Erich Fromm speaks about Love, marriage and relationships from the perspective of "having" and "being", beautifully as follows in his book - "To Have or To Be"
"Love has two meanings, depending upon whether it is spoken of in the mode of having or in the mode of being.
Can one have love? If we could, love would need to be a thing, there is no such a thing as "love". In reality there exists only the act of loving. To love implies caring for, knowing, responding affirming, enjoying: the person, the tree, the painting, the idea. It means bringing to life, increasing his/her/its aliveness. It is a process, self-renewing and self-increasing.
When love is experienced in the mode of having it implies confining, imprisoning, or controlling the object one "loves". It is strangling, deadening, suffocating, killing not life-giving. What people call love is mostly a misuse of the word, in order to hide the reality of their not loving.
The same may be said of marriages. Whether the marriage is based on love or, like traditional marriages of the past, on social convenience and custom, the couple who truly love each other seem to be the exception. What is social convenience, custom, mutual economic interests, shared interest in children, mutual dependency, or mutual hate or fear is consciously experienced as "love" - up to the moment when one or both partners recognize that they do not love each other, and that they never did. Today one can note some progress in this respect: people have become more realistic and sober, and many no longer feel that being sexually attracted means to love, or that a friendly, though distant, team relationship is a manifestation of loving. This new outlook has made for greater honesty - as well as more frequent change in partners. It has not necessarily led to a greater frequency of loving, and the new partners may love as little as did the old.
The change from "falling in love" to the illusion of "having" love can often be observed in concrete detail in the history of couples who have "fallen in love".
During courtship neither person is yet sure of the other, but each tries to win the other. Both are alive, attractive, interesting. Neither yet has the other; hence each other's energy is directed to "being", i.e. to giving to and stimulating the other. With the act of marriage the situation frequently changes fundamentally. The marriage contract gives each partner the exclusive possession of the other's body, feeling and care. Nobody has to be won over any more, because love has become something one "has", a property. The two cease to make the effort to be lovable and to produce love, hence they become boring, and hence their beauty disappears. They are disappointed and puzzled. Are they not the same persons any more? Did they make a mistake in the first place? Each usually seeks the cause of the change in the other and feels defrauded. What they do not see is that they no longer are the same people they were when they were in love with each other; that the error that one can have love has led them to cease loving. Now, instead of loving each other, they settle for owing together what they have: money, social standing, a home, children. Thus, in some cases, the marriage initiated on the basis of love becomes transformed into a friendly ownership, a corporation in which the two egotisms are pooled into one: that of the family.
When a couple cannot get over the yearning for renewal of the previous feeling of loving, one or the other of the pair may have the illusion that a new partner (or partners) will satisfy their longing. They feel that all they want to have is love. But love to them is not an expression of their being; it is a goddess to whom they want to submit. They necessarily fail with their love because "love is a child of liberty", and worshipper of the goddess of love eventually becomes so passive as to be boring and loses whatever is left of this or her former attractiveness.
This description is not intended to imply that marriage cannot be the best solution for two people who love each other. The difficulty does not lie in marriage, but in the possessive, existential structure of the both partners and, in the last analysis, of their society. The advocates of such modern-day forms of living together as group marriage, changing partners, group sex, etc, try, as far as I can see, only to avoid the problem of their difficulties in more "lovers", rather than to be able to love even one."
Beautifully expresses so succinctly, Fromm points to the root cause of attachment and pain, or disillusionment one undergoes in love, is rooted in one's propensity of "having" the object of love, in the above abstract in his book. Love in all forms loses its sheen, its life, its vitality and potency, when the love falls down to the form of a commodity to be "had". A person would be in excruciating emotional pain till he has not "had" his love. Countless poets have expressed their heartbreak, loneliness and helplessness in being in defiance from their love object. If by luck, the lover is able to "have" his love, then, as Fromm has rightly explained, the magic evaporates, as precisely occurs to one, when one buys the latest iPhone, and then loses interest in that, when a new version of iPhone is released the next year. I know here I have taken the subject to an extreme, and no one compares his lover to an iPhone. The comparison here is symbolically done to put a point.
The way out of this existential dilemma is always to relate love as an action - a productive, creative, nourishing and beautiful action. When one says, "I love you", one should relate it to saying, "I am standing in an act of caring, respecting, feeling, appreciating and affirming, who you are and who you are not". It is true that one cannot "fall in love". Rather one can only walk in love, stand in love, sing in love, write in love, create in love, see in love, paint in love, and live in love. I like to be always "inlove" :)
"Love has two meanings, depending upon whether it is spoken of in the mode of having or in the mode of being.
