Philosophy of loving

Post Reply New Topic

Hey everyone,

Here to ask a question. Recently I've been through a pretty messy situation where I loved someone and they broke my heart basically. At the same time its been a catalyst to this question in me:

I hear people say it is wrong to NOT love yourself. In fact... it's a very common statement "You can't love others if you don't love yourself first". Is it just me or is that statement of completely flawed logic?

Anyway... so I go to love myself more.. trouble is.. loving someone else contradicts this does it not? To truly love someone else is to want and place them above yourself, and your needs, in order to make them feel wanted/needed/connected. This means we are not loving ourselves truly.

There is then a hoped reaction to it all being reciprocated. So we love others to be loved by others? why not just love ourselves. Am I missing the point in loving someone? The idea of finding someone else is to discover unmet needs within yourself and to have someone give you what you need. But if we didn't have that need.. would we need to love?

Twisted logic.. confusing the heck out of me! Can someone enlighten me? Maybe I'm thinking of love the wrong way but I've surely seen many things even backed by psychologists that state what I just said above.

Is love truly useless? Sure it's nice... sure we're social creatures at heart (even if we don't like to socialise too much) but what really is the need to love? I'm seeing it as a pointless exercise to make yourself vulnerable and to externalise your own needs and place others before you. Perhaps loving externally is a stupid evolutionary mistake which we have kept up needlessly in order to give our chances of reproduction a higher chance. It confuses me.

The evolution is not driven by any urge to make us happy. It is all about surviving and producing offspring.
I know when people consider this, thye usually conclude that by evolution we should be totally egoistic - but then they overlook the fact that humans live in societes. The survival of their tribe is the best safeguard of survival of their own DNA. Thus, we developed the feeling of belonging and concept of loyality. They don't work only on blood relatives, you just need to think of others as your "kinsmen".
Not to mention the natural attraction to the opposiite sex - this is understandable even without all the above.

Hey Magz

Interesting! So you think we do actually have a basis from which love/belonging is attached to loyalty and not only survival/offspring. Why would humans make love so complicated? It's a trade-off between our needs and theirs. And I know that modern philosophy nowadays is all driven by the self.. the higher and lower self. Maybe love is not part of one but part of the other? I don't get it all still... its as if true love is simply pain. Why would we gain from that? That surely isn't loving ourselves first.

Just found something interesting called the "Self - Expansion Model". It states that love develops as a way to advance our self by including the qualities of our partners. When the relationship is new "Honeymoon Period/Phase" this is all well and good... however, when it is over relationship satisfaction and thus self-expansion slows and may fizzle out completely.

Interesting, but if after the period of self-expansion is over, what purpose does love serve? Is it a way to hold out hope that newer/more integrated feelings would come to us? such as parenting or marriage.. stability. It seems a bit of a long shot to explain love still. Love is about truly embracing the needs of someone else, but love comes in stages during a relationship and the first parts of "love" aren't really love... they're self-love and searching. So when real love kicks in.. what is the point in loving if it is not about ourselves? Sure, there are other feelings attached to it such as stability and status perhaps, but we outweigh the love we need as individuals, to give others the love they need in the hopes they give us the love we need. Is this not just a really stupid friendship which serves against us? Maybe our definition of love is changing nowadays... afterall... we can have sex without having children (birth control), we can even have sex nowadays without being a social outcast (Casual sex), and we can fall in love without wanting to have children too (Asexuality/Not wanting kids). It seems to me love is becoming useless. Its lovely, but its useless.

I always think of love in biological terms, which most people on the forum will know by now.
But to avoid repeating myself, another way I always think of it:

"Love" or relationships are about maintaining attraction, that is the foundation, without it there is nothing. In practice, achieving this, is kind of like walking a tightrope. You don't want to be so close your partner gets tired/bored of you, but you don't want to be so distant that there's no connection at all. It's a constant conflict between what you want, and what your partner needs. And the conflict is necessary I think, if the relationship becomes static, the "love"(attraction) dies out, and it's usually static from one direction, I don't think an equilibrium can ever exist in a relationship. You know in the initial phases of most relationships, it's usually very dynamic, it's very flirty and a bit uncertain. It's what makes it very exciting, and something I think needs to be maintained to an extent, in order for two people to stay together succesfully long term. And I don't count two people who are unhappy and bored with eachother, but are afraid to leave, as success.

