LuX Clara's Key Ideas from The Art of Loving
by Erich Fromm

There's a difference between falling in love and loving.

People often fall in love for each other and become crazy for the partner. It starts with a big curiosity and attraction. At a certain point, when we know each other well enough and for a while, the intimacy starts getting less and ends in boredom. In reality their inicial crazyiness for each other was only an indicator for their loneliness before they met.

To learn how to love we need to understand that love is an art. Same as carpentry, medicine, music and many more things.

To learn an art we first need to learn the theory followed by practise.

We humans know that we will die one day. Either before our beloved ones or after them. This makes life difficult. Because we get separated from others. This isolation makes us suffer and feel anxious. This is why we crave for love.

Humans of all cultures try to overcome isolation by finding a better half. And it makes us conformists in order to not get expulsed from our social groups.

While people became conformists to belong to our society or subgroups, nowadays we demand equality for everyone but often get confused and think people should be the "same". But polarity is necessary in live and foremost in love.

Opposite to a symbiotic union of love (where both parents get benefits for loving each other) the mature love unites while still preserving the own integrity, the own individuality. This love gives us the power of overcoming or feelings of isolation, but let's us still be ourselves. The paradox of it is that two human beings become one and are still two individuals.

Love is an action. An action of giving. In our society we see giving in an economical way, which means we expect to get something back or having less after giving away something.

On the other hand you can see giving as the highest form of power. In the act of giving I experience richness, power and strength. Giving is way more enriching than recieving because it expresses our power and vitality.

Care: love means caring for the life and growth of whatever we love.

Responsibility: it's not about taking responsibilities for external things but being responsible means to be ready to respond internally.

Respect: Respect doesn't mean to be submissive to another person. It means that see the other humans as they are, be conscious of their uniqueness. I don't expect them to be as I want them to be, but I love them as they are.

Knowledge: you can't take responsibility or care for a person without knowing her or him. But the more you know a person the more you realize that you don't know her.

Love is the unification of two poles, mostly of a male and a female pole. We can find a lot of examples in nature where one pole needs the other to be complete. Like day and night.

A newborn baby gets all the love from his mother from they it's born. It gets unconditional love from her. The baby learns: they love me because I am.

At the age of 8 to 10 kids start to learn that they can give love and receive love back. Thus they learn: I love because they love me.

Mature love says: they love me because I love

Traditionally the love we get from our mothers is different than the one we got from our fathers. This has to be seen in the context of Western traditional cultures.

Maternal love: unconditional love

Paternal love: conditional love (you can do something to earn it - had its pros and cons)