Love as a craft: the journey from dream to hard reality

Source: When love turns from a gift into work

1. "Love is an activity, not a passive affect; it is a 'standing in,' not a 'falling for.' In the most general way, the active character of love can be described by stating that love is primarily giving, not receiving."

2. "Active love is a difficult and frightening matter compared to love in dreams. Love in dreams thirsts for immediate action, for rapid satisfaction... whereas active love is labor and self-mastery, and for certain people it is, perhaps, an entire science."

(1. Erich Fromm, *The Art of Loving*, 1956; 2. Image: Fyodor Dostoevsky, *The Brothers Karamazov*, Book 2, Chapter 4)

Explanation: The friction between dream and reality

Two intellectual giants, one a German-Jewish psychoanalyst and the other an Orthodox Russian novelist, arrive at the same conclusion: romantic love, as we expect it to be, can turn out to be an illusion. Fromm argues that love is a "craft" that requires study and practice, just like carpentry or medicine. Dostoevsky sharpens the distinction between fantasy ("love in dreams"), where everything happens quickly and dramatically, and reality ("active love"), which is Sisyphean, quiet labor, and at times difficult. For both, love is not just something you feel, but something that primarily demands practical effort.

Perspective: The culture of convenience against the art of loving

The modern world has taught us that every friction is a glitch: if the internet is slow, you switch providers; if delivery is delayed, you complain. Everything has to be fast, efficient, and convenient. Movies show a lot of falling in love, but very little love. We have brought this consumer mentality right into the heart. We expect love to be "smooth," flowing, and intuitive.

But Fromm and Dostoevsky remind us of the other side of the myth we saw in Plato: love is, by definition, friction. Active love is difficult because the other person is a subject with conflicting desires and constant discomfort. Choosing to love in a moment of passion requires nothing; doing so in a moment of boredom or forgetfulness does.

Going Deeper: Maimonides: love is knowledge, not blindness

Maimonides, in the Mishneh Torah (Laws of Repentance, chapter 10), provides surprising backing for the idea that love demands cognitive effort. He writes: "One does not love the Holy Blessed One except through the knowledge with which one knows Him... in proportion to the knowledge will be the love."

In other words: you cannot love what you do not know. Falling in love can be blind, but love has to have its eyes wide open. It requires da'at—knowledge, a deep, daily, detailed acquaintance with the object of love. As knowledge grows (of the flaws and virtues alike), love turns from a "passive affect" into a real act. It is no coincidence that the Book of Genesis uses the word da'at both in the context of wisdom (Genesis 2:17) and in the context of sexual relations (Genesis 4:1).

Culture: Love without filters: Haneke and the final act of care

The film Amour (2012), directed by Michael Haneke.

Unlike all the romance movies that end at the wedding ("and they lived happily ever after"), this film begins in the final moments before the curtain drops, at the end of life. Georges cares for his wife Anne after she suffers a stroke, following a suicide attempt of hers. There are no violins playing in the background here, just the oppressive silence of changing bedsheets, feeding, and physical decline. Haneke presents Dostoevsky's "active love" at the height of its power: it is not pretty, it is painful, but it is the noblest thing a human being can do for another. In the end, in a modern European atmosphere, Georges suffocates Anne—a killing that, in his eyes, is an expression of love.