On love and affection

Defining "True Love" and discussing why that might not be what most of us can or even want to achieve in our personal relationships

Attribution: This was a collaborative piece conceptualised in discussion with other persons.

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"Why do you love me?" is a question that we might often struggle to answer in the infancy of a romantic relationship, and is typically answered with word magic, which at further prompting, might evolve into a tier list of the things which you appreciate about your partner and why she makes you feel special. However, this oftentimes reveals the confusion that many of us face in distinguishing between love and affection. Today we shall attempt to deconstruct both and identify the differences between them and their practical implications in our current and/or future romantic relationships.

Fundamentally, the seeking of affection is a manifestation of our emotional needs, the medium of which is our partner's behaviour.

I had previously briefly broadly defined the categories of needs that we all have:

We all have different cognitive, behavioural and emotional ("CBE") needs. Where we cannot fulfill these needs on our own, we might start to look outward from ourselves into other people who might be able to cater to these needs. For example, if you overthink (cognitive), are a bit clingy (behavioural) and value the reciprocation of vulnerability (emotional), you would tend to seek friends or confide in who can appreciate and offer the same. Thus, primary friends, very close friends or partners in a healthy romantic relationship also tend to share similar CBE needs.

The mismatch of CBE needs or the inadequacy of a partner in fulfilling the other's CBE needs is a common cause for strife within the romantic relationship, for this might be erroneously interpreted as the other "losing interest" in the relationship or are "losing feelings" in each other. This can be mitigated with clear and open communication between the two partners in coming to compromises on how to meet each other CBE needs, and clear any confusion in the interpretation of the other's actions.

Hence, affection refers to a personal need to receive emotional recognition from your partner, and is thus wholly selfish.

Love, however, is wholly selfless.

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selfish

/ˈsɛlfɪʃ/

adjective

(of a person, action, or motive) [...]concerned chiefly with one's own personal profit or pleasure.

selfless

/ˈsɛlfləs/

adjective

concerned more with the needs and wishes of others than with one's own; unselfish.

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Love refers to being completely willingly committed to another person and caring for them, even at the expense of one's own personal needs. Thus, the True Lover has no concern for their own needs, and only cares for the needs of whom they love.

Even as we disregard problems arising from imperfect or asymmetric information where the True Lover might not be able to accurately deduce the needs of whom they love, the True Lover is seemingly impossible to be because of an inherent contradiction between the interactions of two such True Lovers who are partners.

Consider the following syllogism:

Suppose that P and Q have mutually exclusive personal needs.

If P Loves Q, P would want the best for Q and would thus sacrifice his own needs to fulfill Q's.

If Q Loves P, Q would want the best for P and would thus sacrifice her own needs to fulfill P's.

This case leads to a circular argument and is thus logically unresolvable.

However, this can be reconciled by each person realising that part of their partner's needs is ensuring the other person's well-being, and thus might be more inclined to take care of themselves for the other person; by recognising this conundrum, both partners can discuss a solution by considering both their needs and compromising between both of them to achieve the situation with greatest net benefit.

This circumvents the unresolvable syllogism by seeing the situation in shades of grey and mutual compromise, instead of black-and-white where one person's needs must be wholly disregarded. This is always a useful perspective to bear in mind.

It may thus seem to be the case that the above syllogism can hold true if either of the conditional statements are not met; if P does not Love Q or Q does not Love P, this conundrum can be avoided as the True Lover will be logically allowed to Love the other person with no concern for their own needs.

Such a person (a True Lover) must thus either not have any personal needs, or are so selfless as to willingly forgo all their personal needs if they come into conflict with the needs of whom they Love. 

Briefly departing from the discussion of romantic relationships, this type of dynamic where one person is a True Lover and the other is not as selfless can be observed in parent-child relationships, for most parents will unconditionally Love their children and, to the best of their abilities, provide for their needs, even if at the expense of their own. It is not to say that the children are selfish and do not care for the needs of their parents - filial piety is an important value in Eastern culture and teachings, but that most children might be too young, inexperienced or immature to fully understand the situations where such compromises are made by their parents for them, or are incapable of helping out more than to take care of themselves such that their parents need not worry as much about them.

Reconciling the above discussed theory of the True Lover with the understanding that we all have different CBE needs, it becomes evident that most healthy relationships are not and cannot be characterised by True Love, but of compromise and binocular vision.

Just as how a pair of binoculars provides separate lenses for both eyes looking across long distances, so binocular vision refers to simultaneously considering your needs alongside your partner's, perceiving yourself from the perspective of your partner and seeking a solution that both are amenable to in the long term. This also allows discussion between the partners to go deeper than the superficial to resolve deep-seated issues.

Whilst we cannot strive to achieve the disposition of the True Lover, it is important to recognise some traits of the True Lover that would be beneficial to emulate in our romantic relationships if we really love our partners. This includes practicing the aforementioned binocular vision, putting your partner's needs before your own - not out of obligation but out of uncoerced willingness and want, being mindful of your and your partner's CBE needs, maintaining honest and open communication to come to fair compromise on the issues which you both disagree, and to balance our selfish human need for affection with our selfless giving of love.