G. Correy & M. S. Correy - Some Meanings of Authentic Love 汉译

So far, we’ve discussed mostly what we think love is not. Now we’d like to share some of the positive meanings love has for us.

Love means that I know the person I love. I’m aware of the many sides of the other person—not just the beautiful side but also the limitations, inconsistencies and flaws. I have an awareness of the other’s feelings and thoughts, and I experience something of the core of that person. I can penetrate social masks an roles and see the other person on a deeper level.

Love means that I care about the welfare of the person I love. To the extent that it is genuine, my caring is not a smothering of the person or a possessive clinging. On the contrary, my caring liberates bother of us. If I care about you, I’m concerned about your growth, and I hope you will become all that you can become. Consequently, I don’t put up roadblocks to what you do that enhances you as a person, even though it may result in my discomfort at times.

Love means having respect for the dignity of the person I love. If I love you, I can see you as a separate person, with your own values and thoughts and feelings, and I do not insist that you surrender your identity and conform to an image of what I expect you to be for me. I can allow and encourage you to stand alone and to be who you are, and I avoid treating you as an object or using you primarily to gratify my own needs.

Love means having a responsibility toward the person I love. If I love you, I’m responsive to most of your major needs as a person. This responsibility does not entail my doing for you what you are capable of doing for yourself; nor does it mean that I run your life for you. It does imply acknowledging that what I am and what I do affects you, so that I am directly involved in your happiness and your misery. A lover does have the capacity to hurt or neglect the loved one, and in this sense I see that love entails an acceptance of some responsibility for the impact my way of being has on you.

Love means growth for both myself and the person I love. If I love you, I am growing as a result of my love. You are a stimulant for me to become more fully what I might become, and my loving enhances your being as well. We each grow as a result of caring and being cared for; we each share in an enriching experience that does not detract from our being.

Love means making a commitment to the person I love. This commitment does not entail surrendering our total selves to each other; nor does it imply that the relationship is necessarily permanent. It does entail a willingness to stay with each other in times of pain, uncertainty, struggle, and despair, as well as in times of calm and enjoyment.

Love means trusting the person I love. If I love you, I trust that you will accept my caring and my love and that you won’t deliberately hurt me. I trust that you will find me lovable and that you won’t abandon me; I trust the reciprocal nature of our love. If we trust each other, we are willing to be open to each other and can shed masks and penetrates and reveal our true selves.

Love can tolerate imperfection. In a love relationship there are times of boredom, times when I may feel like giving up, times of real strain, and times I experience an impasse. Authentic love does not imply enduring happiness. I can stay during rough times, however, because I can remember what we had together in the past, and I can picture what we will have together in our future if we care enough to face our problems and work them through. We agree with Reverend Maier when he writes that love is a spirit that changes life. Love is a way of life that is creative and that transforms. However, Maier does not view love as being reserved for a perfect world. “Love is meant for our imperfect world where things go wrong. Love is meant to be a spirit that works in painful situations. Love is meant to bring meaning into life where nonsense appears to reign.” In other words, love comes into an imperfect world to make it livable.

Love is freeing. Love is freely given, not doled out on demand. At the same time, my love for you is not dependent on whether you fulfill my expectations of you. Authentic love does not imply “I’ll love you when you become perfect or when you become what I expect you to become.” Authentic love is not given with strings attached. There is an unconditional quality about love.

Love is expansive. If I love you, I encourage you to reach out and develop other relationships. Although our love for each other and our commitment to each other might bar actions on our parts, we are not totally and exclusively wedded to each other. It is a pseudolove that cements one person to another in such a way that he or she is not given room to grow. Casey and Vanceburg put this notion well:

The honest evidence of our love is our commitment to encouraging another’s full development. We are interdependent personalities who need one another’s presence in order to fulfill our destiny. And yet, we are also separate individuals. We must come to terms with our struggles alone.

Love means having a want for the person I love without having a need for that person in order to be complete. If I am nothing without you, then I’m not really free to love you. I love you and you leave, I’ll experience a loss and be sad and lonely, but I’ll still be able to survive. If I am overly dependent on you for my meaning and my survival, then I am not free to challenge our relationship; nor am I free to challenge and confront you. Because of my fear of losing you, I’ll settle for less than I want, and this settling will surely lead to feelings of resentment.

Love means identifying with the person I love. If I love you, I can empathize with you and see the world through your eyes. I can identify with you because I’m able to see myself in you and you in me. This closeness does not imply a continual “togetherness,” for distance and separation are sometimes essential in a loving relationship. Distance can intensify a loving bond, and it can help us rediscover ourselves, so that we are able to meet each other in a new way.

Love is selfish. I can only love you if I genuinely love, value, appreciate, and respect myself. If I am empty, then all I can give you is my emptiness. If I feel that I’m complete and worthwhile in myself, then I’m able to give you out of my fullness. One of the best ways for me to give you love is by fully enjoying myself with you.

Love involves seeing the potential within the person we love. In my love for another, I view her or him as the person she or he can become, while still accepting who and what the person is now. Goether’s observation is relevant here: by taking people as they are, we make them worse, but by treating them as if they already were what they ought to be, we help make them better.

We conclude this discussion of the meanings that authentic love has for us by sharing a thought from Fromm’s The Art of Loving(1956). His description of mature love sums up the essential characteristics of authentic love quite well:

Mature love is union under the condition of preserving one’s integrity, one’s individuality. In love this paradox occurs that two beings become one and yet remain two.