The conditions of love

Should a wife remain loyal to a man who commits fraud in order to get a better job and support his family? Or should she denounce his fraud and find a better man, or more honest life?
 The fascists famously thought that women are for kinder, kuche and kirke only. It’s obvious to most people nowadays that this is silly; women should not blindly obey a master (no-one should). But there is still debate to be had about relationships. Should people devote themselves to their spouse above all else, or put principles and scruples first? How far should anyone go in the name of love? What is supporting a lover, and what is loss of humanity instead of an expression of it?

Barbaric attitudes still exist about the primacy of love: lying, cheating and dishonesty are all justified if they push our children slightly further ahead of others, or benefit their welfare even slightly. This devotion is often called unconditional love, and we typically hold it up as a virtue.

              Unconditional love is a strange phrase. Can anything be unconditional? Isn’t the very fact of being that person’s child a condition for that love? But beyond the semantics, I want to be loved because of who I am, not unconditionally. If what I am does not matter, it’s not really me who is loved; I am irrelevant to the love. I am my character, my attributes, my actions… if I am loved no matter how these things change, then what is left of me to love? Why me and why not some other being down the road? A person who would love me despite who I am might as well love anyone… and to be consistent, should love everyone. And if she would love anyone, I must necessarily be jealous of everyone.

              That pretty much sums up many relationships: a deep fear that supposedly unconditional love might be withdrawn, because unconditional and yet exclusive love is contradictory. Even God loves us all unconditionally, not just one of us.

              Jealousy and fear must necessarily accompany an attitude to love that believes it should conquer all. Maybe that’s why so many people trust their friends more than their partners: our friends, it is safer to assume, see us for what we are, and are our friends nonetheless. They can safely be left with strangers and still be our friends afterwards. We know that they will still value us; that they can value multiple people, and that we already have proved ourselves worthy. We haven’t been taught to build our friendships on a dangerous oxymoron, so they seem stabler and more reliable.

              The need for certainty in romance - for unconditional love no matter what we do - actually destroys certainty, because if there are no conditions then anyone can meet them.

              Our strange idolisation of love corrupts our society in ways that aren’t immediately obvious. Love seems like a good thing; it certainly feels like it when we feel it (although not so much when we lose it). But so do chocolate, brandy and sitting around doing nothing. Yet for these we accept we can indulge too much: that good things must be regulated and moderated. For love, we preach that not only is it always good, but that it is better than all else: principles, laws, commitments, ideals… all may be sacrificed at the altar of love. It has become one of our gods that we worship, and we will hear no sacrilege. We should always question our idols.

              I’ve written before about our worship of love in relationships as the almighty goodness in our lives that solves all our problems. If life is empty, a monogamous relationship will solve it. So many stories in society tell us this; so many adverts and behaviours assume this that we cannot help but absorb it, or feel oppressed by it. Relationships are a thing that we love separately from, and often more than, the actual person on the other side of one. We can forget that ‘the relationship’ isn’t a third person to care for or nurture.  

              If people don’t want to sacrifice everything for a relationship, that doesn’t make their love unworthy or non-existent. It might appear to be limited; not to be ‘full’ love. Appearances are not reality, as summed up by the phrase ‘style over substance’. There is a difference between feelings and action; for creatures with a mind, the inner world is not always directly expressed in the outer one. We can feel greatly and yet still behave with principle and honour. Only those who believe that the highest principle that exists is expressing love’s momentary whims will let it override other things in their life.

We accept that parents don’t allow children open access to the family savings and bank account(s). We accept that simply satisfying fanciful desires in the name of love is wrong, but unconditional love would take no notice of that. The child might want a ton of sweets, and the parents might wish to see their child that excited and happy, but both should be denied. We regard it as unhealthy to indulge in love too much. So why not in general? Why must love be supreme, and one love supreme over all others? Should I love my partner more than my parents? If not, isn’t that a limitation on love? We usually agree that we should love all these people, but if love for one person must have unlimited expression, we can’t love more than one person. Perhaps limits on [expressions of] love are more loving.

We are told to love our jobs; employers ask silly interview questions about it. If we love our jobs, we will sacrifice more for them, donate our time, invest ourselves in the work. A few people wonder if this is healthy for us. It might not even make us better at doing good work, which requires a dispassionate attitude and not much stress. All this overwork has become necessary to scrabble over the exhausted bodies of our co-workers towards that vital promotion that will make life slightly more affordable; that will allow us to buy all those products that replace our lack of self-love, or that show our love for others. No-one who has other things in their lives, be it children and families, hobbies or just a sense of balance, has much chance of climbing the greasy pole very far. Perhaps limits on [expressions of] love are wise.

