There are kinds of love! The word love is one of the most used words among human beings, and perhaps one of the most important. People name many things love: the sexual act, the feelings of lovers, caring for children, caring for pets, the relationship with God.

But is there a difference between these feelings? Is there a difference in intensity: to love more, or to love less, or just to like? Is there a difference between liking and loving? What would be the opposite of love?

Types of love and Lewis's work

In C.S. Lewis' book "The Four Loves", the writer explores the nature of love from a Christian perspective. In the book, Lewis explains from the most basic natures of love to the most complicated ones, based on the four Greek words for love: storge, philia, eros, and agape.

When analyzing the so-called storge love (brotherly and family love), it is observed that this type of relationship has a premise of pre-made feeling, the parents at some point conceived that child (fruit of their love/sex), therefore, this child was previously desired, expected and idealized since the uterine gestation.

This kind of love arises naturally, and regardless of what the parents or the children do (contemptuous or violent attitudes), this love is hardly ever broken, there is a strong tendency to forgive and to overcome conflicts.

Types of love and degrees of kinship

It is not uncommon to find mothers in prison lines, bringing things for their children, hence the expression that "mothers go to hell for their children". Other degrees of kinship, such as uncles, grandparents, and cousins, carry this characteristic of natural love, cousins tend to be best friends (philia love), because they have a blood tie and because most of the time they spent good times together in childhood.

Storge has a tendency to become philia, but if it becomes Eros we would be facing an incestuous relationship. philia love (love of friends), is that affection that arises in the journey of life, friends from the neighborhood who played together in childhood, friends at school, or at university. This type of friendship usually arises between people who share common life interests: biker's club, wine club, church groups, and at work for example.

Many professions like doctors, nurses, and teachers, who spend long hours together during their work, end up making many work and profession colleagues, and develop deeper bonds with some, thus creating some true friendships throughout their lives. This love can sometimes turn into Eros love, love relationships can arise from good friendships.

Romantic Love

Eros, related to sexuality and its unfoldings, is that love of physical attraction, sexual desire, and a racing heart. A priori, it also arises from an idealization (passion), and as the years go by, when the defects appear, there are then two options, the first is to break off the relationship, for not supporting the other anymore, the other option would be a mature analysis that the other's defects are bearable, then, this relationship survives.

Perhaps this is an interesting definition between liking and loving. On a "scale" of love, first you feel attracted, you begin to like, feel affection, and if this relationship lasts it becomes love. Finally, agape love (unconditional/divine love), is considered by Lewis to be the most important of loves, and a Christian virtue.

Naturally, because he was a Christian apologist, Lewis describes that all loves emanate from this "greater love," which, because it is unconditional, is a self-sacrificing, unselfish love, capable of even giving one's life in the place of the one loved, as did the Christian leader Jesus Christ.

Types of love: Sexual love

Fernando Pessoa, Portuguese poet and intellectual, wrote that: "We never love anyone. We only love the idea that we make of someone. It is a concept of ourselves - in short, it is ourselves - that we love. This is true on the whole scale of love. In sexual love we seek a pleasure of our own given through a foreign body.

By this, Pessoa means that, many times, the feelings and relationships that we describe as love are only narcissistic idealizations, created and idealized by ourselves.

Following this reasoning, Lacan also points out that to love is actually a search for oneself, to truly love someone would be a search for an inner truth. To love another person, would help to give answers about oneself.

Freud and the types of love

Freud also observed in his vast work, that love functions as a model of the pursuit of happiness, and recognizes its illusory nature that fulfills the role of consoling and helping to tolerate the malaise that is inherent in human desire. Freud also placed love alongside the sexual drive, not as part of it, but parallel to it in the sense that it is a drive as strong as the sexual one and that makes a movement of the self toward the object beyond the pure pleasure relationship. But in the absence of love, what would take its place?

The main antagonist of love turns out to be hate; couples that used to love each other may experience certain situations of disagreement and betrayal, which may culminate in aggression and crimes of passion. Therefore, it can be considered that when a relationship ends under adverse conditions people don't end up liking each other less (like a lesser love), but in fact this love quickly turns into a feeling of hate (a negative drive).

I want information to enroll in the Psychoanalysis Course .

Children, no matter how much they naturally love their parents, if they experience situations of abandonment, abuse, or family incontinence, may come to hate their parents. Parents in extreme situations may also "give up" on their children, after consecutive disappointments with children involved in drugs and crime for example.

Like it and love it

On the contrary, in the construction of love, there we can identify a difference between liking and loving. As said before, passion is a way to show feelings to the other, however, it is not something mature, it is still a feeling untested by the adversities of a long-lasting relationship, nobody starts dating loving to the point of dying in the other's place, after they are married,by sharing children and family maybe this can happen.

Likewise, there will always be among friends those you love the most, co-workers you hate the most, and others you are indifferent to. In the family some cousins will develop more affinity with others, uncles and grandparents too, so that you don't hate others, but you have more affinity with one person than another.

In summary, as Zygmunt Bauman said: "We live in liquid times. Nothing is meant to last".

Final considerations

Sympathy, empathy, compassion, identification, attraction, sexual pleasure, affection, caring, companionship, companionship, all of these are often called love, perhaps because these are the expected behaviors of those who claim to love.

But since these feelings alone cannot always be considered love, then a word with a lower semantic value is used: "like" to say that one loves less.

There is no measure, no way to measure love, it goes beyond human conceptions, perhaps this transcendent and metaphysical characteristic of love is what makes it beautiful, and an inspiration to poets and lovers.

This article was written by the author Igor Alves ([email protected]) Igor is a Psychoanalyst by IBPC, is majoring in Literature and Philosophy.