love already holds space for you
- Ava Hoffman
- Feb 14, 2023
- 3 min read
We’ve spent centuries expanding what Valentine’s Day celebrates.
In 1700, valentines were exchanged between friends because they weren’t content only applauding romantic love. In a more recent century, Galentines, Palentines, and anti-Valentine’s days have sprung up for presumably the same reason.
There is a push for greater representation of self-love, black love, queer love, trans love, disabled and inter-abled love, Latin love, and Asian love. Our world is not satisfied to commemorate just one expression of love.
We offer themed chocolate, donuts, pizzas, strawberries, cookies, and coffee in an effort to include as many tastes and preferences as possible in the veneration of love. Each year, we add more days, qualifiers, elements, and products to Valentine’s Day in order to expand the scope of love and include more people.
And it’d be a nice thought, if love was exclusive. It’d be a valiant effort if love was meant for a select few. It would be a needed enterprise were love restricted, limited, possessed, or controlled.
But it’s not.
LOVE ALREADY HOLDS SPACE FOR US ALL.
One of my biggest pet peeves is the English language. It is incredibly meager. We tried to compact thousands of years, myriads of languages, and an impossible amount of ancient cultural context into a singular vocabulary. At best, it is insufficient. At worst, it robs us of a whole and holy understanding.
Ancient Greeks had six words for love.
SIX.
To them, every form of love was so vital and valuable, it needed its own distinctive term and definition. Each facet of this emotion is needed, and together, the six give us a comprehensive picture of love. They reveal how inclusive love already is and the fullness it already offers.
Love is foundational, and the depths of that foundation matter.
These six postures of love matter.
Agape. Eros. Storge. Ludus. Philia. Pragma.
May they change your life as profoundly as they have mine.
AGAPE
Unconditional. Selfless. Perfect.
This Greek word is linked to the Aramaic “abba.” It means “Father” and “love.”
This is the original love.
Throughout history, this love has described how the God of the Bibles loves humankind. In both religious and nonreligious texts, it retains this meaning. Consistently, agape indicates that perfect loves comes from outside us and is something for humankind to aspire towards.
We are designed for this kind of love. It is written on our hearts. The empty places in our soul (and life) long to be filled with this radical love.
Agape is the love that completes us and makes us whole. It is the love that adores our messy places and wipes away our tears. Agape love sits in the dark places with us – in the ruts, the closets, and the exhausted despair. It welcomes our hard circumstances, embracing our scars, and whispering peace over our tender wounds.
This is the love that does not turn from our brokenness, our struggles, our burdened hearts. Agape leans in. It seeks to nurture and sustain and satisfy and delight us in the worst of circumstances. It is the love that blesses our weakness, favors our pain, and praises our inability.
Agape love knows your fear and deepest shame.
And He calls you, “Beloved.”
See, agape love is God. Only He in His holy perfection exemplifies love like this.
Agape does all these and more because God is Agape. Jesus is Agape in the flesh, and the Spirit is Agape in you and me.
Agape is the foundation from which all other forms of love pour. God is the foundation from which all love is possible.
Without Agape, not much else in the way of love counts.
EROS
Sexual. Passionate. Brief.
Have you ever witnessed what happens when a pinecone is thrown into a fire? There is immense crackling and sparking, embers fly everywhere, and you have to jump back to avoid the intense heat and soaring coals. It is startling, unpredictable, and potentially dangerous, depending on the conditions.
And then, it is gone.
The sparks disappear, the heat fades, and the pinecone is complete ash. The flames are gone, and without added fuel, the fire ceases to exist.
This is eros love.
It is a sexual form of love characterized by lust and pleasure. Like a wildfire, it can quickly take on a life of its own. The Greeks considered it both powerful and dangerous.
And like a flame fueled by pinecones, it burns out fast. Eros is short-lived. Call it what you will – puppy love, honeymoon stage, young love – it never lasts.
Contrary to what the world tells us, sexual love isn’t designed to sustain!
