What Type of Love Do You Have for Your Partner?

“We loved with a love that was more than love.” Edgar Allan Poe

It doesn’t take the ancient Greeks to know there are different kinds of love. I love my high heels, but that love is very different from the love I feel for my children. In their wisdom, the ancient Greeks divided the ways we love others into eight types, but sadly no category for how I feel about shoes!

In researching the types, it became clear to me that most people don’t recognize the differences in the way we feel love and think that if they feel any sort of love for another person, it is enough to base a commitment on. The Inuit have more than one word for snow (some say it is more than fifty) because in the earliest days their very survival depended on knowing how the weather would effect travel and hunting. Not understanding the variations of love will not kill you, but could certainly lead to heartbreak.

The types are:

Agape – Unconditional love

Eros – Sexual attraction
Ludus – Playful and flirtatious love
Mania – Obsessive love (Not healthy)
Philautia – Self love
Philia – Deep friendship
Pragma – Enduring love
Storge – Familial love

I believe the most important of these if you hope to make a relationship work is Philautia or self love. I see too many people entering relationships for the wrong reasons; to fill a void, to avoid life, to make up for the love we don’t feel for ourselves: If someone loves me I must have value. We don’t need anyone to complete us, as romantic as that seems. We need to be whole, emotionally healthy, and loving who we are, exactly as we are.

The first types of love you are likely to experience when you meet a potential mate is Eros and Ludus. You see a hot girl across the bar and you give her the look. She smiles and waves. You send her a drink. All the flirting you do to gauge a person’s interest. If the chemistry is right, you move onto Eros or passion and sex. At this point it’s fun, it feels good, life is sweet...you’re in love. But what love? Not the enduring kind. Sadly, too many people make a decision to marry at this point.

The problem with Eros and Ludus is they tend to burn out after a while. Ludus is so much fun because the part of the brain that lights up when we are in the throes of this is the same as someone high on drugs. Eros is a self-serving, egocentric based love that focuses on our wants and needs. Passion fades. It is no longer fun to flirt with someone you live with. A few years down the road you have a kid, you are in debt, she has put on weight, and he doesn’t help with the housework. Because this was all based on superficial love, you find there is no foundation for you to stay together.

To make a relationship long-lasting, you need to move the passion you initially feel to a higher form of love. Pragma is mature love that develops over time. It is the result of not only choosing wisely, but of working through issues with a commitment to staying together as a couple. Philia is described by some as brotherly love, without romantic or physical attraction. I don’t hold the belief that a healthy relationship can’t have this sort of love. We hear of cases of people who were friends since childhood that suddenly realize they want to marry. Arranged marriages have a low rate of divorce and these don’t necessarily start with passionate love.

A case could even be made for Storge as being a form of love that is enduring and healthy within a relationship. Sexual attraction is not important to some people and is becoming more acceptable to acknowledge. If the parties are both asexual or one person is and the other is accepting of this, the love might very well be one of familial love. This could also be what people within an arranged marriage experience.

To reach these higher forms of love, you need to put in effort to get to know the other person, their hopes and dreams, but more importantly their flaws and dark side. Would we want them as a friend? Do they care about who we really are and help us be the best version of ourselves? This takes time, awareness, and asking hard questions.

The love you have today, might not be the love you feel tomorrow. Love changes over time. Life happens, stressors occur, and our bodies change as we age. The passion may have burned off, but if it is an important relationship we will have done the work to have a foundation that we can build on to reach a higher love.

Is Agape possible in a romantic relationship? Doubtful. Unconditional love, I believe, is rare outside of perhaps a parent and child relationship. Would I continue a relationship with a partner that hit me or cheated on me? No. We need boundaries and it is healthy to have them.