The same applies to children. Parents’ brains change when they become parents. They are devoted to their children. No-one can argue with wanting to do nice things for your own loved ones. But parents will go further than many think is reasonable: we see scrabbles and fights to buy special toys, queue-jumping, hustling, pleading for special treatment. Pushy parents lie about where they live so that they can get their children into a better school. ‘But think of the children’ seems to be an excuse for all sorts of misbehaviour, rule-breaking and unfairness. You don’t have to be as grumpy as I am about this to recognise that a little more parental self-control would be of benefit. Love shouldn’t be an excuse for rule-breaking: limits on [expressions of] love are moral.

We have gradually become more and more populist in popular culture. Films and stories more and more show the everyman as the hero; as great, good and sufficient for the occasion. There’s a campaign for them to show the everywoman as at least as great and good. Both of these involve idolising things anyone can do, including emotions. Plots in which love conquers all - in which love is a mystical power that makes good things happen – are commonplace. The idea that all we need is love appeals to us because love is accessible to everyone; or at least, more easily, and to far more people than skill, learning, training, intelligence or wisdom.

Sometimes we might laugh at foreign stories that emphasize following the rules as the way that things work out well. Chinese stories about honouring the collective seem odd. In the West we find that a little bit of stifling tradition and collectivism go a very long way, and that’s fine. Good rules make things better for everyone, but rule-making is easily corrupted and rules quickly calcify.  Yet rule-following is another version of populist storytelling. Anyone can follow rules, just as anyone can fall in love. We just have a blind spot for our own version of lowest-common-denominator plots.

In truth, the commander of an expedition, the captain of a starship and any other highly-trained operative will know that love shouldn’t influence decision-making at all. Not only that, but such a person will have enough self-control not to do anything really silly. It is the failures of self-control that we often regard as the most dramatic and heroic moments of many stories. These are the scenes that inspire us. They’re a lie: fake news as bad as any Trump tweet. If you risk everything on a long shot you’re a fool, not a hero. Millenia ago Agamemnon bothered to gather his friends and an army before setting off to sack Troy. It was Paris who destroyed his city and family by an impetuous act of love when he whisked Helen away. There’s a time and place for [expressions of] love, no matter how deep that love is. Love makes fools of us all far more than it makes heroes.

 It suits the impulsive extraverts among us to imagine that impulsivity is a necessary symptom of the most powerful emotions, but it’s a different character trait entirely. It shouldn’t be redeemed by spurious association with something we value. It suits modern, impulsive society to excuse impulsivity, but that doesn’t make it right.

Something done with care and diligence, with other concerns all dealt with to ensure that it can be enjoyed in peace, might be an act of a more self-controlled mind, but growing towards that over time is no less an act of love. Self-control is even available to everyone … but it’s not easy, so it’s still not the populist answer we want.

That’s how you build real love: you give people space to be themselves. The fullest love doesn’t show itself through willingness to do everything; always help, always around, smothering, offering, controlling, driving, interfering… if you truly love something, you will give it freedom. Love is self-controlled. We have stories that tell us this about animals, so why don’t we recognize the same for humans? Real love deals with its doubts and jealousies itself rather than placing that burden on someone else. No-one is responsible for making you happy or fulfilling your dreams; if that’s what you want from love then you need some self-help.

Firm limits are helpful. A favourite line of abusers is the disturbing ‘but if you loved me you’d do what I want’. There are endless variations of the same basic message: I will doubt you unless you do what I command. It hurts lovers to be doubted; people want to prove themselves (especially young men, who hope to rise to challenges). It’s not always deliberate; it’s just how some people have learned to interact. They express their doubts and fears and other people deal with them. It still makes love a tool to manipulate others. And it all comes from not accepting limits on our love. If we said ‘it doesn’t matter how much I love you. I’m not your servant’ or ‘and if you loved me you wouldn’t try to manipulate me’ or even ‘My doubt is my own problem; I will spare you that burden’, we’d set better boundaries on what is reasonable or not.

If we recognise limits - if we know that to be manipulated is wrong in any circumstance – then we can resist the gradual decay of our relationships, and the risk of abuse.

In the end, it doesn’t matter if you split the love from actions or not. Love is not a ‘higher principle’; it’s an emotion. Unconditional love isn’t the greatest good; it’s an oxymoron. And also evil. It steals our humanity rather than defining it: only brute animals are governed by instinct and emotion. If we accepted a few more limits, we’d be a lot less stressed about living up to unpleasant and impossible expectations. Unconditional love is unwise, immoral, impossible, impractical, often unhealthy, and can even be less loving!