They were both college students, both Technology majors, both fond of line dancing and Virginia Reels. They had a common interest in applied technology and they found a common solace in Bach’s Fifth Symphony. He and she became friends and dated through college, and long before graduation, it was clear that they were both sincerely in love with each other. They were married not long after and both worked for several years before children even crossed their minds. They decided to wait since she still wanted to pursue her career, and besides, they were saving up for a yacht.
They finally got their yacht, but she wanted to keep working, and the inconveniences of children seemed too much at the time, and so they decided to wait on children for an indefinite amount of time. Not long after, she found out that her husband had been going out with another woman when he was supposedly working late. At about the same time, she started noticing the good looks and charm of another man on her surgical robotics team, and she figured that it was alright if she expressed an interest since she and her husband clearly weren’t in love anymore: they didn’t even use the yacht and they hadn’t listened to the Fifth Symphony together since their honeymoon.
She started going out with her team member and found that she had even more in common with him than she had ever had with her husband, and she couldn’t help noticing how her husband’s little habits had always had irked her. Both she and her husband were thinking about applying for a divorce but neither had said anything to the other about that. They ran into each other at the theater one evening while they were with their respective new loves, and when they arrived at home that night they decided that a divorce was the best solution. Within the year, their irksome and troubled relationship was legally ended.
In today’s society, this sort of story is all too common, and the former lovers are often left wondering what went wrong. Not finding an overt problem, they conclude that they “fell out of love” because they never really loved each other in the first place. However, they don’t seem to learn from the first mistake and “fall in love” again, and again, and again, and each time they believe that they have found “the one,” only to be disappointed as the heady joy of love deserts them and leaves them to conclude that they still have not found their true love and that they must, therefore, separate and look elsewhere.(113) The problem that many modern lovers seem to have is not a lack of love at the outset but an over-dependence on their own, natural love, and a lack of Charity.
In his essay, “Marriage in Crisis,” Cormac Burke lays out three problems with the formation of marriages in today’s society. Two of these problems are: man’s “tendency to ‘deify’ human love; to expect from human love…[what] only God can give,” and “his tendency to invert the order of priority in the ends or purposes of marriage, i.e. his tendency to think that marriage is primarily for the expression and enjoyment of love, and secondly (if at all) for having children.”(5,6) The first problem is probably the biggest because when one’s loves are disordered so that God is not first, it is impossible for the other loves to have their proper places.
St. Augustine says at the beginning of his Confessions, “You have made us and drawn us to yourself, and our heart is unquiet until it rests in you,”(3) but many lovers are deceived by Eros because he “seems to speak from the eternal realm”(113) and they come to believe that Eros is in fact, the Love that they naturally seek. Lewis points out that Eros is a foretaste of that Love, and that it is “(well used) a preparation for that.”(114) The problem is that modern lovers have largely forgotten the Love that they ultimately desire and they try to substitute Eros in His place. If a marriage is not formed with the primary, mutual intention of helping one’s spouse and future children reach Heaven, then spouses are in serious danger of abandoning each other for new lovers when Eros deserts them and they come upon hardships.
Eros is the most exclusive of the natural loves and is a desire for the Beloved. This desire, however, is not a sexual one. Lewis distinguishes Eros from sexual desire or “Venus,” and points out that a man who is actually in love is in a state of “delighted preoccupation with the Beloved”…and “really hasn’t the leisure to think of sex” because he is “too busy thinking of a person.”(93) Eros is a natural love, but it has elements of selflessness and objectivity that give it a supernatural and godlike quality. What is more, since Eros is apparently selfless, it can seem to be the very Love or Charity of God. The danger within Eros may be too great a preoccupation with the Beloved, but the greatest danger of Eros lies in its being turned into an idol and placed before, or even in place of, one’s love for God.(111)
Although Eros can be a benefit within marriage, it cannot be the basis. As Lewis states, Eros, although it seems to be selfless devotion to the Beloved, willing to make any sacrifice on the Beloved’s behalf, is in fact unwilling to make one sacrifice. Lewis says that “the love which leads to cruel and perjured unions, even to suicide-pacts and murder, is not likely to be wandering lust or idle sentiment…[but] may well be Eros in all his splendour; heart-breakingly sincere; ready for every sacrifice except renunciation.”(108) The difference between Eros and Charity, and the reason why a marriage cannot be based on the first but must be based on the second is that when Eros is placed as a substitute for God’s Love, lovers are willing to do anything for Eros, even when what Eros commands is spiritually dangerous or even fatal. When Eros is made into a god, he becomes a tyrannical god, or, as Lewis puts it, “a demon,”(6) and no demon ever intentionally leads a man to Heaven. Charity, on the other hand, is concerned with the objective good of the Beloved and is willing to make any sacrifice required for the Beloved’s eternal welfare.
The other problem with Eros is that it is not permanent. Eros is based on an attraction and there is no guarantee that the attraction will last long or that it won’t find a new focus. Lewis says that Eros, “that kind of love which lovers are ‘in’,”(91) is “notoriously the most mortal of our loves,” and that “the world rings with complaints of his fickleness.”(113) He points out that although Eros is willing to make promises and lifelong commitments, it is not actually able to keep them even though it makes them sincerely.(113) Charity is not fickle and although Eros can be a component of love within marriage, it is Charity, and not Eros, that must be the foundation of a marriage if the marriage is to long endure.
