By conceiving LOVE as a tetracompound force - eros, philos, storge, agape (in dynamic relation) - a diagnosis of LOVE can be made that allows one to discuss how healthy the condition of that LOVE may be.
2. I base my LOVE relationship on what I can receive?
3. I consider our LOVE when I experience a biological response to my partners overtures.
4. I don’t expect to do anything to experience LOVE from my partner.
5. I cannot help experiencing LOVE with my partner.
6. I think the process of my LOVE is simply a normal function.
7. My ideas about right and wrong are effected by my feelings and LOVE behavior with my partner.
8. To put it most simply, I would say that LOVE is a feeling.
9. If the feeling isn’t pleasant, I would not call it LOVE.
10. LOVE is doing what comes naturally.
11. Morality should not interfere with the experience and the recognition of a LOVE relationship.
2. We share whatever we have with each other.
3. We spend time interacting socially, like conversing, telling each other where we’ve been and what we are doing, going places and doing things together.
4. I expect to, and I do carry half of the responsibility of our social life and my partner shares half. We do this informally and willingly not in some formal accounting manner.
5. We speak the same language and we are helping each other to expand a common vocabulary.
6. I hope my partner reciprocates with me and I look forward to her reciprocation.
7. I believe friendship has been and continues developing between us.
8. We enjoy sharing with each other.
9. Our friends support our LOVE relationship.
10. Apart from LOVE, we consider each other best of friends.
11. We recognize that social principles dictate social relationships.
12. I recognize that I must be sociable in order to expect my partner to be sociable to me.
13. I must discern and keep the moral code which evolves over time through our interaction.
1. Before we could express our LOVE toward each other so that we understood the behavior which meant LOVE we had to express the signs and symbols which in our culture meant LOVE.
2. We both understand what the appropriate behavior is that indicates respectful love for our partner.
3. We understand that the pattern for engaging in a LOVE relationship emerged from the culture in which we live.
4. We had to learn what LOVE is.
5. There is a passive intellectual aspect to our LOVE for each other.
6. In spite of our feelings, our culture defined the process of our LOVE.
7. We could not ignore how our culture defined LOVE and we had to know it before we could LOVE each other in a healthy and productive manner.
8. In spite of how we feel we know that we LOVE each other.
9. The boundaries of our LOVE is set by our culture.
10. We measure our LOVE by how well we adhere to social norms.
11. Our LOVE is regulated by cultural laws.
12. We consider moral behavior by what is culturally acceptable
Add up the scores of these 12 statements and divide by 12. This is your rank for storge.
2. I look for ways to give, especially time, esteem and appreciation to my partner despite the way I feel.
3. I believe my partner and I strive for spiritual reconciliation to begin the healing process when there are differences between us.
4. While in practice it may not be so, I assume I am totally responsible for what goes on in our LOVE relationship.
5. I assume the responsibility of initiating loving behavior.
6. I make rational decisions to act on behalf of my love partner.
7. I believe the ideas I have and express modify my behavior.
8. I see our love as primarily my giving.
9. I am responsible for setting and protecting the boundaries of our LOVE.
10. I measure my LOVE for my partner by my sacrifice.
11. The old law of LOVE was loving your neighbor as yourself, but the New Law is to LOVE my partner as God loves me.
12. To LOVE my partner is to reflect what is Godly.
13. I believe agape is the only source for an authentic Morality.
The Therapy
For purposes of discussion, let us suppose the ranks are: eros = 8, philos = 5, storgé = 4, agape = 4. Your profile is 8-5-4-4.
From the above profile, you can suspect that the best thing working for you (in our example) is eros. Now for an ideal procedure, never begin the therapy with eros, and always begin it with agape. The reason for this should be obvious. You have no control over eros. The stimuli from your partner that generated a pleasant feeling was simply a neurological response that you reported as a pleasant feeling. If your partner’s stimulus evoked pain, so be it, you experienced pain. You could fake the first and deny the latter but that doesn’t change the fact of the reality, postmodern ideology notwithstanding!
Mutual commitment to change as necessary for healing is absolutely important!
