Family’s love is similar to society’s love
Is love a civic virtue? There are ways in which a family’s love can extend outward. Parents encourage their children to form friendships with other children – when I grew up, many of my friends were the children of my parents’ friends. Parental friendships lead to children’s friendship; children’s friendships can also lead to parental friendships. Adults can interact via their mutual desire to care for children.
Marriages are also more likely to be interracial today: in 2019, 19% of new marriages were interracial [1]. In 2014, 39% of recent marriages were interfaith [2]. This suggests that the narrow view of relating (we must be the same race and religion) has been replaced with a more flexible one.
However, expressing love can be challenging. Gary Chapman, in The Five Love Languages, notes that people express love differently: some in words, some in actions, and some by spending time together. In a voluntary association, such as a church, love is expressed especially by engaging in the activities of the group. For instance, donating money to the church shows our love for other members who are in need. However, families always have a dilemma: how should we express our love? Different people may have different preferences. This dilemma is a perfect metaphor for our society, where we also do not always know how to express love. I would argue that it is particularly men who have this difficulty. So what I have to say here is especially relevant for parents of boys.
Expressing love is difficult for men
When I was observing a college class (as a teacher myself), the teacher of the class (a woman older than me) said “I love my students.” I had noticed that this teacher got very good test scores, and I was wondering about her secret method. However, if professing her love for her students was the method, I thought I could not duplicate it. As a man, I couldn’t imagine saying “I love my students.” It would sound either effeminate or (more to the point) deeply inappropriate.
Things were not always so. Alexander Hamilton wrote to his friend:
“Cold in my professions, warm in my friendships, I wish, my Dear Laurens, it might be in my power, by action rather than words, to convince you that I love you. I shall only tell you that ’till you bade us Adieu, I hardly knew the value you had taught my heart to set upon you.” [3]
Pictures show male friends in the 19th century holding hands [4]. Indeed, male friends in the Middle East hold hands to this day; George W. Bush held hands with the Saudi King Abdullah to show their friendship [5].
One historian writes, on reddit, “Love was understood as something that encompassed far, far more than mere sexual desire, and expressing love and fondness, and using effusive poetic descriptions of your affection to another man, was just a thing men could do.” [6].
Note that love is said to express “far more than” mere sexual desire; whereas in our society, for many people, sexual desire is thought to be the highest form of love. (What more is there?)
19th century men, just as today, valued marital primacy (their marriage was more important than their friendships.) Their letters would include language about the body that was absent from letters to friends (“A thousand kisses upon your burning lips, upon your heart,” said Napoleon) or other strong, exclusive language (Hamilton: “best of wives and best of women,” as quoted in the musical. Jacob Ebersol: “I live for you and the children” [7], John McCue: “Your presence my love is indispensable to my happiness” [8])
We have, perhaps, lost some of our adeptness and appreciation for poetic language, but perhaps couples today could find creative ways to express marital primacy. Another problem is that we often dislike overly strong language of this kind, thinking that that implies an unhealthy dependence upon one’s spouse. We use words like “codependent” and “boundaries” to indicate that people should not be joined too fiercely or closely. For example, husbands who post too many photos of their wives on social media are said to be “wife guys.” Is that particular anxiety good for us?
I am not an expert as to what developments caused the shift away from expressions of love; but many people write about male loneliness in the 21st century, and I am guessing that is a major cause.
- Men who express love for their male friends are thought to be gay. (And gay men themselves likely don’t want to be thought to be hitting on all of their male friends!)
- Men who express love for their female friends are thought to be hitting on them. (Which could be unintended and/or unwelcome.)
- Male teachers who express love for their students are thought to be pedophiles.
- If one person is comfortable saying “I love you” and the other isn’t, it can lead to awkwardness. But given all the other aforementioned constraints, this is the most likely outcome of saying “I love you.”
- Saying “I love you” is reserved for only the most sacred of relationships (marriage) and cannot be said to someone who is outside of that inner circle. But most men must wait until their thirties to get married.
Women are not nearly so subject to these constraints. Indeed, I believe that women can express platonic love for male and female friends much more easily than men can express platonic love for either male or female friends. Women can wear clothing that displays images of hearts; men cannot. That’s part of the reason that we have a male loneliness problem and not a female loneliness problem.
Plato’s ideal of love
Moreover, the word “platonic” doesn’t really mean what we think it means. Plato’s idea of love was meant to improve upon and transcend physical desire (to be higher than it) rather than being a second best as we mean in our culture. Thus, Wikipedia says:
“The ladder starts with carnal attraction of body for body, progressing to a love for body and soul. Eventually, in time, with consequent steps up the ladder, the idea of beauty is eventually no longer connected with a body, but entirely united with Being itself.” [9]
In our culture, in contrast, romantic love is often taken as the highest ideal of love, so that “I love you Platonically” sounds rather sterile or disappointing. What does that say about us? (It’s hard to make something named after a philosopher sounds emotionally meaningful, perhaps.)
Poisoning the well
A significant part of the problem is that some men took the sexual revolution to be a sign that it’s “open season” for sexual expression, and that sexual love is the main or only kind of love. This has, in effect, “poisoned the well” for everyone else, who now assume that men will be unable to control their sexual impulses – and will engage in harassment or abuse. That’s why male teachers cannot express love for students. At the same time, it may also be that with patriarchy came a tendency to turn a blind eye to men’s misdeeds; such as upper class men’s misdeeds against lower class women (servants.). I suspect it’s a combination of actual better behavior in the past, plus turning a blind eye to bad behavior that did exist. It also comes with the loss of communities, such as church communities, in which expressions of love were appropriate and necessary. I am not sure that we have found the answer to these issues yet – we still do not really trust men, as far as I can tell. I am also reluctant to point the finger at particular men. Many men have contributed to the problem in small or large ways.
In the “four loves” model (which people may incorrectly associate with Plato, but which does come from Greek ideas), the highest form of love is not romantic love (Eros) or companionate friendship (Philia) but unconditional, selfless love (Agape). In the Christian tradition, the kind of love we are told to feel for everyone is the highest form (Agape). What are we to make of this? It’s at the heart of much of the Western tradition; yet it is, at the same time, so unfamiliar and alien to us.
Love as a civic virtue
If love is to be a civic virtue, we’d have to return to a time when it could be expressed more freely. What do you think: should love be a civic virtue? Personally, I would like my kids to be able to say “I love you” platonically (in the highest sense of the word) to their close friends. I think this would be healthy and would prevent some loneliness when they are adults. Long ago, the model for this more far-reaching love was the love within the voluntary association or church community. Could love within the family play that modeling role today? Could a CEO, for instance, think that they should treat their workers better – based on what they’ve learned from their family life? It’s not impossible. Circling back to the title of this blog, it depends on whether our family is intentional: whether we explain these issues to our children explicitly.
[2] https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2015/06/02/interfaith-marriage/
[3] https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Hamilton/01-02-02-0100
[4] https://dustyoldthing.com/19th-century-concept-of-friendship/
[7] https://museums.kenosha.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/Ebersol-19th-Indiana-Collection.pdf
Nexus State Theory 