LOVE… WHAT KIND?

When someone you love is hurting and you are partly to blame for that hurt, what do you do? When being around them makes them hurt more but all you want to do is take away the pain, what do you do? When you can’t do what they ask you to do to take the pain away, what do you do? When they have made a decision to bare the pain alone, what do you do? How do you make someone you love see that doing it alone is not the best option? How do you make them see that what they are asking of you is not the right thing? How do you tell them you’ll always love them and make them believe you?

Love is a strange thing. Infuriating, wonderful, awe-inspiring and lethal. The Ancient Greeks had 4 different words for love: agape, eros, philia, and storgē.


• Agape: general affection, feeling of being content or holding one in high regard

• Eros: passionate love, with sensual desire and longing

• Philia: friendship, loyalty to friends, family, and community

• Storgē: natural affection, like that felt by parents for offspring

I think there should be more. More to describe situations where there is pain involved or situations where there is joy. Situations where there is surprise or situations where you need to say ‘love’ but differentiated depending on your relationship with that individual. I wish there was a way to describe the changes in love. How situations have caused that change, but by no means diminished it’s power. How you can feel one love for a person one day; and another form of love for that same person another day.

Love is not enough. It is often not enough to see a relationship through it’s ups and down, and the word itself just does not do emotions justice in difficult situations.

Love is a strange thing. Infuriating, wonderful, awe-inspiring and lethal.