Reader discovers that her boyfriend might be “a bit of a jerk”

A READER WRITES: “I was interested in the research which suggested that romantic infatuations only last for about 18 months. I have been going out with my boyfriend for nearly two years. For the first year, our relationship was passionate and wonderful. But in then our relationship began to deteriorate rapidly. Our sex-life has got worse. I think that I might not have anything in common with him, and that he might even be a bit of a jerk”

BB SAYS: This is a common experience in relationships. When the first flush of romantic love inevitably passes, people discover that they have, as you put it “nothing in common”.

The Ancients Greeks had two different words to describe two different types of human love and human connection: one was Eros, the other was Philia.

Erotic love is passionate, uncertain, and exciting. On the other hand, Philia is based on friendship, companionship, shared interests and mutual respect. Now that the period of erotic infatuation in your relationship has passed, you are finding that there is no basis in Philia to continue your relationship. If you cannot find such ground, then it is difficult to see how your relationship can continue.

Eros and Philia exist in each of us, and they are in tension with each other. Strongly erotic people are not suited to long term relationships - their lives are consumed with the eternal search for novelty and for their “other half”. There is a nobility in this search. Unerotic people tend to be bland and to lack passion. And as the philosopher Hegel says, nothing great has ever been accomplished without passion. Erotic love says Flaubert, “is a springtime plant that perfumes everything with its hope, even the ruins to which it clings”.

And this brings us to the difficulty with erotic love – it is based on hope and it rarely endures. Love without Philia cannot sustain itself. Indeed, people who have been in successful long term relationships often say that REAL love only begins when the period of infatuation passes. As Balzac says: “True love is seen with white hairs and is always young in the heart”. Or consider the wise words of Montaigne: “If there is such a thing as a good marriage, it is because it resembles friendship rather than love”.

A successful relationship requires both Eros to initiate it, and Philia to sustain it. Unfortunately it is very hard to find both. That is why, as a minor English poet once put it “the course of true love never did run smooth”. Or look to Montaigne again: “Marriage is like a cage; one sees the birds outside desperate to get in, and those inside equally desperate to get out”.

Love is a complex business, and each of us tries, in our own way, to find what Saul Bellow described as “the consummation of the heart’s ultimate need”, where both our erotic longings AND our longing for Philia can be satisfied.

Do YOU have a problem? Leave an anonymous comment, or send your problem in confidence to brianbarrington@gmail.com