Love: It's All Greek To Me

Mark and I met one night on a dating app. Neither of us was looking for a relationship, but here we are, together for nine years and married for five years. We have a solid, loving marriage now, but it wasn’t always that way. It was a long road to get here, and the lessons we have learned along the way taught us what true love is and is not.

Types of love

In English, we use the word ‘love’ as a coverall word. Sometimes, the true meaning or connotation is lost. Love is a bigger picture than one word. The Greek language, for instance, has seven different words used for love. (For more complete information, click here.)

Eros is romantic, passionate, lustful, and pleasurable love, much like we experience at the beginning of relationships.

Philia is a close, intimate friendship love.

Erotoropia, a flirtatious and playful type of love, is also common at the beginning of a relationship.

Storge is close, familial love. This love is unconditional and caring.

Philautia is self-love, not to be confused with selfishness.

Pragma is a committed, long-term companionship love. This is often what comes later in a relationship or marriage.

Agape is a universal love for all life, nature, and humanity, and it is an empathetic love.

Back to Mark and I

So, after that first night, Mark and I began dating. Our second date was canceled due to a stomach bug, but we got together again soon after that. We connected deeply because we had both been through some hardships, and we understood that about each other. He knew I was not out yet and never pressured me to come out, even when we became boyfriends. We had sleepovers and mostly just hung out together. We were playful and flirtatious. We were experiencing erotoropia. As our physical relationship grew and we spent more time together, we were experiencing eros. When I told Mark I was falling in love with him, eros was the type of love I was referring to.

Our relationship hit a wall. We weren’t growing as a couple, and things stayed the same. So what did we decide to do? Move in together. I needed a place for my kids and me to make a home. Mark had a big house with three extra rooms. In hindsight, neither one of us was ready for such a thing. Our relationship was only a few months old.

Nevertheless, we made it work. He was instrumental in turning his big old house into a home for my children and us. But living together brought out some of the baggage we were both carrying from previous relationships that were damaging and left long-lasting hurts. We weren’t ready to work through those feelings separately or together. We were both struggling with boundaries in and outside of our relationship. The erotoropia love we were feeling in the beginning had faded.

We continued to struggle for a couple of years. There were moments of storge love, especially with my chronic pain and bipolar disorder. One time, I was in the hospital for severe head pain—a ten out of ten on the pain scale. My blood pressure was very high, and my heart was racing. While waiting for pain meds, Mark got into the hospital bed with me to comfort me. And it worked. My blood pressure and heart rate both went down and after the pain meds, I was able to doze off for a bit.

Another time we had the storge type of love was when Mark had massive dental work done. I took care of him, made him all the soft foods he could have, and kept him on top of his pain meds.

That would be the way our relationship went for another couple of years. Moments of storge, eros, and erotoropia love, but not consistent. There was a time we got into an argument when I was in a very destructive manic episode. We fought, and I said vile, mean, and even hateful things to him. To this day, I still feel heartbroken that I said those things to him. I checked myself into the hospital to break that mania. That was one of the worst manic episodes I have ever had.

Mark asked me to marry him in August with a beautiful proposal, and I said yes. We were married the following December in a beautiful wedding in a country church.

Wedded bliss didn’t last long. Boundaries outside of our marriage were once again broken, and I left. We separated for a month to give us enough time to get our mental state straight and decide if we truly wanted to be together and make it work. We learned some things about ourselves and each other throughout that separation. The biggest thing we learned was that we do love each other, albeit a broken love, and we wanted to make it work.

I came home after a month, and the following month, the Covid lockdowns started. COVID-19 lockdowns saved our marriage.

Pragma Love

When you spend much time with someone in the same space, you get to know them completely. Mark and I were in isolation the entire time due to him being an essential worker, me being high risk, and my mother being high risk. He came home from work every day and decontaminated himself. (This was at the beginning of the pandemic when we didn’t know much about it.) We would eat dinner together and then sit in silence on our phones. We decided to get a couple of puzzles to do together. Something was changing in our relationship, and it was palpable. We actually started to talk to each other. We talked about our relationship, the news, and his workday. Our eros love was growing again as well. What else is there to do in quarantine?

Over the next couple of years, we worked on our relationship. We continued to learn about each other. We forgave each other for the past. Boundaries in and outside of the marriage were clearly communicated and agreed upon. Mark did research and understood more about bipolar disorder. I communicated when I was going through a cycle. It got to the point, and even now, Mark will see many times that I am struggling before I do. I encouraged him in his job. He encouraged me with my writing. Pragma love had taken hold, and we were obviously better together.

These days, we have a good balance of eros, storge, and pragma love in our relationship. Our marriage is strong and on sound footing now. We are just better together.

Hopefully, this article articulates the different types of love according to the Greek words, and the reader can see how each type plays out in their own relationships.

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