What Does Being in Love Feel Like?

This is what my friends and I were discussing over a coffee.

What does being in love feel like?

One, commented that being in love is like an addiction. You want to be with the other person all the time, you think about them all the time, when you meet you go blank and you have butterflies in your stomach.

Another, said that being in love means putting your heart in another person’s hands and trusting them not to break it…’

‘You are not talking about being  in love’ one of my friends argued, ‘this can also be said about friendships. What does being in love feel like?’

This conversation triggered my curiosity.... so I went researching. 

Philippa Perry in her article How Do You Know When You Are In Love? states how being in love can be passive since it is something we fall into whereas acting in a loving way is active since you are actually engaging.
She also talks about transference i.e. when we make 'unconcious assumptions about the person before us based on our experiences of people we have met in the past.' This behaviour is passive therefore explains 'falling' in love. 

Roman Krznaric in his speech The Six Varieties of Love further developes these ideas and brakes down all the different types of love we can experience through the eyes of the ancient Greeks. 

1. Eros (Ερως) - the idea of sexual passion and desire (named after the God of Fertility (Eros) ). The ancient Greeks however considered it to be something dangerous, irrational, a kind of love that makes you loose control, something they wanted to avoid. Unlike modern society''s ideas which crave a love like this. 
2. Filia (Φιλία) - friendship which is more valuable than eros (according to them)
3. Ludus - Playful Love, playful affection between children or lovers.
4. Pragma (Πράγμα) - Mature Love, the deep understanding that could develop between a married couple.
5. Agape (Αγάπη) - selfless, charitable love, the kind you not only give to your friends or relative but also to strangers.
6. Filaftia (Φιλαυτία) - self love - separated into 'narcissistic' love (negative impact on others) as well as 'loving yourself' in a way that allows you to genuinely love others (positive impact). 

Krznaric also comments on today's societies' ways of loving through the eyes of experts as well as himself. Here are some of the thoughts he expresses:

'In the 1950's there was an American Psychoanalysis called Eric Fromm and he made a distinction between falling in love and standing in love. He said, we spend too much energy on falling in love... we need to get better at standing in love which is about giving love rather than receiving.'

In our society today if you marry 'there is a 50% chance of getting a divorce and the Greeks [looking at us] would have said there is a huge lack of pragma  in the modern world.' 

©2019