See Them as They Are, Not as You Want Them To Be — The Art of Loving Series (5/6)
So far in this series, I’ve covered two of Eric Fromm’s four elements needed for the mastery of the art of love: care and responsibility. As I noted in the responsibility article, while the ability and want to respond to the needs of the other person should come from within, if it is not tempered, it can become controlling. Something else is need to help with this.
In this article, I’ll be talking about this tempering element, which the third element needed for the art of love’s mastery — respect.
What is Respect?
This concept of respect isn’t what you might think of, at least in the usual societal definition of it, wherein respect is based on fear of someone or being in awe of the status of someone or something.
Instead, this respect, as Fromm argues, is based on the ability to see a person as they are. It harkens back to the word’s origin in Latin: the verb infinitive respicere — to gaze at. Essentially, the word’s meaning, in this sense, is that you’re able to see a person as they are — to see and understand what makes them unique.
It doesn’t stop there, though. It also implies an active concern for a person to grow and unfold as they are. To discover and grow into themselves. This means that if you say that you love someone, you want them to grow as they are for their sake, not just for the sake of the relationship or being with you.
Respect is Freedom
It’s here you’ll be able to see an important aspect of respect — it’s free of exploitation. When you love a person, you feel unified with them as they are, not as you need them to be, as if they were some kind of object.
Too, it’s here that you have to realize that this aspect of love requires work on our part. This element of love denotes a form of independence and freedom: the freedom to be ourselves and not have to mask up. Because of this, attaining this element requires us to be independent and achieve freedom ourselves — I have to be able to walk on my own without the crutches of a relationship or another person.
I think this is the concept that people, in a way, are trying to express when they say that “if you can’t be happy by yourself, you can’t be happy in a relationship.”
If you can’t be happy by yourself, then over time, you’ll subconsciously start using your partner as an object to gain something from, rather than viewing them as a person with whom you’re journeying through life.
Not only, then, are you no longer inwardly free, but you’ve now become a slave to the relationship, where the actions of the other person now determine how you feel on the inside. [For more insight on this topic, consider reading through my Enchiridion breakdown series at On The Stoa publication]
We Have to Be Seen
I think, though, that there’s another aspect of respect that’s needed when it comes to the art of loving. You have to allow yourself to be vulnerable enough to let your partner see you for who you are — the good and bad — so they learn who you are and help you grow into yourself and who you want to be.
Don’t sacrifice your unique self because you think it’ll keep the relationship going. When you’re truly free and can stand on your own, you won’t feel the need to sacrifice who you are to keep a relationship — that may or may not be good for you — going. If the relationship doesn’t work out, then so be it. It probably wasn’t going to work out in the long term anyway.
If it does work out, though, then your partner will be able to understand you for who you are, and as a result, can truly accept and love you. It’s okay to be you and stand out.
By being free and having achieved this independence, not only can you truly respect someone, but you can also build up your responsibility in the art of love, gearing yourself to having the ability to respond to the needs of another. I mean, how can someone provide for another if they cannot provide for themselves?
Love is respect, respect is love, and too is it freedom. If there there is no respect, there can be no freedom. If there is neither respect nor freedom, there can be no love. As Erich Fromm writes in The Art of Loving,
[r]espect exists only on the basis of freedom: ‘l’amour est l’enfant de la liberté’ as an old French song says; love is the child of freedom, never that of domination (Fromm, p. 28).
If you are interested in reading the Art of Love, click the link below and gain access to the free PDF.
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