Erich Fromm, through his book “The Art of Love”, has left us a great source of inspiration to reflect on love. This author has seen love as an art, as a feeling that we all have the potential to generate, but that requires care to be nurtured.
Erich Fromm’s reflections on love are relatively well known and important questions arise such as: “What does it mean to love?’How can we keep that feeling?’ Is love a passing thing?
- The study of the love made by this humanist psychologist and philosopher is distinguished by its great maturity.
- Which understands love as an art that is learned and must be cultivated and cared for so as not to interrupt the learning process in love.
“The first step is to realize that love is an art, just as life is an art. If we want to learn to love, should we do it the same way we would learn any other art, such as music, painting, carpentry or medicine and engineering?-Erich Fromm-
When we use love to escape loneliness or our problems, we are doomed to destroy it. If we use this feeling as a refuge from the problems we cannot bear in our lives, we are fleeing from ourselves.
“Love as mutual sexual satisfaction, as teamwork and as a refuge from loneliness, are normal forms of disintegration of love in contemporary Western society, of the pathology of socially determined love. “-Erich Fromm-
This way of loving becomes pathological, because it does not favor our personal development, we do not listen to each other and we hope that the other will take responsibility for what we cannot achieve.
This shows projections; we see in each other what we cannot bear in ourselves, it is a childish way of not wanting to take responsibility for one’s life and all that entails, when we turn love into a tool, an escape tool to not find ourselves, we lose our ability to love and our honesty to relate to us.
Love is an excess of energy that we have at our disposal, having fulfilled all our basic needs, Erich Fromm believes that this energy cannot be staated, it is not enough to feel, it is necessary to mobilize and live and this is only possible by taking care of and nourishing this love.
There are certain difficulties in a relationship that are inevitable and even necessary, some obstacles that cause negative emotions that we have to face, you have to work those emotions that you feel and understand that breaks come from something you don’t pay attention to. Emotions are our most intimate and personal language, they help us connect more honestly.
“Love is a constant challenge. It is not a place of rest, but of movement, of growth, of working together; that there is harmony or conflict, joy or sadness, is secondary to the fundamental fact that two beings experience the essence of their existence, who are engaged in the relationship and are not together to escape themselves?-Erich Fromm-
Finally, from this reflection, we realize the importance of two people relate according to their own essence, and thanks to a deep knowledge between the two, the couple will be able to build a solid foundation on which to evolve love. Wanting to escape oneself is a mistake, because that way it is not possible to have a healthy and reciprocal encounter.