How to Be A Loving Person
The Art of Loving
‘To love means to commit oneself without guarantee, to give oneself completely in the hope that our love will produce love in the loved person.’ - Erich Fromm
The Plant | Introduction
Your friend tells you he loves his house plant, but you notice he isn’t watering it. You ask him,
‘’How can you love your plant if you are not watering it?’’
‘’I do love my plant.’’
‘’You are resting on your laurels and hoping the plant will grow. You are not giving it love - how can the plant grow if you don’t water it?’’
‘’I loved the plant enough to buy it, surely that is enough. That was love. But, I must confess, we are growing bored of each other.’’
‘’You don’t realise that love is the active concern for the life and the growth of that which we love. Where this active concern is lacking, there is no love. You don’t love your plant and the plant doesn’t love you.’’
‘’I see. I have been passive when it comes to my plant. That is why it is dying.’’
Your friend fills up a watering can and waters the plant - lighting up with joy at this act of giving. He realises that giving love is rewarding as it produces love in the plant - it grows and flourishes. You leave your friend with a new appreciation of what love means and an understanding of what it means to be a loving person.
What this analogy shows is that love is an active process. It is a decision one makes in the present - to love unconditionally, to concern oneself fully with giving love to the loved person. It is an art that requires mastery, otherwise we are only fuelled by the initial desire of another person. As the Psychotherapist Erich Fromm said,
‘[we] take the intensity of the infatuation, this being “crazy” about each other, for proof of the intensity of [our] love, while it may only prove the degree of [our] preceding loneliness.’
Of course, the plant analogy fails in a few regards: it is an unequal relationship, the plant needs to be watered by its owner (which isn’t conducive to mature love) and there is a problematic ownership dynamic. However, it points to the need not to rest on our laurels when it comes to love. The art of being a loving person requires constant care and attention. Fromm explains that love is made up of ‘respect, responsibility and knowledge. It is not an “affect” in the sense of being affected by somebody, but an active striving for the growth and happiness of the loved person, rooted in one’s own capacity to love.’
In this article, I will explore what it means to love someone maturely, the difference between desire and love, and how we can cultivate love in our daily lives. Fromm’s beautiful and poetic book The Art of Loving (1956) will guide me through this topic.
Desire
I’ve never had a romantic relationship and never been in love. I have not felt much desire for romantic love, although I have been curious about the experience. Now, however, I have a strong desire for intimacy. I have recently come back from Spain, and I was struck, when I was doing my daily run and running past beautiful Spanish women, by strong feelings of desire. Before I had just acknowledged female beauty - now the impression of beauty wouldn’t get out of my head. I felt aware of my biological machinery, my unconscious desire to reproduce translating as hyper receptivity to the opposite sex. I felt hijacked by desire, and the most fitting description of this desire was a feeling of lack or incompleteness. This desire told me that once I had found love, I would feel complete. However, this is irrational. I want a relationship to complete myself, to make myself whole, but this is a one-sided exchange. It is one of dependency. Fromm argues that love,
‘presupposes the attainment of a predominantly productive orientation; in this orientation the person has overcome dependency, narcissistic omnipotence…he has acquired faith in his own human powers, courage to rely on his powers in the attainment of his goals. To the degree that these qualities are lacking, he is afraid of giving himself—hence of loving.’
I have been wrestling with this paradox: I want love to be whole, but I know I can’t give love unless I am whole. So, how does one cultivate wholeness in the absence of love?
Objectivity
‘Man’s happiness today consists in “having fun.” Having fun lies in the satisfaction of consuming and “taking in” commodities, sights, food, drinks, cigarettes, people, lectures, books, movies—all are consumed, swallowed. The world is one great object for our appetite, a big apple, a big bottle, a big breast; we are the sucklers, the eternally expectant ones, the hopeful ones—and the eternally disappointed ones. Our character is geared to exchange and to receive, to barter and to consume; everything, spiritual as well as material objects, becomes an object of exchange and of consumption.’ - Erich Fromm
The radical shift one needs to make to become whole, and to be at peace with oneself, is to view the world and people objectively. If we think about people as the protagonists of their own story and not secondary characters in ours, we can cultivate compassion and empathy for them without needing them to be or act in a certain way. If I meet someone I ‘fall in love’ with, I need to make sure I think productively and rationally about the other person.
