Idealization of Love

Problems Associated with the Idealization of Love
Introduction
As Berardo and Owens point out, “sociologists agree that love is one of the most complex and elusive concepts to deal with from a scientific point of view” (1696). Yet, love is one of the driving forces in culture if not in all of history itself—if poets, artists, and cultural historians are to be any measure (Berardo and Owens). It is underlying current of interactions, of community life—even of fighting and of wars: its presence makes people come together, and its absence draws them apart or pits them at one another, sometimes in vicious and cruel ways. Love is practical and love is ideal and its dimensions and manifestations are as diversely imagined and seen as the history of the human race has been lived. However, with the idealization of love, the concept can often become situated in an unrealistic sphere that is hard or even impossible for people to understand, let alone put into practice. Love is not something that is meant to forever be out of one’s reach but rather something that one can exercise daily, even if only in small ways, in one’s own life. It is an attitude, a habit even, a manner of being that one expresses to others, to oneself and to God. Love that is idealized, however, can become blinding to the little realities that actually go into making love a possible and positive routine. Idealized love can cause people to actually lose sight of real love, which in practice is often far less romantic, far less picturesque, and far less poetic than idealized love. In the end, however, real love is the only kind of love that matters: the idealized sort is more of a device that can be used for any number of purposes related to the progenitor. This paper will show why idealized love is problematic as it distracts one from making real love (practical love) an everyday habit.
The Idealization of Love
The idealization of love can take many forms—it does not have to be thought of purely as an abstraction. That form exists, of course, and is represented both philosophically and poetically throughout time. However, sexual love can be idealized; emotional love can be idealized; platonic love can be idealized; spiritual love can be idealized. As Levine points out, there are at least “seven interlocking meanings of term love” (143) and each one helps to describe an aspect of love—whether it is spiritual, emotional, philanthropic, platonic, and so on. However, these terms or aspects of love can also be heightened or sensationalized beyond the bounds or reason. Love is not opposed to reason or out of touch with reason; it is not disconnected from reason nor is it always subject to reason. When some aspect of love is put on a pedestal as though it were something that exists all on its own and is not interconnected with the other aspects of love or with the reality of life in general, it has become idealized—and this idealization can be very dangerous because of the fact that it is divorced or disconnected from the reality of life. For example, in a relationship, love is a two-way street and demands mutuality—yet, as Lewis et al. note, “mutuality has tumbled into undeserved obscurity by the primacy our society places on the art of the deal” (208). The art of the deal might work in a business negotiation—but business has a totally different set of parameters than love: the aim of business is to make money—it is ultimately self-centered; the aim of love is other-centered: “the physiology of love is no barter” as Lewis et al. state—“love is simultaneous mutual regulation, wherein each person meets the needs of the other, because neither can provide for his own” (208). Lewis et al. place a utilitarian definition on this concept of love. Indeed, defining love is important, and that shall be discussed in the next section. For now, it is enough to realize that love that is idealized is love that is self-centered and self-serving: realistic love is love that is other-centered and outwardly expressed.
The main problem with idealizing love is that it makes what should be a grounded and rooted concept that is practicable into something that is so heightened and blown out of proportion that it becomes totally unrealistic and impractical (Lewis)—i.e., it bears no connection to reality and when one attempts to apply an idealized form of love to reality, the consequences are often disastrous. For instance, a marriage that was entered into on the crest of idealized emotional love crashes into the rocks of everyday reality when the first fight breaks out and neither partner has a realistic view of the life of the emotions to understand how to react or bear the struggles with patience (a form of love), understanding (empathy—another form of love), or fortitude (courage in adversity—another form of love). Idealized sexual love also has its negative consequences when applied to real life: a person may be pursuing an idealized sex life that is simply impractical given the reality of every day human beings. The sex instinct is like every other human instinct or appetite and should be enjoyed in moderation—but when pursued exclusively in and of its own right, the effects can be detrimental to one’s health. In the end, the problem of idealized love is that it is simply unrealistic: “too many people spend their lives waiting to have what they expect is the pure feeling”—thinking that they cannot truly love unless that feeling is there (Levine 144). This is a mistake because this is an assumption based on an idealized concept of love. The reality is that love is a practice that proceeds from a principle—to love is action of the will. One wills love into being: one does not passively wait for it to happen or to find him. The expectation of a passive receiving of love, like getting a package in the mail, takes one’s will out of the equation. Love is dependent on the will.