It might seem unrelated, but I think it ties into what you said about loving yourself vs loving someone else. Whether we undervalue or overvalue ourself, the relationship will fall apart eventually. And since an equilibrium cannot exist, a constant back and forth dynamic is the only thing that can keep it alive. Like I said before, it's like walking a tightrope. It's very difficult, and I find it's usually alot more difficult to know when to pull back, than when to push forward. I think one of the primary reasons alot of relationships fail today, is because one part does all the pushing, and the other all the pulling. 'Static' may have been a bad word to describe this, but I think you understand what I mean.

BTW this only applies to modern relationships. There was a time when men a women desperately needed eachother, but I don't think that's the case anymore. That's why attraction is the only thing that can keep it going. With our short attention spans, a boring relationship is bound to fail.

Very interesting insight. I think you're right. It just seems that loving someone else is a joke on us? We don't need someone else to further us anymore, and as you say there is only attraction and purely a biological standpoint. I wonder if this is the end of love? We have pretty much everything we could ever want nowadays.. heck we could even parent a child without love or even a relationship with someone else. If that tightrope fails on us, only hurt is going to come of it. And hurt is not self-loving.

As in, any kind of love is an expression of not valuing ourselves? I guess it is. It's also a joke on ourselves in that we make ourselves vulnerable to pain, and the more we push, the more likely it is that we will recieve it. Atleast in a modern society, I don't think it's so obvious that it's in our best interest.

You're right, we have pretty much everything. That's why I think the only thing left that we might desire from eachother is attraction. People might say "companionship", but I don't think people really want that if there's no attraction, and it's the same when it comes to sex. People might want resources, but for the most part both men and women can take care of themselves these days.

Loving yourself just means accepting who you are, and not believing people who tell you you are worth less than what you are. It means accepting someone being a dick to you sometimes if you love them, but putting your foot down when it crosses the line. It's standing up for yourself, and believing you deserve it.

Hi, Rocker!

You have a lot of questions. I’d love to tackle them one at a time, but time is limited. So I’ll keep this brief.

Regarding logic, forget about it. There is no logic in love or emotional affection. It’s useful to approach love and relationships logically—who you choose to love, and why; how you handle conflict, and why—but the “stuff” of relationships rarely has any real logical basis. Some things, like, say, how to overcome difficulties meeting girls and getting dates you can apply logic to. Trying to resolve conflict while her body is flooded or deprived of hormones throughout her monthly period? You cannot apply logic to an inherently irrational state of mind. And don’t even THINK about bringing THAT up in conversation, or you’re liable to be relieved of one or more bodily appendages.

And that’s actually among the LEAST of your worries in maintaining a relationship. It only gets more complex from there. Never, EVER assume that any situation is governed by logic. Never, EVER assume that YOU are the rational one in any given situation. Men get no free passes.

Now for the rest of your post, loving yourself, etc.

It’s foundationally very, very simple. I operate on the premise that ALL humans are selfish. It’s not just that we’re selfish, but it extends to the level that what we want most in life is to feel important. It’s a universal character trait. Everyone is like that.

Now, if you know everyone is selfish, you can take one of two directions in handling people. On the one hand, you can view being good and kind as a pointless, vain activity. You can live to serve your own needs with minimal use for interaction with others. You can work for money to buy necessities and luxuries and be done with it.

The other direction is to recognize your own human limitations and understand you cannot transcend a certain level of accomplishment without help from others. What you then do is invest in others, whether that is time or money. You don’t place the immediate expectation on others for reciprocation. Rather, you invest in their value potential. You HOPE that they will either repay you directly. If they do not, you hope that at the very least your investment in them has some part in the betterment of the community and/or society that, in turn, benefits YOU as a fellow participant within that community or society.

Any concern for individuals is value assignment. “Doing the right thing” is integrity, yet another value. Because values are personal, those concerns are by nature selfish.

“Selfish” may seem like a harsh term, but it doesn’t mean what people typically think. I prefer the term “self-interest” to make the meaning clear.

So in terms of self-interest, love can be loosely defined as a personal or individual value or desire for another person. It can very well be that one may value another person to the degree that the other person is valued more than one’s own life. It’s the personal/individual attribute of this value that brings it within the realm of one’s own self-interest. It is therefore impossible for love to be altruistic. The complete sacrifice of self means one must also let go of the object of desire, you see. Since love IS desire for another person, love and altruism are incompatible.

