What happens to love? Someone tells me s/he loves me, maybe
we’re even very close, sharing a deep emotional intimacy. Then,
something happens. Something always happens; maybe hurt feelings or a
misunderstanding. Maybe I create a genuinely deep wound in the one who loves
me, as I act out my own pain. And the result is...love goes. Swiftly as it flowed into my life,
as from an opened floodgate, love dries up. It goes. At least, the other person’s
ability to think well of me goes. The space between us that was once filled with
love fills with anger, distance, and pain. What happens to love?
Recently, a friend asked me for my definition of love and I
shared my favorite, which comes from M. Scott Peck’s classic self-help
book, The Road Less Traveled (1978). Reflecting
the work of Erich Fromm, Peck wrote that love is “the will to extend one’s self
for the purpose of nurturing one’s own or another’s spiritual growth.”
This definition works for me in so many ways. First, it says
that love is for the purpose of
nurture. Good. So, love is not for controlling each other. Physical violence
and threats don’t fit under the category of nurture, either. Nor is love for worshiping
each other as “better,” either than self or past friends or partners. It isn’t
to provide me with a yardstick to unfavorably compare my abilities, accomplishments,
or attributes to another’s, to create new ways to loathe myself. My loving of
another should nurture my spiritual growth, or it should nurture the spiritual growth of my beloved. So,
if my purpose, your purpose, anyone’s purpose, in loving is to nurture
spiritual growth in ourselves and others, then how can love ever go?