The following are two examples of dysfunctional and functional thinking regarding love, but they are quite extreme examples. Our best aim, as we learn to master the art of love, is to land as close as we can to the functional:
Dysfunctional thinking: I love this person. I can’t be happy without this person in my life. I want to have sex with this person. I want to have this person in my life, as without her I will be lonely and miserable.
Functional thinking: I love this person. I am so happy, therefore I want to share my happiness with this person. Once I have given her a healthy supply of love, she may reciprocate and share her love with me. We may have sex to share each other’s love and feel a deep sense of oneness, but sex doesn’t come before love. I love this person, but if she were to leave my life there will be no resentment as giving love was my act alone and was a great source of satisfaction. I have so much love to give.
We tend not to think anywhere near this ‘functional’ way as our default is treating the world as consumers. How can this thing or person enhance my identity? Make me feel ‘happy’? Make me feel ‘whole’? As Fromm explains,
‘The outside reality, persons and things, have meaning only in terms of their satisfying or frustrating the inner state of the body. Real is only what is within; what is outside is real only in terms of my needs—never in terms of its own qualities or needs.’
In order to love, we must stop seeing ourselves as the world’s protagonist. We must get in touch with our inner reality to understand and empathise with the inner reality of those we love. If I am feeling anxious, there is a good chance the one I love has also felt anxious. Feeling deeply about what it means to be human connects us with everyone - regardless of race, religion or political position.
Deep contemplation of our inner reality is a requirement for becoming whole. Only once I truly see myself, can I be content with myself and not need other people to fill in psychological holes. Attention needs to be diverted away from the external world and into the internal world, where one can cultivate love.
Cultivating Love
‘The love for my own self is inseparably connected with the love for any other being’ - Erich Fromm
How does one cultivate love? To give love, one must have love. You can’t enter into a romantic relationship without it, and you can’t go to an imaginary love shop and buy love to give to someone - although a bouquet is a decent enough substitution. It is commonly thought that love appears when one meets their soulmate, and that ‘falling in love’ is love. However, this is desire - not love. Love is an activity, something that needs to be worked on every day. You may feel a deep longing for someone, but that is not love. It is desire. It probably won’t sustain a long-term relationship - it will fizzle out as one becomes familiar with their partner, and that desire will translate to a platonic co-existence. Why does this happen? Because love was assumed to be a passive process, that happens when you meet your ‘soulmate’, when it is, in fact, an active concern for another person. Love is an activity, not a state of being. It needs to be worked on, from the moment you feel desire for someone all the way to the end of your relationship.
So, you are on your own, and you want to cultivate love so you can give it to others in the hope of getting some love back. But how do you go about doing that? What are the daily habits for cultivating love?
Meditation
Meditation isn’t seen as a productive activity. As Fromm explains,
'A man sitting quiet and contemplating, with no purpose or aim except that of experiencing himself and his oneness with the world, is considered to be “passive,” because he is not “doing” anything. In reality, this attitude of concentrated meditation is the highest activity there is, an activity of the soul, which is possible only under the condition of inner freedom and independence. One concept of activity, the modern one, refers to the use of energy for the achievement of external aims; the other concept of activity refers to the use of man’s inherent powers, regardless of whether any external change is brought about.’
Consider these common questions: what are you ‘doing’ and what have you ‘done’ today? We think of human life as one action after another, a constant state of doing, which is why meditation is so radical - it’s purposeful non-action. And if one were to ascribe an aim to meditation - it would be to cultivate love. It is a recognition that love requires practice. As Fromm argues, it is an art ‘just as living is an art; if we want to learn how to love we must proceed in the same way we have to proceed if we want to learn any other art, say music, painting, carpentry, or the art of medicine or engineering’.
So how does meditation cultivate love? It dissolves the myth of separation, which is a barrier to love. Feeling separate is akin to having an ego, but when one meditates one connects to a wellspring of energy within oneself. This energy connects us with life. The spiritual teacher Michael Singer explains,
“You have a wellspring of beautiful energy inside of you. When you are open you feel it; when you are closed you don’t. This flow of energy comes from the depth of your being…that spiritual energy is what you’re experiencing when love rushes up into your heart. That is what you’re experiencing when you’re enthused by something and all this high energy comes up inside of you. You.”