To begin with, for optimal improvement both parties in the relationship should sincerely be committed to wanting to see continued improvement. The level of this commitment will determine the success of your love again flourishing. Remember, it takes two persons to develop a productive relationship, it takes only one person to destroy it - or at least prevent it from improving. Only you know how sincere and complete your commitment is. And all you can do initially with your partner is believe what your partner says. The outcome will help you to determine how sincere and profound the commitment to the healing of the fractured LOVE was.
1. Improving storgé.
Remembering that agape is the willful behavior of LOVE, mind work is necessary here. Do not expect nor work for some big LOVE thrill to heal the fractured LOVE. Focus in on storgé which you have major ability to conform and which ranked lowest at the 3 level. Go to the paradigm and read across on storge. Ask yourself: how you can improve storge at each characteristic of LOV? How can you share more completely in social and cultural understanding? Often it is a spiritual hiatus that divides a couple so that the moral, ethical and spiritual friction that is the result keeps a healthy LOVE life from developing. How well have each of you achieved at least a functional level in a common culture?
Speak to each other in order to understand the ramifications of your partner’s statuses and roles. How basic is you relationship – i.e., are you two spouses, engaged, cohabitors, daters, occasional lovers, relatives; what are you both to each other? How well have you respected the expectations of your relationship? Now intentionally treat your partner in the light of the expectations of your relationship. If you behave towards each other as spouses when in fact you are only daters, your love relationship becomes adversely affected. Make all the necessary changes in what you say and how you act so that your behavior is appropriate for the recognized relationship.
Make sure that your behavior towards your partner outside of your relationship is appropriate. As a matter of fact, our relation with the one we love and want to be loved by is profoundly affected by our behavior towards others. Unlike other relationships, when we identify another as our lover, just about every other relationship must be modified in some way. Not to do this is to put an otherwise productive relationship with our lover at risk.
A student, who was to be married shortly after graduation, told me that he agreed to marry his girlfriend when she agreed that after the marriage he did not have to change his life-style. I assured him that he was guaranteeing marital trouble. After about seven years they divorced. Once you decide to get married, it implies that you agree to modify your behavior accordingly in all of your other relationships.
Behavior deemed appropriate must be modified as our love relationship changes. The change must first begin in our heads. A person must imagine and think of what behavior is now appropriate given your love relationship. If the work is not done adequately in the head, it will not be adequately seen in our behavior. To the extent that it is otherwise overtly acceptable while covertly we are otherwise, we are practicing a deception that is corroding and eroding our relationship whether or not we admit it
Storge admits to no deviance and tolerates no plea of ignorance (see Table 1). The 3 in your profile must be transformed to a 10 for engaging in an optimum love relationship.
2. Working on agape. (Indirectly improving philos and generating eros.)
If you concentrate on elevating agape, you will find that philos will improve and the consequence will be that eros will be generated. How do we improve agape? Try the following.
You must lay aside whatever feelings lead you to negative behavior toward your partner. You must understand that the behavior to which you shall be called is independent of the way you feel. You must not engage in this on the basis of what you expect in return. Consequently, this process begins in your head. Just imagine what you can do that will enhance your partner, regardless of the way you may feel. Here is where you do not go for broke in your actions. Remember that LOVE is built on trifles. For example, I shall assume that you are a male. Rather than yield to the desire to buy her a dozen roses, get just one rose and a card and place it by her bed, or desk, of some other conspicuous place.
The next day stop your car along the highway and pick some wild flowers - just a few, enough to place in a glass. Do you see that this conveys the unspoken message that you have been thinking of her when you are alone. Get together a series of otherwise individually unimportant ideas. Just do them, whatever, without any fanfare.
What your say during this time is very important. Do not joke, or pull any smart alecky tricks. Watch your language. Speak in a manner that you know is acceptable to her. Be positively responsive to her gestures and suggestions, even though at other times you would express disfavor with them.
The principle here is to think of what you can do to enhance her persona. Ask for her advice, opinion, and suggestion in a matter of fact way. Do not expect anything from her and be grateful for whatever she gives.
How much of this must you do? And for how long? It all depends on the seriousness of the fracture in your love relationship. If you are really sincere about your commitment for healing, than you cannot show any anxiety about time.
If you engage your partner in committed interaction, that will generate a sentiment of trust, which will become the motivation to want to engage in activity where committed interaction can go on. And the cycle goes on. It all begins with committed and sincere interaction on your part. READ THIS AGAIN. IT IS A BASIC PRINCIPLE IN CREATING AND SUSTAINING PRODUCTIVE RELATIONSHIPS. TRY IT AND YOU WILL SEE THAT IT WORKS. It can be represented by the following model 4 – The Social-Psychological Model of Human Relationships.
