What is love? I am talking here about the guy-girl kind of love. Innumerable books have been written, many tomes of verses have been compiled and countless films have been made on this subject in all the countries of world. But the question remains; what is love? Some see it as a physical thing. "My husband is wow in bed!. He satisfies me well." That would be the definition of sexual love.
The brilliant French psychoanalyst, Jacques Lacan delienated the difference between sexual love and true love. He says of sexual love...
I have seen both men and women who have tried to seduce a woman to get from her the nurturing and attention they never received from their mothers. And I have seen both women and men who have tried to seduce a man to get from him the protection and attention they never received from their fathers. And in the end it’s all an impossibility. The moral is simple, and cuts across the board, male and female, heterosexual and homosexual: You can never seduce your despair, and you can never find real love through any form of sexual activity.But what about love? I mean the definition of love, shorn of its sexual pleasure angle. I think it is finding in the other person (read lover) things that you do not have. A girl with a strict father is more likely to fall in love with a guy who is easygoing and gentle. In other words, the opposite of her father (That is assuming that the girl had always hated the peremptory nature of the father). I mean she has always hated the frowns and tut-tuts of her father since she was this high. She yearns for freedom from this. The mild tempered guy comes along and, presto! She promptly falls in love.
The 'complementary' argument could be also used in personal qualities. A guy who is boistorous and an extrovert will fall for the charms of the shy, loner type of girl. Of course this one quality will not suffice. Other traits also contribute to the magical process called 'falling in love'. For instance if the guy is careless and untidy, he will love the systematic and methodical types when finding his mate. In short, the saying "opposites attract" is very much true.
But this kind of love is adulterated too. It has an element of fear. Fear of being abandoned. So we give love, with the motive of receiving love. Lacan puts it this way.
As shocking as it might sound, most of us who claim to be loving are not giving selflessly. Instead, we are addressing a covert psychological desire to avoid being abandoned. Sad to say, the apparent generosity of common “love” is really an act of bribery.'True love', as Lacan calls it is totally pure. There is no feeling of bribing. He defines it thus,
it refers to the expression of profound emotional qualities such as patience, forbearance, compassion, understanding, and forgiveness.Image
