A social columnist has revived the adage that ” love lasts 3 years », Already seen in the mythical story of Tristan, Iseut and their love potion. Author Denis Moreau agrees that passion fades after a while: “ we descend more or less brutally from the little emotional cloud from the top of which we idealized the loved one “. But that is not the question ! Love should not be confused with passion, this “State of dazed bliss into which the transports of the beginning idyll sometimes plunge “. The individualization of society and the effortless pursuit of instant pleasure rather than the construction of lasting pleasure, have led to the assertion that it is normal to dissolve a loving union that does not succeed, or no longer, in arousing this state. constant excitement.

Passion fades, it’s a reality. But this initial conflagration does not necessarily follow misery and desolation: ” love is modified, and can then be commuted into something other than passion, of which the relative lexical poverty of the French language in matters of love makes it difficult to describe ».

Today’s generation wanted to break with the hypocrisy they thought they saw in couples who stayed together by convention. But by wanting to give love back its authenticity, she freed herself from societal constraints and idealized the present moment. On this subject, the Jeammet spouses wonder: ” Is it enough to prioritize feelings and their intensity to bring a love story to life? “And if so, how” will wonder withstand intimacy ? Asks Finkielkraut in turn.

It seems that, now, it is no longer constraints or conventions that stand in the way of love, but love itself. This absolute of love, the only possible justification for existence, which weakens the true notion of love. The importance of the present moment has shifted “love” towards a “love of love”, which leaves behind the person whom one really claims to love.

One excess has replaced another. Today, we are no longer ready to sacrifice ourselves for the person we love, no longer able to completely renounce ourselves to see through the eyes of the other. Conversely, we believe that it is impossible to exist together in a couple, that we must always forget the other in order to flourish again. The fashion is to be “free from all attachment” in a world where loneliness and stress have never weighed so heavily… Anthropologist Maurice Godelier notes that “ the individualization of choices and the pursuit of individual success unconsciously or consciously motivate and shape the conduct of men and women “. The self-sufficient and never happy individual has become the norm… Will you be able to deviate from it? Not easy because the other must also move away from it, otherwise the specter of abandonment and betrayal, which fully participates in the phenomenon of absolute freedom, would quickly take shape …  

When abandonment occurs, how can one still believe in love? Should we see in Bruckner’s formula ” for the best, otherwise too bad ! », A recommendation? A path ? Today, the love code only knows the path of rupture, bitterness, resentment. If it is true that love inevitably induces the risks of frustration, suffering and displeasure; how to maintain the link with the other if one does not accept to take such risks? Why avoid this exceptional alliance project on the pretext that not everything is controllable? Why always contemplate the worst? It is only when we believe that something is possible that we do everything we can to make it possible … 

Still according to the philosopher Denis Moreau, there are three types of “love”:

—          L’Eros. It is love in its sensual and carnal dimension.

—          Agape. It is a love that is difficult to translate which corresponds to the “gift of oneself” to the other, to dedication and to self-sacrifice.

—          La philia. It is an accomplice, “marital” love, which refers to common memory, patience, availability, respect, esteem, frankness, confidence, sincerity, loyalty, to benevolence, generosity, indulgence, simultaneous and reciprocal.

The philosopher specifies that true love, the purest there is, would be the assembly of the three, ” far superior to each of its components ‘. ” The more time passes, the less I understand that we so commonly identify love with the sole fires, or excess, of its beginnings, and the more I am tempted to sing about the beauties, and the benefits, of peaceful love unfolding in the long duration of a common life He adds. Hence the interest in learning to love …