What’s love got to do with it?

Among our essential emotional needs are two nods to our need for human interaction, in the forms of both an intimate relationship and community connection.

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Further details always reassure readers that the intimate relationship needn’t necessarily be a physical one, which is well and good – a close friendship can provide immense support and connection without crossing the road from platonic to sexual. But I’ve always felt that the phrase “intimate relationship” is a somewhat cumbersome cloak unnecessarily hiding the elephant in the room: love.

What is this thing called love? And what’s it got to do with getting our needs met?  

Ancient Greek philosophers identified five forms of love: familial love (Storge), friendly love or platonic love (Philia), romantic love (Eros), guest (hospitality) love (Xenia) and divine (unconditional, altruistic) love (Agape). We could add or amalgamate these divisions to our heart’s content, and many have, but crucially, the word “love” means many different things to (and within) each of us, and contemplating love sends our brains on a pattern matching search, for references to love within our own experience.

For some, childhood memories are coloured with love that came hand in hand with stability, security and a sense of safety surrounding their young lives, creating an instinct that love is a wholeheartedly desirable state to aim for. Consequently love conjures up strong positive emotions that we enjoy and want to continue to feel: deep affection, unconditional support, intense positive feelings, great interest and pleasure, kindness, compassion, sharing, belonging.

Sadly, for others the opposite can be true: memories of intense love for parents, or family, who were unstable, unreliable, or absent can be stained by the harsh realities of such insecurity, and consequently a feeling that love involves such emotions as fear, worry, anger, pain, jealousy, disappointment, rejection, loneliness or danger.

In similar ways, adult relationships can leave us with a complex array of pattern matches. Depending upon our experience therefore, we may see the concept of love as wonderful and to be embraced, or terrifying and to be avoided, or anywhere along that spectrum.

To love, clearly, is a risky business. We open our hearts, lower our defensive barriers and share our resources in the form of attention, food, funds, time, energy, safety and shelter, all of which potentially compromises our ability to get our own needs met. So what’s the benefit?

Emotions are triggered by our essential needs, they are the signal that we need to take action about something (such as fear prompting us to jump away from a snake, or loneliness prompting us to seek company, or hunger to seek food). Love isn’t, as Tina Turner sang, “a second hand emotion” – it’s first hand, real and palpable, and is prompted by our emotional needs, so we must look to those to find out why love is so vital to our survival.

Falling in love may be pure chance or alchemy but under the heady rush of giddiness, the flurry of heart emoticons and air-blown kisses, there are essential needs being met for all parties concerned.

The HG Intimacy podcast offers great food for thought on this ‘love’ thing, and HG college training days Couples Therapy and Improving Relationships both go into much more depth.
 

“Love is a many splendored thing”
Paul Francis Webster, American lyricist (1907 – 1984)