I've heard about the different types of love since I was a young teenager. Yes, at 14, I knew the Latin roots for different types of love--agape, phileo, and eros. Looking back, I've always been a sucker for love and very intrigued by it. My childhood pastor taught on love, and I've never forgotten the definitions of at least three types of loves experienced by humans. Agape--which Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King describes as "disinerested" love is an unconditional, divine-in-nature love--perhaps the love a mother has for her child. By "disinterested", King is not describing this kind of love as "aloof" or "detached", but he defines "disinterested" as a love which characteristically does not seek selfish gains as a RETURN on one's investment of time, attention, energy, and other expressions of "love". This love imputes love onto another "just because". It does not ask, "What's in this for me?"
Phileo is root from which the city Philadelphia, the city of "brotherly love", derives its name. Phileo is the type of love one has for a friend. It's not romantic or sexual in nature; it's the kind of love that I feel for my best girls.
Lastly, eros is the love that America seems to be enchanted by. It's the kind of love splattered all over Cosmo magazine ("How to make him WANT you! in 2.5 pages! Read inside!!!), in almost every Blockbuster film, on billboards, in songs. It's the kind of love that we idealists are often disappointed by. It's the love confused by pheremones and hormones, it's announced by butterflies and sexual attraction. It seems to die after 6 months, when hormonally, the newness of butterflies wears off.
So, after today's date (#2), and reflecting upon these first two dates, I felt honored to have been allowed into these two men's lives. They both shared very personal things with me (not too much, yet vulnerable things). They showed me their creativity, personal uniquenesses; I even met family members. I felt privileged to have shared space with very remarkable human beings, and I was content just being in their space and hearing their personal narratives. I left them both just wanting them to be well and blessed in their lives. I was feeling phileo, or perhaps even agape, for these men.
What if we, as Americans, approached dating differently? I celebrated the Hawks victory late last night with two friends/acquaintances, and in the conversation, discussion of expectations about sex and exchange of "goods" surfaced. But what if people stopped expecting any type of reciprocity from a date ("because I bought you dinner, I want sex--or at least a kiss", "he better not be cheap or he ain't gettin a second date", "this girl is perfect eye candy to parade in front of friends")? What if we didn't try to impress? What if we weren't obsessed with being attractive enough or wearing the right clothes or having the perfect body, and we could just enjoy the moment with another soul who was generous enough to open up and let us see just some of their unique humanness? Of course our sexual nature impedes this kind of pure exchange, or at least it challenges it, and often complicates things, but I'd like to believe that we can see ourselves and our dates differently and not in the sometimes exploitative ways that we often do.
I think these first two dates were fun and free because we just "were"--there wasn't the pressure to see if "eros" would happen. We just exchanged our narratives and enjoyed laughter in shared space, broke bread together, sipped coffee, talked our interest...we "phileo-ed" each other, and the LOVE WAS GOOD.
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