Truth Reconciled

Love is a complicated subject because it can have so many different connotations. Every portrayal of love in our society can seem distinct from every other. In romantic films, it is portrayed as an instinctual, uncontrollable, changing desire toward another person. In heroic stories, love means sacrificing for the good of others. In family-oriented productions, love is caring about the well-being of others and supporting them in times of need.

The purpose of this post is to understand love. I’ll discuss several common ideas about love and try to organize them. Most of all, I want to understand what constitutes “true love,” the kind of love that everyone hopes to achieve, and I hope to prove it, rather than simply speculate. 

Infatuation: a good feeling

The word love is often used to describe the positive emotions you feel when someone or something makes you feel good. If you feel happy when a certain person is around, then you could say that you love them, in the same sense that you love your favorite food or your favorite pastime.

If the good feeling comes from a potential mate, and you obsess over it and feel addicted to it, then it is called infatuation, or falling in love. This love is very strong in the short term, but seems to evaporate over time in most cases. It has difficulty enduring struggles. Any trials that this love faces will make the good feelings that fueled it immediately disappear, and any relationship based on this type of infatuation will fail unless it is replaced or reinforced by a more enduring love.

That’s not to say that this fiery love can’t be rekindled. All it requires is some addictively good feelings caused by the social proximity of the other person. The trick is to allow yourself to feel those feelings by letting go of anything that impedes them. Accept your loved one as they are, let go of grudges, forgive all, and choose to see the good. Of course, this may be easier said than done, as it requires a much more mature type of love.

Although unreliable in the long term, infatuation does serve a useful purpose. It acts as a hook that can latch people together so that they can begin to learn what real love is. Without this romantic obsession, marriage would be quite rare.

Naive Love: a desire to make someone happy

“I just want you to be happy,” is a common phrase spoken by those who claim to love someone. It is often untrue, coming from selfish and manipulative individuals who want to control others, but sometimes it is genuine, and it is usually easy for a mature person to tell the difference. Do you really care about your loved one’s happiness, or do you just want them to not bother you with any unpleasant negative emotions?

Assuming you have a genuine concern for the happiness of another, there still remains the question of what you actually know about happiness. One thing needs to be made perfectly clear: You do not have the responsibility nor the capacity to make anyone else happy. A person cannot be held responsible for what he or she cannot control. You have no control over the happiness of others. You may have some control over their environment if you are near to them, but you cannot control how they react to any situation.

As discussed in my article on happiness, it is an emotion that comes from within. Happiness comes when we obtain what we want, but if we keep wanting more, then our happiness will always be temporary. If you want someone else to be happy, then you have tied your happiness to theirs. If they are unhappy, then you will be unhappy because you do not have what you want. In this way, desiring happiness for an unhappy person only guarantees your own misery.

If the person you claim to love is a person who chooses to be happy, then you might feel satisfied with your relationship. You might naively believe that your love is true and that it bears the fruits of happiness. But if your loved one does not feel happy, then your seemingly selfless type of love will probably begin to reveal its selfishness. You will see that this type of love puts expectations or requirements on the other person. Your unhappy partner will feel pressured to feign happiness in order to please you. This is not true love, it is a toxic burden that only contributes to the continual unhappiness of everyone involved.

I have made it sound bad, but that is only because I had to make a point. So many people believe that this is what love really means, but it is only the beginning. This is what I call “naive” love, the next level of love after infatuation. It arises when a relationship based on infatuation has to deal with unhappy feelings, when you realize that your loved one only makes you feel good when he or she is happy. In order to satisfy your addiction to those good feelings, you develop the desire to make your loved one happy.

Faithful Love: a willing and unwavering commitment 

If true love doesn’t mean that you try to make your loved one happy, then what is it? What does it impel us to do? Up to this point, we have discussed a few things that love does not do. Love does not use others to feel good or for other selfish reasons. Love does not impose an expectation, requirement, or goal onto a loved one. It does not try to change a loved one. Love is not about fixing problems that a person may have.

So what does true love do? While a loving person may not try to change someone, they will be there to help when needed. As a truly loving person, you will fully accept your loved one as they are, and you will be there for your loved one to support them in the changes that they want to make. 

I call this type of love “faithful” love. It requires a person to be completely and willingly committed to another. You will be there for your loved one, through thick and thin, no matter what. You will never abandon them. Despite all the pain and work and struggles that might accompany it, you will remain firm in your commitment, not because you are forced to remain, or because they make you feel like it’s worth it to you, but because you choose to remain for them.

True, enduring love is unconditional. It does not expect nor require anything from the person being loved. Your loved one may not love you back, but you will still love them. They may despise you and blame you for their problems, but you will not despise them back. You will love them without expecting them to love you back.

You might think that’s unfair, and that you should at least expect to be loved in return, otherwise you’re just suffering for nothing. But the truth is that you have no control over how your loved one feels about you. Any goal you create for someone else is an unrealistic goal because you have no ability to make it happen. Many might say that sacrificing for someone who doesn’t care about you is not worth it and that you should leave such a relationship, but then you certainly wouldn’t be demonstrating love, would you? Is discovering “true love” not worth the effort?