Love is an untapped energy source that can be accessed only through deep contemplation - meditation. This love lays dormant within each of us, a reminder of our oneness with all things. But once one is aware of it, one must learn how to give it. And when one gives it, a beautiful and loving relationship can blossom.
This is the next step in one’s mastery of love.
Giving Love
‘Giving is the highest expression of potency. In the very act of giving, I experience my strength, my wealth, my power. This experience of heightened vitality and potency fills me with joy. I experience myself as overflowing, spending, alive, hence as joyous. Giving is more joyous than receiving, not because it is a deprivation, but because in the act of giving lies the expression of my aliveness’ - Erich Fromm
What does it mean to give love in a relationship? Let’s break giving love into its core components:
Penetrating the core of a person - seeing the core anxiety behind the surface level anger, the ‘being’ in the ‘human being’, a deep knowing.
Playing a part in a person’s flourishing - not having any expectations, separating your tasks and experiencing joy as the other person grows in their own way.
Being one’s full self - your sense of humour, your woes, your passions. As Fromm said, ‘All manifestations of that which is alive in him’. Enriching the other person by being fully alive - being human.
All this requires one to be whole and to ‘know thyself’. Once one knows oneself they know everyone. Fromm explains that ‘love is active penetration of the other person, in which my desire to know is stilled by union. In the act of fusion I know you, I know myself, I know everybody—and I “know” nothing.’ Being at peace with yourself, being happy in your skin, is the greatest gift you can give to someone else. You have space and room to listen, your love contains the other person and reminds them of their innate wholeness. One becomes two, which through love becomes a deeper ‘one’. Instead of trying to inspire love in someone else through working out, wearing beautiful clothing, applying make-up and acting flirtatiously, one should share themselves fully with another without inhibition. One should try to become a loving person rather than try to be a loved person. Fromm explains,
‘If your love as such does not produce love, if by means of an expression of life as a loving person you do not make of yourself a loved person, then your love is impotent, a misfortune.’
Giving love is a requirement for a successful relationship. But how does one see if this love is ‘working’? How deep is the relationship? Is there productive communication Fromm said that ‘the aliveness and strength in each person concerned; this is the fruit by which love is recognized.’
Daily Habits for Cultivating Love | Conclusion
What is lacking in many of us is a sense of agency. Happiness, love, peace, satisfaction - these are things we don’t actively work on. We need to switch from being consumers of life, taking things from the external world in the hopes of feeling whole, to the creators of life - being a source of wholeness. Fromm explains that ‘people are anxious, without principles or faith, they find themselves without an aim except the one to move ahead; hence they continue to remain children, to hope for father or mother to come to their help when help is needed’.
We haven’t grown up in our relationship to love. Mature love comes from an active process of daily contemplation, reflection and objectivity. Here are a few daily habits to cultivate love, so when one ‘falls in love’ they have a plentiful supply of love to give:
Be healthy. If you are physically fit and eating well you will feel good, which makes it easier to feel love. This is essential, as being whole requires a feeling of wellness.
Metta Loving Kindness Meditation. This may arise spontaneously in your meditation practice. Recently, while meditating, I felt a deep love for my dad—not as ‘my father’ but as a human being. Loving kindness is thinking of someone as the protagonist of their own story. Try to get into their head. Feel their pain. This becomes compassion, and you will feel love emanating from you.
Gratitude. Think or write all the things you are grateful for. Sometimes it is being aware of the familiar things which give rise to a feeling of love. You are eating food - love the food, the feeling of being full. You are about to sleep - love the comfort, the act of rest. You are with someone you love - appreciate their company, and be an active listener.
Meditation. Just be with yourself, be aware of no-thought and see how that place is full of love and contentment. One must be present to bring love into the world. Fromm explains that ‘to be active in thought, feeling, with one’s eyes and ears, throughout the day, to avoid inner laziness, be it in the form of being receptive, hoarding, or plain wasting one’s time, is an indispensable condition for the practice of the art of loving.’
As you can see, love is more than a feeling. It is an active pursuit - something to be mastered. To master love, one doesn’t need someone to ‘fall in love’ with. One can find love from being present in this moment.
References
The Art of Loving by Erich Fromm (1956): https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/14142.The_Art_of_Loving
The Untethered Soul by Michael Singer (2007): https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1963638.The_Untethered_Soul