And because desire demands that one act on the best interest of the other for the sake of the individual, love is impossible without action. No action=no love. Therefore, love = action, NOT emotion. Desire IS emotion. Actions taken to benefit the object of desire constitute and define love. Note that the actions themselves and the desire itself need not follow any obvious logical pattern. The logical basis for such actions are to benefit the object of desire which, in so doing, ultimately work to benefit the individual, the self.

Also important to note is the actions of love are generally MUTUALLY BENEFICIAL as a consequence. The ideal is to form a symbiotic relationship in which each of the pair act to complement the other, drawing on the strengths of the other to compensate for a weakness.

In order to love someone, you must DESIRE someone to the extent you even WOULD love them. Without that desire, which springs from self-interest, you won’t love. It is, therefore, impossible to love someone if you DON’T love yourself first. If you don’t, then there is no desire for others or anything, no actions (love) stemming from desire, and hence no REASON for anyone to assign you any similar value. If no one values you, they won’t desire you. And without desire, there is no love.

It does logically follow that for others to love you, you have to love yourself first.

However, I don’t see that as being most relevant. The reason why is most of us DO love ourselves. Our self-interest compels us to enjoy food, watch television, consume alcohol, binge on video games or Netflix, and so on. I’ve become addicted to running. But I’ve reached the point that running doesn’t challenge me. If I quit, I’ll lose the ability to run. So as a way to keep running but also fight boredom, I’ve started weight lifting to build my chest muscles. Previously I took up swimming. But with the end of the season, I need something to build on my swimming habit. So a typical day is 30 min. easy chest exercises (incline flies and bench presses with 15 pound dumb bells 3 sets of 15 slow reps on both exercises), about 47 minutes on an arc trainer, easy 1 mile walk on the outdoor track, and 10k training in the early evening (not more than 1 hour). I love myself and how I feel because of the sense of accomplishment I get from a little beginner athletic activity, because it’s more than anything I could ever do as a teen.

It takes time. The things you value are where you put most of your time and money. How much you value another person or deep relationships will determine how much time and money you invest in them.

If you aren’t investing in others, it’s most likely you have no interest in them. And that is OK. There’s nothing wrong with that. But you might have to re-evaluate your goals if they depend on relationships with other people. If you want a girlfriend, you need girls to take interest in you. For girls to take interest in you, you must first be interesting. In order to be interesting, you must first be interested. And that means you always place the interests of the other as the focus of the conversation. You cater to and exploit the self-interest of the other to your advantage. Once she sees that you are genuinely interested in things she’s passionate about, she will seek you out for company because you make her feel important. Because she wants you to keep making her feel important, she will do anything to keep you around. THAT is how you become interesting. Your self-interest lies in putting the desires of others ahead of your own. There is no failure when this is practiced consistently.

This is called reciprocation. It is the essence of the Golden Rule. Jesus taught it. Many sages and other Biblical writers before Jesus knew it, it’s been known the world over long before the Hebrews, and it has endured the ages. Jesus called specifically on the evil nature of human beings as the source of good deeds. Learn this and you can master all human relations, including romantic ones.

I hold to a Christian view of love, and your language here is, with some exception, largely Biblical.

The problem is human nature. The human heart and mind is the opposite of everything you mentioned. “There is no one good; no, not once.” When someone came to Jesus and said, “Good teacher...” Jesus asked, “Why do you call me good? Only God is good.” We don’t accept Jesus as Savior out of a desire to be “good.” We do it to escape the fires of hell, to enjoy Paradise, for the hope of wealth or for physical healing, for overcoming addiction, for spiritual or emotional fulfillment, and for all kinds of other reasons. Yet God accepts us who come to Him through Jesus just as we are: broken and in need of grace. Somehow I get the feeling nobody is going to block the pearly gates to demand of us a good reason why we should get in. Either you placed your faith in Jesus or you didn’t. “Good” will never cut it, and the best we on earth can do is merely practice for heaven. Once we get there, I feel it becomes irrelevant.

Love is exactly like that. No reason is ever good. No loving act is selfless. The reason why is every object of desire is given value by the self. Our self-interest drives us to seek it out. The real magic is when we BECOME the object of desire, when the other returns our love and meets our needs and desires. That’s really all anyone wants in a relationship. And that’s why it’s so important to show love early on. If someone doesn’t feel important, they have no reason to want to be with someone.

