Don't Divorce Eros From Agape in Your Relationship

You are probably familiar with the fiery and passionate love from the iconic 16th century play, Romeo and Juliet.

This timeless duo of two young lovers has become the epitome of the type of love nearly synonymous with romantic love: Eros. It is the type of love that desires to possess the object of its affection and says, “love is a feeling.”

Like every human relationship between man and woman, we find that Agape disagrees. “No, love is a choice,” it says. Agape is the type of love espoused in the Christian worldview and is associated quite often with marriage and self-sacrifice. So begins a disagreement which, left unresolved, leads to the divorce of two great loves.

It comes as no great surprise that, just as romanticism has divorced itself from Eros’ companionate love Agape, our Christian worldview is in danger of forgetting the wife of its youth. We often hear the Christian worldview counter our modern culture with the saying, “Love is a choice, not a feeling.” But it would be inaccurate for us to forget that God’s plan for love is not exclusive to one type alone.

God desires His people.

The Bible is replete with examples of how God shows his love for us. In the Old Testament, God delivers the Israelites from Babylonian exile even after they had turned their back on Him repeatedly.

Despite Israel’s sin against Him, He still desired His people. “Because you are precious in my eyes and honored, and I love you, I give people in return for you and nations in exchange for your life.” (Isaiah 43:4) Kind of sounds like something straight out of Shakespearean romantic literature, doesn’t it?

Of course our feelings, especially those in romantic relationships, can become intoxicated with sin. You don’t need to look much further than the love portrayed in movies and yes, even Romeo and Juliet, to see what that looks like.

In God’s plan for love, the feeling or desire to possess our beloved inspires its companion: willing the good of the other.

The feeling without the choice won’t endure.

But just as we so often forget that love can’t bloom on the choice alone, our romantic culture has committed a serious infidelity by divorcing itself from Agape.

Just how many movies could become a blockbuster hit by showcasing a couple that didn’t fight too much or made wise decisions about faith and values? But this is exactly the type of love that the Church has always propagated for, "marriage helps to overcome self-absorption, egoism, pursuit of one's own pleasure, and to open oneself to the other, to mutual aid and to self-giving.” (CCC 1609)

Eros and Agape: It’s time for reconciliation

There is both beauty and truth to the reconciliation between the desire of Eros and the reason of Agape. St. John Chrysostom praises the divine nature we see between these two types of love. “This love (eros) is deeply planted in our inmost being. Unnoticed by us, it attracts the bodies of men and women to each other.”

Not only does he praise eros, but the selfless nature of agape in speaking about husband and wife. “Suffer anything for her sake, but never disgrace her, for Christ never did this with the Church.”

It’s perfectly understandable why we so often hear that, “Love is a choice, not a feeling.” Our individualistic society has become so accustomed to gratifying its desires that it has forgotten the other half of love. But in the Christian counterculture, we forget that the “other side” has merely taken a truth about human nature and run away with it.

So perhaps its time to reconcile the two. Love is not just a feeling. Love marries choice and feeling.