The divorce rate in America alone proves that eros cannot be the foundation for a long-term relationship. It was not meant to nourish our souls and deepen our relationships.
While modern society abhors a monogamous lifelong sexual partner, the Greeks noted while eros by itself fizzles swiftly, it is preserved when coexisting alongside other forms of love.
Lustful desire becomes sexual longing, and the objectification of another person’s body becomes deep appreciation for their body and each change it undergoes.
We’re often stunned when married couples in their 60s and 70s remain sexually active. Perhaps it is the thought of one sexual partner for that long. Maybe we expect wrinkles and sagging body parts to dilute sexuality. Or maybe we just have so few examples of eros love synchronized with other love…
One study calculated the amount of time a person engages in sexual pursuits over their lifetime to be 0.45%.
For the world’s emphasis on eros, this fact remains : in the larger scope of love and life, sex alone actually means very little.
STORGE
Familiar. Kinship. Natural.
We learn the most about this kind of love by looking at its opposite – astorgos. By understanding what and who we do not want to become.
Stubborn. Unmerciful. Covenant-breakers. Despisers of good. Incapable of or refusing to show love. Without understanding. Lacking affection. Inhuman.
There are not love. And they are certainly not the characteristics of a healthy family.
Storge is the love between family members.
It is mutual and attentive and affectionate, characterized by reciprocal tenderness. There is a genuine respect and care and trust and concern embedded in this love. It upholds the dignity and personhood of each family member, deeply devoted to their shared intimacy.
“Family” typically brings to mind our blood relations – those we are biologically linked to. For many of us, we think of our nuclear household. Many others wonder about their family, contemplating their origins. For almost everyone, “family” come with mixed emotions.
Storge is not exclusive to those with a wonderful family dynamic, though.
No, storge is for those who have a shared and cherished relationship.
Jesus made it explicitly clear in Matthew 12 that the Godly definition of “family” is people united in Him, pouring out agape love on one another, and purposely being a blessing to all. Jesus flipped “family” on its head when He severed that label from the nuclear unit and blood relations.
Choose your family.
Who checks-in, just because? Who shows up where others refuse? Who is doing the hard work to love you well? That is your family. That is where storge lives.
Don’t limit this love by your familial experience.
Instead, define “family” the way God does and use storge as a standard.
LUDUS
Playful. Teasing. Flirty.
This Greek word literally translates to “game.”
Ludus is the love of a fling – casual, sexual, and exciting with zero obligations. Uncommitted, this is the language of modern-day hook-up culture, one night stands, booty calls, sex-with-no-strings-attached relationships, and casual dating pairs.
The hunt for attention and the chase for love is the game of ludus. With the desire to conquer, ludus keeps score and the more partners the better. Toying with emotion, ludus does not reveal its thoughts or feelings, especially when it means having an advantage over the other person. Wanting to have as much fun as possible, this love often doesn’t care who it hurts along the way.
At its extreme, ludus manipulates, has unhealthy attention-seeking behaviors, and becomes a sex addiction. It dehumanizes, objectifies, and destabilizes.
Often mistaken for a deeper and more stable form of love, ludus becomes messy, complicated, and damaging. Infidelity is the natural end to a romantic relationship rooted in this type of love.
HOWEVER.
When ludus fuses with other types of love, relationships flourish.
Friendships are fun. Marriage holds spontaneity. Laughter has a place in families. Longtime relationships are light-hearted, cheeky, and childlike. Each interaction with someone we love has the capacity for delight, exuberance, and an uninhibited natural quality.
Ludus needs other forms of love for depth and stability. Able to enrich relationships, ludus needs love outside of itself to sustain it. Sensitivity comes when this love is complemented by other loves.
Ludus needs to be intimately entangled with the other forms of love.
PHILIA
Affectionate. Intentional. Together.
We do not celebrate this type of love often enough or hard enough.
This is the love of friendship.
