Summary
Loving and Liking: defines self-love and friendship and distinguishes between love and friendship.
What is Love?: goes over characteristics of love, such as different sides of love, respect that love requires, and what it takes to be in love. Answers questions about attraction and lust verses love.
Caring, Intimacy, and Commitment: what caring means, intimacy and closeness, defining commitment and the benefits of it.
Some Theories about Love and Loving: goes over 5 theories of love in great detail.
Functions of Love: healthful aspects of love and the positive qualities of being in love.
Experiencing Love: touches upon gender differences in love and homosexual love along with what inhibits us from experiencing love.
When Love Goes Wrong: after touching upon positive aspects of love, the author goes over some negatives such as narcissism, jealousy, control, and single dimensional love.
How Couples Change: Romantic and Long-Term Love- contrasts these types of love.
Global View of Love: history of love and romantic verses arranged love.
Points of Interest
Since January, I have found a fascination with reading books about male-female relationships, how men view women, and love in general. Currently, I am reading Men, Women, and the Mystery of Love. The first chapter of the book, The Three Kinds of Friendship, was very similar to the Love and Friendship section on page 137. The three kinds of friendship are:
1. Friendship of Utility: "mutual benefit of the relationship is what unites the two people as friends" (12).
2. Pleasant Friendship: "may sincerely care about each other and wish each other well in life, but what unites them as friends is primarily the good times they experience together" (13).
These two are the most fragile because when they no longer have fun together, go through a tough time, or no longer receive the benefits, there is "nothing left to unite the two people" (13).
3. Virtuous Friendship: "true friends are primarily concerned not with what they get out of the friendship but wit that is best for the friend and with pursuing the virtuous life with that friend" (15). This is the strongest kind of friendship because no matter what, the friends will have the pursuit of a common goal to unite them.
The book also goes over the negative sides of love, different dimensions of love, and love verses lust along with other things.
Questions
I don't particularly have any questions about the reading, but I think it would be interesting to debate some of the topics discussed in the reading. For example, our class could discuss our views on the "love at first site" view or incorporating sex into relationships.
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