No one understood love better than the ancient Greeks. They recognized 8 different types of love and gave each type its own word. All of us experience each one of these types of love.
Let’s look at each type…
1. Eros: Erotic love
This is passionate or sexual love and our modern definition of romantic love. However, this kind of love can quickly burn away, needing to be rekindled by deeper forms of love.
This type of love is powerful and can be over-indulged in, leading to impulsiveness, abuse, acts that break the hearts of others, infatuation, and the selfish pursuit of physical pleasure.
2. Philia: Affectionate love, friendship
This is the love of friendship, void of sexual attraction. It promotes loyalty, camaraderie and self-sacrifice for the group. It is a love between equals.
3. Storge: Familiar love
This is a love of familiarity, or the love between kinship and family. It’s the love between children and parents. It also occurs between childhood friends who maintain that love throughout adulthood.
However, this type of love can become an obstacle when members of these clans or groups begin to develop different ideals.
4. Agape: Selfless, unconditional, spiritual love
This is the purest form of love. This is an unconditional love, or love from or for God, or what Buddhists call “universal loving kindness.” It is love with an absence of expectations or desires, a forgiving love that transcends all flaws and shortcomings.
5. Ludus: Playful love
This is the type of love that usually develops early on, when we are falling in love with someone. This is the type of love that helps sustain long-term relationships, keeping love interesting, exciting and alive.
6. Pragma: Enduring love
This is the type of love that develops over time between two people. This type of love develops harmony which transcends the casual or physical. It develops through the refined practice of patience, compromise and tolerance toward one another.
It can be between friends, family members or romantic couples. It is found within long-married couples and decades-long friendships.
7. Philautia: Self-love
This kind of love can be healthy or unhealthy. The healthy kind has positive self-esteem, while the unhealthy kind can be powered by egotism.
Healthy self-love promotes confidence, perseverance and resilience. It allows one to care for oneself in order to care for others.
8. Mania: Obsessive love
This is a negative type of love that occurs as a result of an imbalance between eros and ludus.
It comes from poor self-esteem, jealousy, possessiveness, neediness and codependency.
Source: http://tiny.cc/gfvjty