That’s why I believe in “rational self-interest.” Even if you ARE an altruistic person, you still need to be very careful with all the good you try to do. People do use each other and behave destructively. If you desire to give yourself and give completely, at least be just careful enough that your giving is not a waste. Rational self-interest values other people. It accepts that for each of us to succeed as individuals, we should support each other and reward achievement. In a romantic relationship, this works because, for example, you love seeing your SO happy, so you do things you know make him smile. And you don’t expect anything in return, but maybe he gifts you chocolate and wine because he knows you like that and he likes to see you happy. Or maybe you love it when he scratches your back and he just likes getting his hands on you. Everything works for the best of everyone because you know it’s what you would want. It IS what you want.

So I think a lot of time it has the appearance of altruism. Deep down it never is. But when everyone is working for the good of each other, in reality what does it really matter WHY anyone does anything? I just choose to accept it.

OP, cliches don't and can't capture the vast complexity of human relationships. Some people discover their inner value because they meet someone else who clearly sees and identifies it to them. Others discover a sense of worth in achievement of one kind or another, and the lucky few have it implanted from an early age by parents who were able to communicate affirmation of the child's inherent human value via approval, appreciation, acceptance.

Love is a small word with myriad meanings. The problem with cliches about romantic love, like the cliche you cited, is that romantic love isn't primarily a cognitive event, it's a response that goes much deeper than the cognitive level. Many people fall in love with others very unlike themselves. Sometimes the differences become add-ons for each partner, enlarging the capacities of both.

Thank you everyone for your replies. It's very insightful to see differing perspectives, and I understand we all see it differently.

I follow a Christian pathway, but also have a scientific background and hold beliefs of cynicism. It would be wonderful if the world was equal, but I know this is not the case. As people have said, love is a tight-rope act where you literally hope that your perceived desire is strong enough to gain you some love in return. Looking at religious figures/prophets, you see that many didn't have a need to seek out romantic relationships. They had an inner love that they shared out. Perhaps driven by their own needs, perhaps not. That's another debate which would be pretty two sided!

Fair point that not all emotional states are logical too. True that we don't "choose" to fall in love and that it happens subconsciously/instinctively, however, why choose to put ourselves into the position where love can develop, why do it at all? If the world is only filled with people and events that are out for themselves, why would we bother? Surely it's just safer to love yourself, and your God, and to give help to those who need you. Maybe I'm coming at this from a perspective after being hurt too much, but to me, it seems love is dying as it is not needed nowadays. Sad, I guess so. Sure I know that there are long lasting lovers out there, but it seems that this love is fueled by a rare partnership. Most countries have a 40-50% divorce rate. I hear counsellers talk about approaches to save these relationships by "meeting each other's needs emotionally, and opening up communication". We're not static human beings are we.. we grow apart if we're not growing together. But growing together is rare and we never know what is in someone's heart or mind. We could be told/given signs that people want us more, want us to grow ever closer and then by some weird life event(s), they grow oppositely. So we love to be vulnerable, to hold out hope in something. Such a waste of our lives if you ask me it seems.

Then finally, as autistic people, how much more difficult is it to even spot changes, spot different forms of communication and even to communicate the "rules". This happened recently where I didn't see it coming, it hit me and now I'm having to rebuild myself and life once again. Glutton for punishment or unsuited to loving.

Ok, I’ve already answered this question, but here it is again: Why even bother?

Rational self-interest. First, your ability to achieve is bounded by your limits. You cannot grow beyond yourself without help from others. Second, other people will not work to better themselves or others without some sense of reward. If you need people for your own survival or your own accomplishments, you NEED them to be successful as individuals. Your success depends on their success. Investing time and money (if you have it) in other people ALWAYS comes back in your favor.

You would like to think love is unconditional. Altruistic. Except a love that “endures all things” means a wife has to endure beatings by her husband if dinner is cold when he gets home from work. Or a husband has to tolerate a wife who runs up credit cards and screams at him every night because he doesn’t do enough or she thinks he’s cheating. Or if either of them actually IS cheating, the other has to put up with it and “forgive all things” because true love means “letting go.” The Bible says it is better “for a man to live on a corner of his roof than to share a house with a contentious woman.” I believe it works both ways.

