Praise of Loyalty

Is it possible to promise someone eternal love and unconditional fidelity? This is one of the questions that philosophers especially worry about. But it is also a question that each of us asks himself. What can I say to the one I love? That loyalty is not of this world? That I really can’t promise him anything? Such was the conviction of Friedrich Nietzsche. He believed that we can always promise to do something, but we can never promise to feel something, since feelings «do not obey our will.» That is why «he who promises to love another forever or be faithful to him forever, promises what is not in his power.»

And then what? Should I give up the idea of ​​promising any form of fidelity to the one I love? In fact, while I can’t promise someone that I will always love them, I can promise to always be «authentic» to them. This promise of authenticity sealed the pact of fidelity that Julia made with her beau in Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s Le Nouvelle Eloise. This contract does not bind the heart with this word, because then there would be a risk that the heart would be out of tune with itself. But binds love with the promise of «frankness». “There, my loyal subject, kneeling before the lady of your heart and your mistress, holding hands with her in the presence of her chancellor, you will give her an oath of allegiance and impeccable devotion.

This is not an oath of eternal love — after all, no one has the power to either keep or transgress such an obligation — but in indestructible truthfulness, sincerity, frankness. You will not swear eternal allegiance to her, but only undertake not to commit treacherous acts and, at least, to declare war before you overthrow the yoke.¹. This treaty seems to me eminently just. He suggests that true love obliges me to talk about the changes in feeling that occur during my life. The only true betrayal in love is to keep insisting that nothing has changed when everything has changed. That’s what love seems to me the main thing. I have to stay authentic.

Because everyone has to make sure: there is no such love that does not know doubts and misunderstandings. I can’t hope that I can live and love without changing. To say otherwise is not to understand that my relationship with my partner is evolving and this evolution allows me not to miss life. Believing that we can always rely blindly on a partner, we bring falseness into the relationship game. Psychoanalyst Daniel Sibony explains it this way: “If you can completely rely on the other, it means that you yourself no longer exist or that he prevaricates, portraying that he is still alive, while something in him has already frozen. «.

Of course, when we are in love, we think that we will love forever, and consider following this love as a kind of «sacred duty.» When we love, we in our hearts consider ourselves obliged to bear responsibility, to take oaths. If only because love is often embodied in a plan of creation, the implementation of which takes time. But vouching that feelings will be eternal, and giving vows, we not only reveal ignorance of the nature of human feelings, but also reduce love to fidelity to a given word. What kind of fidelity are we talking about then?

When I talk about love, I always talk about diversity and tolerance. To love is first of all to accept our differences. The fact that the other person is really “different” does not match my expectations. And immediately discover that I myself am different from my ideas about myself. I’m less attentive, more selfish. Thus, everything that we allegedly did not know about ourselves and about others is revealed. If love were only the result of idealization, it would not survive the collision with reality. She would have vanished as soon as the masks fell off. She would have shattered at that moment against the banality of the real world. Of course, this discovery may not be to your liking. Otherness is always synonymous with alienation, this discrepancy not only with what a partner should be (in accordance with our desires), but also with who we ourselves are.

But it is the recognition of differences that will then give everyone the freedom to be themselves, when a partner does not require us to change, become different, or make an effort to earn his love. This is the promise of love: I promise you that I will not require you to be «different»; I promise that I will accept you for who you are, even if you are “imperfect”. Recognition of the other is at the heart of the promise of love and fidelity. Recognition that will allow us to no longer be torn between the desire to protect ourselves from a partner, trying to meet his expectations, and the desire to completely trust him and surrender.

“Something is missing in me, and this lack worries me,” Camille Claudel wrote in a letter to Rodin, perfectly expressing one of our characteristic human properties. But only from the moment I accept this lack can I begin to build a loving relationship. That is why the promise of love can be described as a «silent promise» that is open to the future but does not claim to define it. Therefore, it is given implicitly, and sometimes completely indistinguishable. It is generated by intimacy, the achievement of which required effort. The promise of love does not arise in a frozen and static relationship, but rather where the presence for each other is the result of movement — towards oneself and towards a partner.

The promise of love is fragile because it is not protected from disappointment; it feeds on both presence and absence: the near and the far are intertwined in it. It is based on our choice of loving presence, which we re-make every day. Presence, perhaps imperfect and always incomplete. But this closeness, when needed, will allow two human beings to find each other again, again and again. Such a promise of love takes into account the shortcomings and weaknesses of each. Such a promise of love finally gives up the pursuit of perfection. Even if the reason for this is that, as the philosopher Georg Simmel said, we give ourselves completely to another when we realize that we can never give ourselves completely to ourselves.

¹ J.-J. Rousseau «Julia, or New Eloise» (Fiction, 1968).