What happens to love?

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? 

Peck continued his definition of love thusly: “Love is as love does [emphasis added by me]. Love is an act of will—namely, both an intention and an action." Love is not only about the feeling, the "will" to love; it is about acting on that will. Love is an action verb, not a passive noun. 

Peck continues that, "Will also implies choice. We do not have to love. We choose to love.” These words say to me that love does not “go” when the space between two individuals goes awry; goes sideways. Love is an action verb. When pain fills the space where love once dwelled, then someone has chosen to stop loving. This definition also says to me that, even when I am very hurt by you or very angry at you, I can choose to continue my love for you. In fact, that may be exactly what “extending one’s self” implies. To truly love, sometimes—when I feel wounded by someone I love—I must summon all my strength to an act of will. I must intentionally choose to extend myself past the pain or anger for the purpose of continuing to nurture spiritual growth in that other person and in my self. Do you have this experience, of expressing hurt or anger in a way that is truly loving?

Here's what I believe:  Your love for me cannot go away on its own. Your Divine nature has a default setting for expressing love. Some magical combination of experience or feeling doesn’t cause that flow to ebb slowly like a tide or suddenly cease as if turned off at the spigot. If your love for me “goes,” then you have chosen to shut it down. You have closed the hands of your heart around the pipeline of your love for me and throttled it, damming the flow, or you have sliced through that out-flowing conduit and swiftly cauterized it. You have chosen to stop expressing love…and it is your choice, alone, to start again. 

So, in the end, the loss of loving relationship is not merely the result of laziness and apathy, nor malignant intent to harm. It appears that, when my love “goes,” it is simply me saying to myself that you are no longer worth the energy to summon my will on your behalf. It is me saying, “I will no longer extend myself beyond what is easy or comfortable to nurture your growth. I’ve got better things to do.” Perhaps I have been hurt or disappointed often enough that I've exhausted my reservoir of that "will." If I will not make the effort, if I cannot be bothered even to form the intention, to nurture you and then bring that intention to life with my words and deeds, then, yes, love “goes.”

As you read that last paragraph, you first thoughts may have been of some past beloved who you judge did this to you; someone who you believe chose to no longer extend him/herself to nurture your growth. As you feel the anger and resentment rise in you toward this lazy so-and-so, I invite you to also remember the one(s) on whose behalf you have lost the will to extend yourself. For whom did you choose to turn off the flow of spiritual nurture, because the going got tough? When was the last time you decided that someone’s spiritual growth was no longer worth your effort? Were you "right?" Are you sure?

I found these question both painful to answer and profoundly provocative of my growth. I value the growth, even as I bear the pain, because here’s what I know:  supporting spiritual growth in others requires me to grow spiritually, and psychologically, and emotionally. And that’s another beautiful feature of Peck’s definition of love. This place in his definition is also where I would edit Peck:  Love is the will to extend myself for the purpose of nurturing my own AND another’s spiritual growth. It’s not an either-or proposition, in my mind. When I nurture spiritual growth for myself, I cannot help but nurture it in others. If I am to nurture spiritual growth in another, I must nurture it in myself.

If you can right now summon the will to extend yourself for the purpose of nurturing your own spiritual growth, then here’s a little exercise from the 7 Childhood Treasures to support that intention. Looking at one (or more) of your current or past primary loving relationships—friends, partners, family members—make a list of the times when you have chosen to let your love lapse into inactivity. Be honest about what was/is true for you. Release your “knowing” or guessing about what was/is true for the other person. Open yourself to the reality of the times when have you not summoned the strength of will to extend yourself—past the comfort of being the victim, past the apathy of thinking you don’t matter, past the confidence that your anger is righteous, past the story you cherish about the other person—to extend yourself past any barrier for the purpose of nurturing that person’s spiritual growth with your love. Now forgive yourself for each such lapse of will.

When you have honestly inventoried all the times when you were unwilling to have the will to love as an action, and when you have truly forgiven yourself, then you can turn your attention to those who have, similarly, chosen not to act with your growth as their purpose. If you’ve been truly honest about your own past and let it go, I’d be willing to bet you're pretty uninterested in how others were human in this same way.