I have inconsistently thought about what love means. I have thought about it while in relationships of course but I do not think I have ever reeeally sat down and discussed what love means to me with a male partner. Something that will surely change in the future.
When I was a senior in high school, one of my teachers recommended a book that addressed the topic of love. The book is called The Road Less Traveled: A New Psychology of Love, Traditional Values and Spiritual Growth by M. Scott Peck. The book was written in 1978 and is still very much valued, utilized and sought after to this day. I very much admired the author's definition of love. He states that love is "the will to extend one's self for the purpose of nurturing one's own or another spiritual growth."
Professor and a favorite feminist author of mine Bell Hooks, has written two books on the subject of love. I have read both All About Love: New Visions (2001) and Communion: The Female Search For Love (2002) and learned much from both publications. In these scripts Hooks emphasizes that love is not instinctual but rather a choice. That from early ages we are often taught vague and weak definitions of love. We are taught that love is simply an ooey gooey feeling. Additionally many consider love to be the same as offering emotional affection. This is not so.
Love involves communication. The media for example, would have us believe that love equates to being swept off of one's feet or is the process of involving oneself in a sexual relationship without discussing the emotional needs or world view of each party. Why does this happen time and time again? Patriarchal culture depicts love as easy and effortless. It insists that there is only one way to love. Investing ourselves in relationships doesn't sound as romantic and so many avoid it all together.
While some may roll their eyes at the mentioning of patriarchy I believe that our patriarchal culture offers limited views on love. Feminism on the other hand gives us the freedom to love ourselves and others in healthier ways. Ending a relationship that is not healthy for you is a form of loving yourself. Dismantling the notion that aging single women are "Freaks" is a form of loving yourself. And most certainly, not settling for someone who cannot love you in a way you need to be loved is also a form of loving yourself.
I think many of us have heard by now that loving others often begins with self love. Hooks points out in her books on love that one of the flaws of feminism is that many progressive women have felt that in order to be strong and equal to men, there is no place for them to discuss love in their own lives.
Love was never discussed in my home. My parents were a whirling tornado and I was holding onto the banisters for dear life (we didn't really have banisters..heh..). Not only was love not discussed but my parents did not offer a healthy example of what it is to love.
In late Elementary school and early Jr. High I witnessed my peers enter relationships. At that age it all seemed so superficial to me. When I finally entered a relationship myself in high school I began to understand the seriousness of loving someone. It wasn't until I was much older that I was able to see the playfulness. I began to see just how important communication and respect were in relationships. I also came to see that not everyone is up for that. I encountered men that assumed that simply being in the relationship was the only gesture that need be made in order to express love or define love.
During my ponderings of love I see that the struggles women face today regarding love and respect have changed over time. Many of us females today will not tolerate such claims that a woman is the one who is SUPPOSED to clean the house, make the meals and is the sole caretaker of husband and child. We owe this change in thinking to the first and second wave feminists. However, today us third wave feminists undergo continuing challenges.
According to Bell Hooks, (and I agree) it seems that many women and me forfeit the topic of love for one of power. Whether it is a woman who feels she must prove to herself that she is in control of her sexuality by becoming an extremist when it comes to her view of sex (i.e. a sdomasochist, promiscuous, exhibitionist, porn actress) or has gained power by way of money and social status, it seems that all of this is easier to some than discussing how impportant and liberating loving oneself or giving and receiving love is as it is not considered to be "sexy." The message is that love is not sexy, love is not freeing. Sex, power and money is.
If we are to really talk about love then we must acknowledge and examine our desire for it, our lack of it, our gains and losses, our histories and evolutions. This can leave us quite vunerable.
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Excerpts from All About Love: New Visions and Communion: The Female Search For Love by Bell Hooks
Women are not inherently more interested in or more able to love than are men. From girlhood on, we learn to be more enchanted with love. Since the business of loving came to be identified as woman's work, females have risen to the occasion and claimed love as our topic.
Women who learn to love, represent the greatest threat to the patriarchal status quo. But failing to love, women make it clear that it is more ital to their existence to have the approval and support of men that it is to love.
As long as our culture devalues love, women will remain no more able to love than our male counterparts are.
Positioned to be primary caregivers, women are often arrogant when it comes to matters of the heart. Believing in the mystification of our sexist social conditioning, which encourages us to assume we know how to love - as though desire and action were one and the same - we may suffer countless relational failures before we begin to think critically about the nature of love.
Making a relationship "work" is not the same as "creating love."
Even though a great many of us had been raised by tyrannical, codependent, immature women, many of whom were sometimes violent and abusive - usually via verbal shaming and humiliation - for the most part we were still clinging to the image of women as being "all heart."
Our cultural idealization of caregivers is so powerful. It's really one of the few positive traits assigned to women by patriarchy. Therefore, it's not surprising that women are reluctant and at times downright unwilling to interrogate notions that wea re inherently more loving.
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