The Habit of Love
The habit of love is that which is practiced every day, and just like any other habit it consists of routine thoughts and actions cultivated by a person so that over time they become like second nature. They do not have to be consciously—or so consciously—enacted that it requires a great force of will. The more one is in the habit of practicing something, the easier it is to do it over time. Love is an action that can become a habit. The problem that people encounter, however, is that they do not know what this idea of love is: they are under the impression that love is impractical (Sternberg), or that it is idealistic, or that it is romantic, or that it is a feeling (Levine), or a sexual impulse (Kluger), or a dream. They do not realize that love is actually a mindset that is demonstrated in action. Simon May points out that the basis of the concept of love in the Western world is found in the Hebrew Scriptures: “Before Plato and Aristotle—the other dominant sources of Western concepts of love—and well before Jesus, Hebrew Scripture provides, in two pithy sentences, ideas that have guided the course of love ever since” (14). Those two directives are: 1) the commandment to love God with one’s whole heart, soul, and might; and 2) the commandment to love one’s neighbor as one love’s one’s own self. However, with the advent of the modern world (roughly at about the time the Protestant Reformation got underway, which heralded the Age of Enlightenment and Romanticism), the notion that love as dictated by the Hebrew Scriptures is all there really is to it or can even be conceived so simply and implemented routinely has all but vanished under a tidal wave of modern philosophy, rationalistic inquiry, and romantic exploration. A radical new concept of human nature developed during the birth of the modern era: man was no longer viewed as a creature of God but rather as a creature of the slime—an evolutionary accident (Sternberg); and in this context, love had to be redefined. Naturally, it lost some of its gloss and simplicity.
The evolutionary view of human history holds that “through a process of natural selection, organisms that were able to adapt to the environment survived and reproduced, and organisms that were not able to adapt met their demise before they were able to reproduce” (Sternberg 53). The view posits that love is a mechanism that allows for humans to form communal bonds and interpersonal relationships for the purpose of procreation and egoism. It views love within utilitarian terms—i.e., love is a necessary biopsychosocial function because without it, the evolution of the human race will hit a wall. This view is somewhat narrow given how the total phenomenon of human experience is so much different from that of the rest of the animal kingdom—but the point is that when love is romanticized, it loses its utilitarian or pragmatic characteristics. Idealized love may be good for selling books or movies, as it lures people to consume these products with sentimentality—feelings associated with love that are ultimately undeserved; but in the real world, idealized love does not promote the aims of human civilization or foster the extension of the human race. Only real love, love that is disciplined, subject to reason and to the principles of the universal tradition (call it “the Golden Rule” of love), can be of any use to human society as it is the only form that is centered on service to others. If one looks back on how love is defined in the Hebrew Scriptures, one sees that love is rooted in the concept of service: one who loves is either doing service to the God or to one’s neighbor (May 14). Realistic love is servitude, in other words—but this does not mean that love is without any of the positive joys, feelings, satisfactions, or biological functions that make it up its many other aspects. Love has many aspects, as Levine has shown—but love in its totality is understood best in the sense that it is a service to another—whether to a spouse, a friend, a community, or to God.