This unconditional and fully committed love is beginning to sound like true love, but how can we be sure? I’m not convinced that we’ve found the definition of true love because I don’t feel like we proved it. Commitment itself cannot completely describe true love. What if I’m fully committed to you just because I’m afraid of being judged by others if I leave you? Clearly, something is missing. 

True Love: a commitment to eternal happiness

We have described true love vaguely as an unconditional commitment to be present and willing to help a loved one. But how exactly should we help, and what should we be committed to? Should we help them accomplish anything they want, including actions that we consider evil? Where is the distinction between loving unconditionally and enabling unhealthy behaviors?

To answer this question, we need to really nail down what true love is, which means we need to use strong definitions and logic. I think we can agree that true love is the type of love that everyone desires in their relationships. So let’s use this as our starting definition of true love.

Definition: True love is the kind of love that everyone desires in their relationships. 

This definition implies that anyone who finds true love will not desire to change it, because they desire true love and they already have it. It follows that true love will last forever as long as the individual responsible for it has the ability to maintain it. We can therefore conclude logically that true love is eternal.

Whenever something lasts forever, the Refinement Theory of Morality applies. Any society that persists indefinitely will eventually achieve a stable state of morality. Their behavior will be refined to the point that they will always desire to do what is right in any situation. Individuals in this perfect society will practice a kind of love that is unchanging, because their behavior has already been refined to perfection and they will never desire to change it to a less good option. It follows that their love is true love, because it is what they desire and it is eternal.

We can therefore learn what true love entails by studying the behavior of individuals in a perfectly moral society. As derived in my essays on morality, the main objective or effect of their behavior, whether directly or indirectly, intentional or not, will be to expand the reach of goodness itself in the infinite future. This means that everything they do for a loved one will be beneficial to the loved one’s moral state in the long run. This is equivalent to promoting the loved one’s eternal happiness, as described in my essay on happiness. 

In other words, true love means that you have an unwavering commitment to support your loved one in their efforts to become their best and happiest self in the long run. This is different from being committed to their temporary fleeting happiness or trying to change them to act as you wish they would. It implies endless patience, focused on eternity rather than today. It is also different from enabling bad behavior by supporting them in whatever they want to do.

You will only support their good endeavors, not their bad ones. But you will also not try to force them to act the way you wish. Remember, the first principle and requirement of morality is freedom. It is very hard to justify trying to control someone that you truly love. You know that they will eventually get on track. You won’t feel mortified if they behave badly or feel unhappy for a day. You will forgive every mistake that they make along the way. As long as you acknowledge that they will eventually progress towards goodness and approach the kind of happiness that never ends, then you can feel satisfied in your relationship.

True love comes with all the benefits of the lesser kinds of love, without any of the disadvantages. It feels as wonderful as infatuation, because you hold no negative feelings for the loved one and accept them completely as they are. It supports the happiness of the loved one, but not in a toxic way like naive love because it focuses on eternity. You understand that the temporary unhappiness of your loved one happens, and it should not be alarming or uncomfortable for you. True love is the most committed and unwavering type of love, even more than faithful love, because it lasts forever, but it is not painful for you because you are so accepting and forgiving that there is nothing your loved one can do that could hurt you emotionally. 

Conclusion

We have delved into the topic of love and hopefully made sense of it all. We organized various interpretations or understandings of love into four categories that seem to have an order:

• Infatuation
• Naive love
• Faithful love
• True love

We described infatuation as an obsession or addiction to the good feelings caused by the presence of a particular person. We say that we have fallen in love with that person. This type of love is the hook that starts us down the path of love. Relationships that last tend to progress from one type of love to the next, starting with infatuation and progressing towards true love.

Naive love desires the happiness of the loved one. When your infatuation suffers due to a loss of good feelings, you will either give up on the relationship or reach this next level of love. By helping your loved one feel happy, you hope to restore the good feelings that you used to have. This type of love can feel toxic, because it puts expectations on the loved one and ties your happiness to theirs.

Faithful love comes to those who survive naive love and come out still together. It consists of a willing and unwavering commitment to your loved one. Your love is faithful when you have given up on trying to change your loved one, and instead love them unconditionally. You are there for them no matter what, even if they don’t love you back. This love feels good for the person being loved, but it is not perfect. It can enable unhealthy behaviors that stunt the progress of the loved one, and can feel like painful resignation to the one who is loving.

True love is the final phase. It is faithful love combined with perfect goodness and an eternal perspective. We defined true love simply as the love that everyone desires in their relationships, and from that definition we derived that it must denote an unwavering commitment to support your loved one in their efforts to become their best and happiest self in eternity. True love has no downsides, and it lasts forever. It is not fleeting, controlling, toxic, or enabling. This love survives all, forgives all, supports the good, and looks to the future with unwavering hope and confidence.