Giving is the highest expression of potency. In the very act of giving, I experience my strength, my wealth, my power. This experience of heightened vitality and potency fills me with joy. I experience myself as overflowing, spending, alive, hence as joyous. Giving is more joyous than receiving, not because it is a deprivation, but because in the act of giving lies the expression of my aliveness.

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.

The First Step

Commonly we think love is easy while finding an object to love is difficult. The cause for this lays in our belief that romantic love just happens spontaneously.Besides of that we often see attractive people as a gain if we manage to get together with them.People look for the best partner within their own possibilities on the market.

Love as an object

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.

Polarised love

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.

"Equal" is not "same"

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.

Loving means giving

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

How We Perceive Love During Life Stages

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.

Elements of 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.

Mature Love

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.

Falling in love

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.

Our need for love

Most of us think that love is passive, that you can be loved and that you fall in love. Not that love is actually a form of art.This is the reason why most people think that being loved depends of our popularity and our sex-appeal.

What we think love is

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

Love From Parents

The landmark bestseller that changed the way we think about love: “Every line is packed with common sense, compassion, and realism” (Fortune). The Art of Loving is a rich and detailed guide to love—an achievement reached through maturity, practice, concentration, and courage. In the decades since the book’s release, its words and lessons continue to resonate. Erich Fromm, a celebrated psychoanalyst and social psychologist, clearly and sincerely encourages the development of our capacity for and understanding of love in all of its facets. He discusses the familiar yet misunderstood romantic love, the all-encompassing brotherly love, spiritual love, and many more. A challenge to traditional Western notions of love, The Art of Loving is a modern classic about taking care of ourselves through relationships with others by the New York Times–bestselling author of To Have or To Be? and Escape from Freedom. This ebook features an illustrated biography of Erich Fromm including rare images and never-before-seen documents from the author’s estate.

personaldevelopment

Personal Development

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Leadership & Management

The landmark bestseller that changed the way we think about love: “Every line is packed with common sense, compassion, and realism” (Fortune).  The Art of Loving is a rich and detailed guide to love—an achievement reached through maturity, practice, concentration, and courage. In the decades since the book’s release, its words and lessons continue to resonate. Erich Fromm, a celebrated psychoanalyst and social psychologist, clearly and sincerely encourages the development of our capacity for and understanding of love in all of its facets. He discusses the familiar yet misunderstood romantic love, the all-encompassing brotherly love, spiritual love, and many more. A challenge to traditional Western notions of love, The Art of Loving is a modern classic about taking care of ourselves through relationships with others by the New York Times–bestselling author of To Have or To Be? and Escape from Freedom.  This ebook features an illustrated biography of Erich Fromm including rare images and never-before-seen documents from the author’s estate.

Erich Fromm, Ph.D. (Sociology, University of Heidelberg, 1922), was a psychoanalyst and social philosopher who explored the interaction between psychology and society, and held various professorships in psychology in the U.S. and Mexico in the mid-20th century.Fromm's theory is a rather unique blend of Freud and Marx. Freud, of course, emphasized the unconscious, biological drives, repression, and so on. In other words, Freud postulated that our characters were determined by biology. Marx, on the other hand, saw people as determined by their society, and most especially by their economic systems.

ERICH FROMM