Is Love an Art?
Erich Fromm
Is Love an art? Then it requires knowledge and effort. Or is love a pleasant nsation, which to experiences is a matter of chance, something one "falls intro" if one is lucky? Undoubtedly, the majority of people today believe in the latter.
Not that people think that love is not important. They are starved for it; they watch endless numbers of films about happy and unhappy love stories, they listen to hundreds of trashy songs abut love - yet hardly anyone thinks that there is anything that needs to be learned about love.
This peculiar attitude is bad on veral premis which either singly or combinedly tend to uphold it. Most people e the problem of love primarily as that of “being loved”, rather than that of “loving”, of one's capacity to love. Hence the problem to them is how to be loved, how to be lovable. In pursuit of this aim they follow veral paths. One, which is espe
cially ud by men, is to be successful, to be as powerful and rich as the social margin of one's position permits. Another, ud especially by women, is to make onelf attractive, by cultivating one's body, dress, etc. Other ways of making onelf attractive, ud both by men and women, are to develop pleasant manners, interesting conversation, to be helpful, modest, inoffensive. Many of the ways to make onelf lovable are the same as tho ud to make onelf successful, "to win friends and influence people." As a matter of fact, what most people in our culture mean by being lovable is esntially a mixture between being popular and having x appeal.
A cond premi behind the attitude that there is nothing to be learned about love is the assumption that the problem of love is the problem of an “object”, not the problem of a “faculty”. People think that to “love” is simple, but that to find the right object to love - or to be loved by - is difficult. This attitude has veral reasons rooted in the development of modern society. One reason is the great change which occurred in the 20th century with respect to the choice of a “love object”. In the Victorian age, as in many traditional cultures, love was mostly not a spontaneous personal experience which then might lead t
o marriage. On the contrary, marriage was contracted by convention - either by the respective families, or by a marriage broker, or without the help of such considerations; it was concluded on the basis of social considerations, and love was suppod to develop once the marriage had been concluded. In the last few generations the concept of romantic love has become almost universal in the Western world. In the United States, while considerations of a conventional nature are not entirely abnt, to a vast extent people are in arch of “romantic love”, of the personal experience of love which then should lead to marriage. This new concept of freedom in love must have greatly enhanced the importance of the “object” as against the importance of the “function”.
Cloly related to this factor is another feature characteristic of contemporary culture. Our whole culture is bad on the appetite for buying, on the idea of mutually favorable exchange. Modern man's happiness consists in the thrill of looking at the shop windows, and in buying all that he can afford to buy, either for cash or on installments. He (or she) looks at people in a similar way. For the man an attractive girl, and for the woman an attractive man, are the prizes they are after. “Attractive” usually means a nice package of
qualities which are popular and sought-after on the personality market. What specifically makes a person attractive depends on the fashion of the time, physically as well as mentally. During the twenties, a drinking and smoking girl, tough and xy, was attractive; today the fashion demands more domesticity and coyness. At the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century, a man had to be aggressive and ambitious - today he has to be social and tolerant - in order to be an attractive "package." At any rate, the n of falling in love develops usually only with regard to such human commodities as are within reach of one's own possibilities for exchange. I am out for a bargain; the object should be desirable from the standpoint of its social value, and at the same time should want me, considering my overt and hidden asts and potentialities. Two persons thus fall in love when they feel they have found the best object available on the market, considering the limitations of their own exchange values. Often, as in buying real estate, the hidden potentialities which can be developed play a considerable role in this bargain. In a culture in which the marketing orientation prevails, and in which material success is the outstanding value, there is little reason to be surprid that human love relations follow the same pattern of exchange which governs the commodity and the labor market.
The third error leading to the assumption that there is nothing to be learned about love lies in the confusion between the initial experience of “falling” in love, and the permanent state of “being” in love, or as we might better say, of “standing” in love. If two people who have been strangers, as all of us are, suddenly let the wall between them break down, and feel clo, feel one, this moment of oneness is one of the most exhilarating, most exciting experiences in life. It is all the more wonderful and miraculous for persons who have been shut off, isolated, without love. This miracle of sudden intimacy is often facilitated if it is combined with, or initiated by, xual attraction and consummation. However, this type of love is by its very nature not lasting. The two persons become well acquainted, their intimacy los more and more its miraculous character, until their antagonism, their disappointments, their mutual boredom kill whatever is left of the initial excitement. Yet, in the beginning they do not know all this. In fact, they take the intensity of the infatuation, this being “crazy” about each other, for proof of the intensity of their love, while it may only prove the degree of their preceding loneliness.
This attitude - that nothing is easier than to love - has continued to be the prevalent idea
about love in spite of the overwhelming evidence to the contrary. There is hardly any activity, any enterpri, which is started with such tremendous hopes and expectations, and yet, which fails so regularly, as love. If this were the ca with any other activity, people would be eager to know the reasons for the failure, and to learn how one could do better - or they would give up the activity. Since the latter is impossible in the ca of love, there ems to be only one adequate way to overcome the failure of love - to examine the reasons for this failure, and to proceed to study the meaning of love.
The first step to take is to become aware that “love is an art”, just as living is an art; if we want to learn how to love we must proceed in the same way we have to proceed if we want to learn any other art, say music, painting, carpentry, or the art of medicine or engineering.