Altruism is about losing. If the Bible is to be taken as truth, and I believe it is, the “endures all things” aspect of love has to mean something else. The rational person will “endure all things” because of the value he or she places on another, not from a mandate of unquestioning self-sacrifice. The Bible tells us that a sacrifice that doesn’t come from the willing heart is not really a sacrifice. That means true obedience to God depends on the value we give Him. Obedience to God and “self-denial,” therefore, are value-driven and thus acts of self-interest.

Love for others is like that. It involves a trade or exchange. It could be that her smile is all the reward you need. Could be him saying “I love you” and giving you a piece of chocolate when you feel sad is all the reward you need. Marriage relationships up the stakes, but essentially it’s a relationship in which two people pool resources to better achieve common goals or causes. Reproduction. Property sharing. Protection. Hierarchy of needs. Economics. Collaboration on mutual hobbies/interests. Whatever. What you BOTH bring to the relationship benefits the other. You bring complementary strengths to accomplish more as one. You ALWAYS WIN in that kind of scenario.

Divorce happens because one/both end up losing. There is no REASON, no benefit to staying together. I think that’s because unions are entered into based on emotion without real thought to what it all means. Affective love, not REAL love (action). Sooner or later, your self-interest WILL catch up with you. We’re not built for altruism. When you suppress your ambition in favor of the other, resentment closely follows, and that poisons the relationship. You build your lives together on compromise, and after so much time you will succumb to your nature and try to “cheat the system.” May be relational/sexual, financial, emotional, time, but you’ll always end up cheating on some level. To counter this, you must be ABSOLUTELY CERTAIN that your values are compatible or complementary. Religion is usually a big indicator. Marriage involves the binding of two FAMILIES, so getting genuine familial approval is always in your favor. If you can win mom, you can win the boy or the girl. Families are also a good measure of values, so examine their values and behavior for qualities you may not have noticed yet in your mate. Since you’re sharing resources, you’re also sharing liabilities. If he or she likes being in debt, that might be a good sign to move on and find someone else. Having debt and having attitudes about debt are two different things, though, so just make sure you are both in sync on this issue and you make a plan to deal with both your debts in the long run. “The borrower is slave to the lender,” so just remember if she owes someone money, she doesn’t completely belong to you. She doesn’t belong to herself even, so she can’t really give herself away. Have a plan to earn your freedom or the other’s freedom, and you’ll likely have a better marriage.

And don’t become too engrossed in divorce rates. People get divorced thinking it will solve their marital problems. It’s relational suicide, a permanent solution to a temporary problem. Assuming no infidelity or life-threatening abuse, divorce is stupid. Because they don’t deal with their own factors going into a relationship and the trouble they cause, divorce and subsequent relationships are merely living in denial. Thus their problems just follow them into future marriages. A lot of your 50%ers out there are repeat offenders and don’t even know it because they either refuse to accept responsibility for their actions or fail to recognize that their actions are leading to the disintegration of the relationship. The 50% rate doesn’t adequately account for repeaters who get their act together or for those who do make lifelong bonds with their spouse. That doesn’t mean that every first-and-only marrriages “for the children” or for religious reasons are necessarily HAPPY marriages, of course, but it does show that the 50% is skewed at worst and maybe even irrelevant.

Easy formula for marriage: if you’ve known each other for a while and you’ve been dating seriously for at least three months, put a ring on it. Get the details worked out over the next few months up to a year and get married. Give her some babies as quick as you reasonably can. Live, love, and enjoy the heck out of each other, and everything else will take care of itself.

For me my parental love towards my daughter is like a "golden standard" of love.

Romantic love has too much of a push-pull dynamic, it's a stressful, intense mess. There are expectations, transactions (I did this, so now it's your turn to do something else), little acts of manipulation, attempts to change the other person. Endless frustration
For me benefits do not outweigh all the fuss and stress... plus it's pretty hard for many autistic people, including me, to express feelings and communicate well with their partners. So it's an extra added strain on the system. Romantic relationships pushed me into depression 3 times in my life. Why would I want that?

For too many years I've been driven by this ideal of romantic love, but in reality it's not rosy at all. I'm a strong personality, who loves alone time, who's not very affectionate and pretty much asexual. That does not mix well with "romance", obviously. Well, definitely not if you're a woman.
I'd rather build better friendships as they truly make me happy. I have a lifelong friend whom I love just the way I love my daughter and this relationship has never ever made me feel bad. Not a single day of sadness because of this guy and we've been friends for almost 20 years We call each other brother/sister actually, we're family. That's what I need.