It is clear that Eros is not sufficient to support marriage, but Friendship may seem a viable alternative since it is “less natural” or corporeal, and more “spiritual” than the clearly physical attraction of Eros. However, like Eros, Friendship is not sufficient to keep a marriage strong. Friendship is an exclusive love based on a common interest, but interests are subject to change and it is not exclusive enough to maintain fidelity.) What is more, Friendship is easily made into a god, and a more prideful god than Eros since it is not the love that becomes the god, but the collective group of friends at which point the friendship ceases to exist as such.(86)
Friendship is an exclusive love but this natural exclusivity forms the basis for the deification of this love. This exclusivity to some extent requires a “deafness” to the opinions of those who are not part of a friendship, which is natural to Friendship and is not in itself a bad thing. However, as Lewis states, “the partial deafness which is noble and necessary encourages the wholesale deafness which is arrogant and inhuman,”(82) and at that point the “common vision which first brought [them] together may quite fade away. [They] shall be a coterie that exists for the sake of being a coterie; a little self-elected (and therefore absurd) aristocracy, basking in the moonshine of [their] collective self-approval.”(86)
The other issue with Friendship as the sole support of marriage is that the common interest on which Friendship is based is not necessarily a good one: “the common taste or vision or point of view which is…discovered need not always be a nice one. From such a moment art, or philosophy, or an advance in religion or morals might well take their rise; but why not also torture, cannibalism, or human sacrifice?”(79) If the common interest is not good (and it need not be as drastic as “torture, cannibalism, or human sacrifice;” it can simply be a common interest in disliking someone or something), then the marriage will be based on something opposed to God, a hate rather than a love, or at least a twisted kind of love, which will not form a healthy environment for marriage or for children. Like Eros, Friendship needs Charity and specifically the humility of Charity in order to provide marriage with any real support, and even to remain as Friendship.
Friendship and Eros are not sufficient as foundations for marriage when apart, but even together they still need Charity, and it is possible for a marriage to have neither Eros nor Friendship and to be a holy one nonetheless. If Eros and Friendship are taken together within a marriage without Charity, Friendship may well provide support with its basis in a common interest after Eros has taken his leave, and likewise, Eros can provide a mutual attraction even when a common interest does not seem interesting, but Friendship without Charity need not have a good common interest and it is not exclusive enough to ensure fidelity, and Eros without Charity passes away or finds a new Beloved, and, becoming a god, commands infidelity to one’s spouse “for love’s sake.”(113)
Nowadays, prospective couples are not admonished to have Charity but are encouraged to enter relationships (not necessarily marriages) with no more support than Eros. Eros is not seen as a natural love requiring the discipline and support of Charity but as a self-sufficient love worthy of being deified. Although Eros is the basis of many relationships it does not come alone, and since it is undirected, Venus accompanies it and is obeyed as a goddess “for love’s sake.”
The sexual revolution supposedly “freed” men and women from the responsibility of saving sex for marriage, through technologies such as contraceptives and abortions that rendered children avoidable, and with that made marriage largely pointless. The sexual revolution could not have come about, though, without the secularization of society, which placed morality and immorality under the authority of individuals and elevated them to the status of gods, at the same time eliminating the acknowledgement of God and humanity’s dependence on Him. Friendship is not as common as Eros and, in fact, is not really considered a love at all these days. Already rare, Friendship is now even rarer, not least because it is not usually aimed at forming a relationship, which seems to be the primary object of young people today.
It is common these days for people to speak about their own “rights,” and demand that all the world accommodate their behavior and selfishness, but nowhere does one hear anyone standing up for God’s rights, and rarely does one hear anyone standing up for the rights of human beings who are not “in” with the culture of selfishness that seems to be the norm. Marriage is not seen as a holy institution for the loving improvement of one’s spouse and the procreation of children, but as a (currently) more socially acceptable way to serve Eros (which cannot last long on its own) and Venus. Marriage, as it has been understood in the past, required sacrifice and fostered maturity, but today’s people of marriageable age have no wish to grow up, and since they can serve Eros and Venus outside marriage with increasing societal approval and no children as a consequence, they have no apparent need to do so. When the young “couple” falls out of love, which will inevitably happen, they will break up and turn to other partners, but never seem to learn anything about the inadequacy of natural love to fulfill their inmost desire for God, or even to support their care for each other. Eros is willing to make the vows, Friendship (where it exists) is willing to provide a common ground, but Charity is needed to fulfill the vows and to prevent the common ground from blowing away.
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Works Cited:
Augustine of Hippo. The Confessions. Translated by Maria Boulding, O.S.B. San Francisco:
Ignatius Press, 2012.
Burke, Cormac. “Marriage in Crisis”. New York, New York: Scepter Publishers, 1976. print.
Lewis, Clive Staples. The Four Loves. New York, New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Publishing Company, 2012. print.