The fondness of best pals. The dedication that builds communities. This is neighborly love, brotherly love, and the love that leaves a person better at the end of the day.
Philia is what causes men to pound one another’s backs in greeting. It is why women hug one another fiercely. It shows up to help clean a home and build a swing set. It drives hither and yonder to deliver a meal, sit in coffee shop, knit in a hospital lobby, and exist in a living room. Philia is visible on football fields, around campfires, and at the local farmer’s market.
Deep friendship is necessary for a healthy love map, and love is not complete without intimate friendship. We were designed to reach out for fellowship and platonic intimacy.
Philia loves on purpose. It desires to pull lives together, reminding those who receive it of their value and worth. Willing to be inconvenienced, it pursues a deep knowing of those it considers and calls “friends.”
Bailey Hurley is a blogger, writer, and friendship coach. Her book, Together is a Beautiful Place to Be, is a stunning depiction of how friendship fits into our lives.
She shows how philia goes outside of ourselves and sees other people. It seeks opportunities to love and to love tangibly. It links arms with the friend and chooses to walk arm-in-arm through life together.
Oftentimes, we are drawn to those displaying philia love. The one who is encouraging, kind, and authentic. They want the best for us, and their orbit is warm, inviting, and inclusive. They shower us in compassion, and we find ourselves emboldened to show up as our best and most genuine self.
We need philia to thrive.
And in fact, it is philia that enables us to show agape to others (2 Peter 1:5-7).
PRAGMA
Enduring. Mature. Patient.
This is the love of time.
It is mellow and soft and sweet and well-matured. It is gentle with compassion, and it is a love developed through time and with age. Relaxed, at ease, and genial, pragma desires relational growth.
This is a familiarity cultivated through the many seasons. Borne from compromise, settling disputes, finding new normals, establishing and re-establishing balance, making mistakes, and engaging in reconciliation, pragma is what happens when there are equal efforts to love someone else better.
It is pragma on display when classmates embrace at their 50-year high school reunion. It is lifelong pen pals, book clubs, bowling leagues, knitting groups, and the couple holding hands after 60 years of marriage. The regular group of retired men eating breakfast at the local greasy spoon and the college friend group that meets up once a year, no matter where they are located exemplify this love.
Pragma more than survives the years – it blossoms through them.
Suffering, tension, adversity, and difficulty only serve to strengthen and refine pragma. Patience and resilience and stability grow as the relationship traverses time and circumstances.
While it may seem impossible for a relationship to last long enough for pragma to develop, persevere.
Find your family.
Offer philia.
Grow in agape.
Pragma will come.
It is easy to feel excluded by celebrations of love.
Ludus alone is encouraged. Eros is exalted. Everything else is twisted, discouraged, or ignored. It is hollow, shortsighted, and narrow-minded.
See, we need every form of love in our life. The intertwined nature of all six loves is the beauty of love. And it is in this knotted formation we find Truth.
Love already holds space for us all.
No matter who we are or what season we find ourselves in, we have access to love. We are loved. We do love. We will continue to love.
Love does not exist in one form alone. Their co-existence is the fullness we long for. Living well and loving better requires a deep understanding of this wholeness of love.
We were designed to need multiple forms of love, specifically agape and philia and storge. These are the foundations, and nothing healthy can exist when these are lacking.
And in case you missed it, none of those loves requires sex, a partner, or romance.
You were designed for love, beloved. You were shaped to desire it. You were made for love, with love, and by love. You were fabricated with a love-sized hole in your heart.
Love is the most inclusive, impartial, universal emotion, and it is meant for you. To know, to feel, to experience. You are seen, you are known, and you are loved. Fully.
Today is February 14, Valentine’s Day. And you are loved. No qualification or relationship status needed.
You are deeply loved.
Go and celebrate love!
Note!
If you are seeking to learn more about love, these resources are a great place to begin!
Bailey T. Hurley’s Blog
The Bible
The MOPS Blog
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