I’ve been fascinated by the topic of love for a long time and have come across some interesting and illuminating definitions for the concept. Some of them I wrote about here.
Recently, I found a new one that is succinct yet comprehensive, sweet yet raw, largely self-explanatory but also potentially confusing to some. It’s by Dr. Sara Algoe and she defined love as, “other-focused positive feeling that really blurs the boundaries between the self and the other person.”
I love this definition and I want to explore each facet of it.
Other-focused positive feeling
People who have felt true love understand just how crucial (and unfortunately how unknown) this quality is. Typically, people want a relationship and love because they want to feel good. They’ve seen the movies, heard the songs and read the poetry. What’s all the fuss about? They wanna know.
However, in approaching love in this way, it makes the phenomenon seem like something that is derived from other people. In other words, people give you love so that you feel love. You give them back love so they can feel love. You both do this until one of you dies.
What I believe Dr. Algoe is talking about here is seeing the joy in another person and having their joy be your joy; feeling the love the other person has and feeling that love within yourself as they feel your love within themselves. It is a deeply nourishing experience.
This isn’t merely feeling positive emotions for another person, although that is certainly a part of it. It’s kind of like empathy, except instead of trying to understand someone or feeling how bad they feel, you feel their happiness with them.
It isn’t so much about how you’re feeling. It’s about honoring what they are feeling and sharing in the experience with them.
Blurring the boundaries between self and other
This part of Algoe’s definition really brings it all home because if you are other-focused to the point that their joy is your joy, it is natural to assume that the notion of self and other would become blurred. This is oneness.
Mind you, this doesn’t mean that you will completely lose your identity and they will lose theirs. Moreover, this doesn’t mean that you will only feel their positive feelings. You will be able to feel whatever they feel and they will feel you too. This is why you hear those stories of old couples who are damn-near telepathic.
One of the reasons we have such a hard time relating to one another is because we have our own desires in life. When someone comes along with a desire that contradicts our own, we fail to feel into this person. We fail to love them.
By failing to feel into this person, we fail to understand them. Conflict ensues and the only way to get through the conflict is to do the very last thing we want to do: to take this other person as a part of ourselves.
Most people would rather die than to take their enemy as a part of themselves, and that’s a shame because life would be so much better for everybody if we could just try it out.
Another thing I’d like to point out about this part of the quote is that some might raise their eyebrow at the idea of the boundaries of self and other becoming blurred. Does this still count as interdependence, or is this enmeshment and codependency?
Enmeshment is trauma-based and results in one person performing roles that are not their responsibility in order to maintain the bond and to avoid facing the remnants of trauma.
The codependent isn’t able to experience other-focused positive feeling because they are too concerned about themselves. This is ironic because that is typically a characteristic of narcissists, but this is why codependency and narcissism are said to be two sides of the same coin.
It’s all about me, me, me. What am I getting from this? What do I need to do to get love from this person? What do I need to do to maintain love from this person? And when things get sour, is there someone else who can get me what I want?
This is self-centeredness that hopes to fulfill its own goal of happiness. This is not focusing on the other person and creating an intimate bond with which to become united.
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I found this quote in a video where Dr. Algoe talks about the power of gratitude in a relationship. Gratitude is uber-important and she provides some research to back it up. But it wasn’t until I heard this definition of love that I knew I had to save it and talk about it. That was the most valuable part of the video to me.
It’s what the world does not know it needs. I think it’s what the world is unconsciously afraid of.
To focus on anything other than yourself seems foolish when you don’t think you’re already enough and that you need more love in order to be enough. And when you know you’re enough, you automatically turn your attention to the world around you.
To recoil at the notion of a connection so great that two become one illustrates the fearfulness of taking someone as a part of yourself, as they take you as a part of themselves. There is an implication that a connection so deep and so strong could intimidate or even terrify you.
And as humans we have a tendency to run from that which scares us. Just a day in the life, I guess.
But I really do hope this new definition of love can inspire you to try a new approach to relationships or to go towards stronger, deeper connections that can only be obtained by focusing on the experiences of others.
You probably won’t master it right at the start. I certainly didn’t. But it feels way better than the alternative option of focusing on self-gratification. It really gets old.
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This post was previously published on medium.com.
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You may also like these posts on The Good Men Project:
White Fragility: Talking to White People About Racism | Escape the “Act Like a Man” Box | The Lack of Gentle Platonic Touch in Men’s Lives is a Killer | What We Talk About When We Talk About Men |
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Photo credit: Andres Molina on Unsplash