Can one have love? If we could, love would need to be a thing, there is no such a thing as "love". In reality there exists only the act of loving. To love implies caring for, knowing, responding affirming, enjoying: the person, the tree, the painting, the idea. It means bringing to life, increasing his/her/its aliveness. It is a process, self-renewing and self-increasing.
When love is experienced in the mode of having it implies confining, imprisoning, or controlling the object one "loves". It is strangling, deadening, suffocating, killing not life-giving. What people call love is mostly a misuse of the word, in order to hide the reality of their not loving.
The same may be said of marriages. Whether the marriage is based on love or, like traditional marriages of the past, on social convenience and custom, the couple who truly love each other seem to be the exception. What is social convenience, custom, mutual economic interests, shared interest in children, mutual dependency, or mutual hate or fear is consciously experienced as "love" - up to the moment when one or both partners recognize that they do not love each other, and that they never did. Today one can note some progress in this respect: people have become more realistic and sober, and many no longer feel that being sexually attracted means to love, or that a friendly, though distant, team relationship is a manifestation of loving. This new outlook has made for greater honesty - as well as more frequent change in partners. It has not necessarily led to a greater frequency of loving, and the new partners may love as little as did the old.
The change from "falling in love" to the illusion of "having" love can often be observed in concrete detail in the history of couples who have "fallen in love".
During courtship neither person is yet sure of the other, but each tries to win the other. Both are alive, attractive, interesting. Neither yet has the other; hence each other's energy is directed to "being", i.e. to giving to and stimulating the other. With the act of marriage the situation frequently changes fundamentally. The marriage contract gives each partner the exclusive possession of the other's body, feeling and care. Nobody has to be won over any more, because love has become something one "has", a property. The two cease to make the effort to be lovable and to produce love, hence they become boring, and hence their beauty disappears. They are disappointed and puzzled. Are they not the same persons any more? Did they make a mistake in the first place? Each usually seeks the cause of the change in the other and feels defrauded. What they do not see is that they no longer are the same people they were when they were in love with each other; that the error that one can have love has led them to cease loving. Now, instead of loving each other, they settle for owing together what they have: money, social standing, a home, children. Thus, in some cases, the marriage initiated on the basis of love becomes transformed into a friendly ownership, a corporation in which the two egotisms are pooled into one: that of the family.
When a couple cannot get over the yearning for renewal of the previous feeling of loving, one or the other of the pair may have the illusion that a new partner (or partners) will satisfy their longing. They feel that all they want to have is love. But love to them is not an expression of their being; it is a goddess to whom they want to submit. They necessarily fail with their love because "love is a child of liberty", and worshipper of the goddess of love eventually becomes so passive as to be boring and loses whatever is left of this or her former attractiveness.
This description is not intended to imply that marriage cannot be the best solution for two people who love each other. The difficulty does not lie in marriage, but in the possessive, existential structure of the both partners and, in the last analysis, of their society. The advocates of such modern-day forms of living together as group marriage, changing partners, group sex, etc, try, as far as I can see, only to avoid the problem of their difficulties in more "lovers", rather than to be able to love even one."
Beautifully expresses so succinctly, Fromm points to the root cause of attachment and pain, or disillusionment one undergoes in love, is rooted in one's propensity of "having" the object of love, in the above abstract in his book. Love in all forms loses its sheen, its life, its vitality and potency, when the love falls down to the form of a commodity to be "had". A person would be in excruciating emotional pain till he has not "had" his love. Countless poets have expressed their heartbreak, loneliness and helplessness in being in defiance from their love object. If by luck, the lover is able to "have" his love, then, as Fromm has rightly explained, the magic evaporates, as precisely occurs to one, when one buys the latest iPhone, and then loses interest in that, when a new version of iPhone is released the next year. I know here I have taken the subject to an extreme, and no one compares his lover to an iPhone. The comparison here is symbolically done to put a point.
The way out of this existential dilemma is always to relate love as an action - a productive, creative, nourishing and beautiful action. When one says, "I love you", one should relate it to saying, "I am standing in an act of caring, respecting, feeling, appreciating and affirming, who you are and who you are not". It is true that one cannot "fall in love". Rather one can only walk in love, stand in love, sing in love, write in love, create in love, see in love, paint in love, and live in love. I like to be always "inlove" :)
It is so true when Fromm says - "To love implies caring for, knowing, responding affirming, enjoying: the
person, the tree, the painting, the idea. It means bringing to life,
increasing his/her/its aliveness. It is a process, self-renewing and
self-increasing." Yes, when one is not able to self-renew and self-increase, and do the same for his object of love, one has to be aware that it is not love that one is. But rather it is a personality defect - a craving, a need, a parasitic and symbiotic attachment.
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