Unreal Expectations: Why Idealized Love Fails
The problems with modern concepts of love—whether one is enamored of Romantic love or of liberalized (free) love or of self-love (egoism)—are that they are in and of themselves disconnected largely from the concept of love as service to another. One expects from idealized love the fulfillment of the self and its self-centered desires. Real love, however, is rooted not in self-satisfaction as an aim in and of itself but rather in the service of another (May)—in the satisfaction of another; and self-satisfaction is achieved as a corollary to this aim. Idealized love in whatever form it takes tends to lead one further into oneself instead of into service of another or of others. Love between a man and a woman, for example, will naturally lead to procreation and family, and this will place responsibilities of service upon the parents and the children. Yet even this type of love can be idealized and is especially and perniciously idealized in popular culture by mass media. Berardo and Owens show that “the mass media undoubtedly encourages many romantic myths about love,” which is problematic because nowhere in these myths can be found the reality of “mundane everyday constraints faced by real people” (1699). Reality is not always pleasant, whereas love in its idealized form is typically associated with good feelings. To contrast the idealized form of love so often communicated in popular media, whether pop songs or popular films and shows, with the concept of love as a service communicated in the Hebrew Scriptures is to recognize the profound difference between the Old World concept of love and the modern manifestation of love in today’s culture: the Old World concept is more directly realistic because it is other-centered; the modern cultural concept is more idealized because it is essentially sentimental and self-centered—the desired effect or outcome of love modern culture is not the happiness or well-being or satisfaction of the will of another person but rather the satisfaction of one’s own feelings. By making one’s own feelings the object of love, however, it naturally frustrates the aim of realistic love, which is not the satisfaction of one’s own feelings but rather the satisfaction of another.
The key to finding and engaging in real love is that providing service to another is not without its own satisfactions for the self. Indeed, serving the will of another person or of God can give great satisfaction to one’s self, can soothe one’s feelings, can give one a sense of purpose, and can produce happiness in one’s heart. One does not have to constantly think of serving one’s own self-interests in order to be happy; on the contrary, in adhering to the realistic love advocated in the Hebrew Scriptures, one can find a type of happiness and peace not found by any other means and certainly not by the pursuit of idealized love like so many of the troubled Romantic poets of the 19th and 20th centuries learned. To “do all that you do for the sake of love,” as May notes is underlying principle of the Western tradition (20), is the essence of realistic love. It makes the reality of love into an ideal without idealizing love to an unreal pedestal. Ideal love is characterized by God’s love, as depicted in the Hebrew and Christian Bibles (May). Idealized love is characterized by modern attempts to make some aspect of love, whether sexual, spiritual, platonic, emotional, into the all-encompassing essence of love. Ideal love can serve as the image of perfect love that one who is dedicated to real love can strive to pursue and embody; idealistic love serves only to lead one down unrealistic paths in pursuit of an aspect of love that is disconnected from the other aspects by the fact that it has been idealized: “the problem with romance,” as Kluger states, “is that it doesn’t always deliver the goods. For all the joy it promises, it can also play us for fools” (7). When love is idealized, it prompts one to have unrealistic expectations—and when these expectations are not satisfied (because the pursuit itself is disconnected from the reality of love), the pursuer can become dejected, emotional, and even anti-social—none of which are healthy outcomes of one who has made a habit of real love part of his or her life.
Conclusion
In conclusion, realistic love is the only kind of love that can ever truly satisfy because it is the only type of love that applies to human beings as they really and truly are. Human beings are not constructs out of the imagination of the Enlightenment philosophers, the Romantic poets, the modern TV script writers, or the hedonists who have populated history throughout all time. The fact that human beings are even capable of discussing or questioning this notion of love shows that they are more than just creatures that crawled out of the slime for some inexplicable evolutionary reason. The consciousness of human beings and their sense of self and sense of others points indicates that something is present among the human race that distinguishes it from all else among creation. The reality of love is that everyone—all people—are brought into existence as a result of it. To make realistic love a part of one’s life, one must therefore be thankful to love and, in the end, put oneself into the service of love, which—as Christ showed—is ultimately self-sacrificing rather than self-seeking.

Works Cited
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May, Simon. Love: A History, Yale University Press, 2011.
Kluger, Jeffrey. “Why We Love.” Time, vol. 171, no. 4, 28 Jan. 2008, 54-60.
Levine, Stephen B. “What is Love Anyway?” Journal of Sex & Marital Therapy, vol.
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Lewis, Thomas et al. A General Theory of Love. Vintage Books, 2001.
Sternberg, Robert. Cupid’s Arrow: The Course of Love through Time. Cambridge
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