3 Thoughts On Erich Fromm’s Love
Erich Fromm, thanks to his book “The Art of Loving” bequeathed us a great source of inspiration to make us think about love. This author was able to see love as an art, as a feeling that we can all have the potential to generate, but which requires a lot of attention to maintain.
Erich Fromm’s thoughts on love are relatively well known and important questions have arisen from them, such as: What does it mean to love? How can we maintain this feeling? Love, is it fleeting?
The study on love made by this humanist psychologist and philosopher stands out for its enormous maturity. By observing love as an art, which is the fruit of prior learning. He understands that it is necessary to take care of it and cultivate it, so as not to interrupt his learning process.
Mature love according to Erich Fromm
In this reflection, the author makes the difference between accomplished love and love of the child. He speaks of love as a need and the need of the other as a consequence of love:
This principle questions the way we relate to our society and does not hesitate to say that we do it more out of need than to share our love with another person. Think that sharing your feelings requires being connected to them, understanding them and paying attention. In such a way that we don’t look outside for needs that we don’t know how to find inside.
Use love to run away from loneliness
When we use love and use it to escape our genes, we are doomed to destroy it. If we use this feeling as a refuge from what we cannot stand in our lives, we run away from ourselves.
This way of loving becomes something pathological, which implies not listening to our personal development. We do not listen to ourselves and we wait for others to take responsibility for what we are not able to do but which is actually our responsibility.
From there arise the projections, seeing in others what we cannot bear to see in ourselves. It is childish behavior: we do not want to take responsibility for our own existence, and what it implies. When we turn love into a tool, an escape from having to find ourselves, we lose our capacity to love and our honesty in our relationships.
The active energy of love
Love is excess energy that we have when all of our basic needs are met. Erich Fromm understands that it is necessary to mobilize this energy, not only to feel it, but also to live it. And this is only possible if we take care of it and feed it.
There are always difficulties in a relationship, it is inevitable and even necessary. Some obstacles that cause negative emotions that we have to face. It’s good to let go of those emotions and understand that if not, it’s normal for there to be some disturbance. Emotions are our most intimate and personal language, and are used to connect us in a sincere way.
Finally, from this reflection, we retain that: love, two people who have a relationship based on their own essence, because it is only through a deep knowledge between the two that the couple will be able to build a solid foundation on which love in itself can evolve. Think that it is a mistake to love in order to flee from oneself because a healthy and reciprocal meeting is then impossible.