3. Spending Time to Generate Philos
There is no substitute for the expenditure of time to generate a desirous, productive and lasting friendship. It is said that many a courtship has been ruined by marriage! The truth of the matter is that during courtship the couple will spend unmeasured time together just hanging out. Their love was always on their mind and they longed to just be together. Most of their interaction was composed of small-time chit-chat whose content they themselves forget in short order.
But what was happening? They were bonding. Bonding takes time whether it be before marriage or after marriage. Whether it be between two adults, an adult and a child, or between two children. Philos demands time, and regardless of the excuses to the contrary, no time to give, no friend to have.
But what can be done when due to circumstances two persons are separated and can not be physically with each other except for very brief periods? This may be due to working hours, or military service of some other type of occupation, or perhaps unmarried persons living great distances from each other? We must understand that friendship is carried by us in our heads. It is there that a consciousness of the other’s presence is carried and practiced.
Indeed, two persons may be very close together physically, but mentally, they are miles apart. Our imagination is a very powerful mechanism we possess. It is there we must carry and interact imaginatively with one we wish to bond with. This is not a substitute for giving time to be physically together, but a superior technique to prevent the erosion of friendship. The old adage, “Out of sight, out of mind,” need not be true. The contrary proverb, “Absence makes the heart grow fonder,” is true only if in the absence of our friend we carry on our interaction imaginatively.
Now we must understand that this technique is not useful if we think to use it to deliberately be absent from each other, or to justify an excuse to stay away from the other person.
4. The Eros Surprise!
I am not oblivious to the fact that we all want to receive good feelings in a relationship we deem important. This is especially true in love relationships.
The critical mistake that is too often made when a relationship, especially a love relationship, is fractured. One – and usually the male – seeks to act humorous, or suggest activities where there is fun and laughter, supposing that stirring up some good feeling (eros) will heal the fractured relationship. If it looks like the relationship is healed through acting funny, you are being deceived. The good feeling and laughter must be the result of the healed relationship and fractures, not the cause.
Another grave mistake often made by one party – usually not the aggrieved one – is that (s)he supposes that if they do something big like going on a week-end cruise, or going out to the most expensive restaurant in town after attending the most expensive movie in town, after buying two dozen long stem roses and an expensive gift of some some, that everything will be all right. Don’t hold your breath!
Understand, that conflict invariably occurs because of some sort of communication problem. Consequently, it is in the arena of communication that the fracture can be healed. The variety of communication problems is so great that to try to list them here would be futile. The problem is not being able to articulate the problem accurately and in minute detail, but to understand the dynamics of coping and resolving the conflict.
Many assert that we must first know the cause of the conflict before we can expect to resolve it. I thoroughly disagree. If we first learn and understand the dynamics of living together, our need to give our lives in trying to extricate the cause of the conflict becomes unnecessary.
Furthermore, in so many cases of interpersonal conflict, it becomes virtually impossible to really learn the truth concerning its cause. Have you ever tried to learn who started the fight between two young siblings? All you get is, “He did it.” “No, I did not, she started it!” “I did not, he started it when...” and on and on it goes.
What is needed, and it is the simplest and most straight forward action, is to ask each other how you want the conflict to be resolved ,i.e., what is the goal you wish to accomplish together? If one replies that he wants to see the other punished, then in vain will you settle the dispute. It always takes two to establish and maintain a good, productive relationship, but it takes only one person to destroy it and keep it in disarray. If both parties agree that they want to have the conflict end with them being friends, or at least on basic speaking terms, then that is the goal to work towards. Work towards the common goal each seeks, instead of consuming energy on determining the cause. So what after you learn – or think you learn – the cause of the conflict? The chances are that you never learn the real cause. You might reach the point of agreeing to disagree and just get off the fighting, but that is not getting to the real cause. Actually, the real cause – or at least a good part of it – is that you two did not understand the dynamics of producing and maintaining a productive relationship.
I can virtually guarantee that if you follow the recommended regimen, eros will be a consequence without you asking for it. Try it – it doesn’t have to cost you a cent!
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