7 phrases by Erich Fromm about love

The legacy contained in Erich Fromm’s phrases about love continues to inspire us today. Because, if there is something we must admit, it is that loving is not always easy. It requires courage, it requires action, commitment and also a high sense of humility and responsibility. Few authors have taught us as much about the subject as Fromm himself.

The teacher, poet and peace activist, Thich Nhat Hahn, once said that loving without knowing how to love hurts the person we love. The most complicated thing about all this is that we often see this process as something passive. Falling in love represents for many the side effect of that crush where one is exhausted, almost paralyzed; there where there is no other option than to let ourselves go, to wait to be reciprocated, nourished and validated by the loved one, in an act lacking energy, creativity and reciprocity.

Loving intelligently and fully is the result of a deliberate act, a purpose that requires and at the same time demands seeking excellence. If we limit ourselves to letting ourselves go, to acting passively waiting for the other to say, the other to do, the other to guess and reciprocate, we will result in the most absolute frustration. This is what the social psychologist, psychoanalyst and German philosopher, Erich Fromm, taught us in his book “The Art of Loving”, and these are a series of phrases that summarize this unforgettable work to which it is always worth returning…

Erich Fromm quotes about love

“The Art of Loving” is not a separate work within the vast and interesting intellectual legacy that Erich Fromm left us. Actually, it is a continuation of another book, “The Fear of Freedom.” In the latter he had already addressed various aspects of human nature, and therefore he felt the need to delve deeper into that dimension that is so basic and essential for people, such as love.

Thus, if there is something that he sought above anything else, it was to teach us that love is an art, and that as such it requires an exquisite mastery of both theory and practice, because, and this is important to remember, love is the only answer to our existence, it is what gives us meaningwho also gives meaning to our society.

Let’s see below which are the phrases by Erich Fromm that best summarize these ideas.

1. Love is the active concern for the life and growth of what we love

If there is an interesting aspect in the book “The Art of Loving” it is the thesis that Most of us don’t know how to love. It may be a somewhat bleak idea, however, it is also good to remember the social context in which Fromm lived. After the end of the Second World War there was a great vacuum of values, an existential crisis that forced a large part of thinkers, philosophers and psychologists to reformulate many ideas.

Love was and is, therefore, that engine that should push us to be better. For it, We are obliged to actively work on our personality and personal growth, so that we satisfy self-love first, to then love the other fully. Something like this requires true humility, courage, faith and discipline.

2. Love is an activity, not a passive effect; It is a continuous being, not a sudden start

We pointed it out at the beginning. Being in love should not be a passive act, like someone who just lets himself go, without doing anything else. Quite the contrary, it is an act in whose delight there is a great amount of movement, will and exchange.

This is another of the most representative Erich Fromm phrases and where we are urged to leave aside that cloud in which we are installed to strengthen that relationship, to invest efforts, to go together hand in hand working on the same project and being daily creators of our own relationship.

3. Childhood love follows the principle: “I love because they love me.” Mature love…

One of Erich Fromm’s phrases that is not limited exclusively to the area of ​​emotional relationships. In reality, it has a lot to do with the way people relate to their own society: they do so more out of necessity or a feeling of lack than out of altruism, rather than out of an authentic love for their fellow human beings.

This way of loving, which is based on need, is for Fromm something pathological. It means not caring for or understanding us, it means expecting others to take responsibility for what we are not capable of providing and which, in reality, falls within our area of ​​responsibility.

4. If two people who have been strangers…

This is another of the most beautiful Erich Fromm phrases. It tells us about the privacy, that miracle that usually begins with attraction and is consummated with a deeper encounter that transcends the skin and sexuality itself. We talk about the emotional connection, the discovery of the other as a person in all their nuances, with their virtues, their defects, their essences…

We talk about the intimacy in which trust slipsthe touch that makes the hairs on your skin stand on end, or a relaxed and nostalgic conversation that sneaks through those holes in the sky, called stars.

5. Love is not essentially a relationship with a specific person

Something that Fromm wants us to understand in his work is that people see love as an object and not a faculty. Loving is not a dynamic that is limited to the relationship we establish with our partners, our parents or our children.

“To love” is to enrich our existence, it is an attitude capable of giving this world a meaning, a purpose capable of transforming society. However, As Fromm explains to us, in this modern culture we have commodified everything in our desire to satisfy our own needs.even love.

6. It is paradoxical that two beings become one and at the same time remain two

This is another of Erich Fromm’s best-known phrases and also one of the most thought-provoking. As we already know, a temptation that we often fall into is to dilute ourselves in the loved one, especially at the beginning of the relationship. It is an entropic process that ends one’s own identity, which consumes essences, freedoms and dignities.

We cannot forget that the authentic art of love consists of continuing to be ourselves, but involved in the same project. Being two in the same commitment, being two oriented towards the responsibility of facilitating one’s own growth and that of the couple…

7. There is a big difference between falling in love and staying in love

For Fromm there is a big difference between falling in love and staying in love. He thinks that if the relationship begins with sexual attraction and the act is consummated, the bond is somehow jeopardized.

Fromm explains to us in “The art of loving” that to develop a mature, wise and responsible love we need to work in four essential dimensions: care, responsibility, respect and knowledge. However, on many occasions, we find a love without intimacy based only on mere need, that which is consummated with the sexual act.

This is a love of consumption, of use and throw away. Where passion can appear, but also be easily clouded by mistrust and ignorance of the other. A love that never takes shape, before being recycled again.

For its part, who knows (and wants) to go beyond the initial sexual attraction and excitement, will try to create an authentic intimacy, he will try to be a craftsman to make falling in love a real lovea mature and brave love.

To conclude, in these phrases by Erich Fromm we have learned that love is not only an act of mastery, where practice and theory can be mastered. The art of loving is also formulated as an active and responsible attitude towards life and society itself. It is a transformative force that requires awareness and non-conformism, that cries out for creativity and not passivity.

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