not care after all. In the
story of Jonah, God shows his care for the people of Nineveh by sending the
prophet Jonah to preach that forgiveness is waiting for them if they turn
to him. Jonah has a strong sense of right and wrong, but not love. He tries
to run away and is swallowed by a whale, a metaphor for his isolation and
the way hatred entraps us. According to the story, Jonah eventually does
what God commanded, the people of Nineveh repent, and God relents—much to
the disappointment of Jonah. Jonah did not care about the people of
Nineveh. He wanted justice and resented God’s merciful care for them.
It is difficult to talk
about care without bringing in responsibility. More than a top-down
imposition of duty, true responsibility is voluntary. It is the capacity
and willingness to respond. We could call it “respondsibility” because it
is about our ability to respond. In the story of Cain and Abel, the answer
to Cain’s rhetorical question, “Am I my brother’s keeper?” is not “No” as
Cain thought, but “Yes.” You are part of this world and you shoulder some
responsibility for your brother even as you shoulder full responsibility
for yourself.
The third component of
mature love is respect. Without respect, responsibility can devolve into
manipulation and overpowering the other. The word “respect” is derived from
the Latin word respicere
meaning “to look at.” True respect is not compelled through fear; it
requires you to see someone as a unique individual, and accept him as he
is, not as you wish him to be. Loving a person means wishing for his
growth, but for his own sake, and in his own way, even if it is not what you
envisioned.
Care, responsibility, and
respect are necessary conditions for love, but not sufficient for mature
love without knowledge of the person you seek to love. Without knowledge,
our care, responsibility, and respect would be useless because we would not
know what shape our actions should take. Knowledge can take us to the core
of a person. But this requires independence. We use people if we are not
independent, and use our knowledge of them to serve our own needs and
purposes. But if we are independent, we can, for example, see someone’s
anger without retreating from it to find safety or conquering it to feel
more powerful, or by assuaging it to feel like a savior or hero. We
can gain a true knowledge of the anger, and see it as an expression of anxiety,
and that beneath the anxiety is fear and shame. Suddenly, we see a person
who is in serious pain, rather than just angry. Knowledge helps us go
deeper and love someone in the particular way in which they need to be
loved.
Knowledge, care, respect,
and responsibility come together to form a mature love that people can give
to each other to form a long-lasting bond. It is this kind of love, and no
other, that answers the problem of human existence, that answers our need
for union.
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