What is the meaning of a love relationship when it is defined through the lens of classic literature? For example, is it even possible to define a love relationship, or is the combination of love and relationship so convoluted that it defies intellectual interpretation? How can we test a given relationship to determine if it is a LOVE relationship? Would we include the added difficulties of a long distance relationship in our working definition of love relationship? Would this include relationship counseling couples or those who have marriage problems? Perhaps the turning point would be exemplified by couples who seek breakup advice. Language analyst like Wittgenstein would revel in these problems. Two basic problems: what is love and what is a relationship, and how do these two terms equal the elusive love relationship? The bard—Shakespeare—writes in a famous sonnet that love is not love which alters when it alteration finds. So in this case constancy is the chief factor that determines true love. But then John Donne praises inconstancy in many of his love poems. True, he does so tongue and cheek. What about Ernest Hemingway? In his work, romantic love, lust and passion get mixed in different proportions. The obligations of pregnancy, adultery and violence clouds any simple definition of love, and in the case of William Faulkner’s narratives there is the addition of guilt derived from miscegenation, generational insanity, and many kinds of love possible. Some psychologists speculate there are as many types of love as types of individuals.

Traditionally, there are three basic types of love relationship: Eros, Felicitas and Agape. We have looked at Eros in our discussion of Faulkner and Hemingway. This is earth bound love, with warts and all. The love between brothers is shown in Herman Hesse’s Narcissus and Goldman. Narcissus is a philosopher and Goldman is an artist. Together they complement one another. This pattern also emerges in Fedor Dostoyevsky’s Brothers Karamazov. The brothers support one another and they are accepting of their differences, but what about love relationship known as agape? What kind of love is that? Dante said in The Divine Comedy that heaven rendered a light that was like two suns. This is a symbol of divine love. Light also is a central symbol of God in John Milton’s Paradise Lost. This is universal love, the love of life and being itself. Aldous Huxley analyzed the question of why precious stones were precious. He said it was because of the light that was emitted from them. He pointed out that in cultures where diamonds were scarce glass would be used as a substitute. In this domain, there will be no need for breakup advice, divorce help or marriage problems (in heaven they neither marry nor are given in marriage). There will be no concern for the cheating spouse, nor any need for a long distance relationship. There will be no need for relationship counseling. But then perhaps all the talk about what poets think love is does not make much sense on the purely physiological level. What if what we call love is a throwback to Chaucer’s age and we consult Walter Clyde Currie’s Chaucer and the medieval sciences? Then all we have are sanguine, choleric and phlegmatic type characters. Who is to say that their science was less useful than all the current chatter about serotonin and reuptake psychotropic drug therapy when it comes to the issues surrounding a love relationship?

In modern science, love is only a chemical state of consciousness that can be altered at will by taking Abilify or other psychoactive anti-depressant. So should one eat more chocolate to simulate a love relationship? With chocolate you are probably on safer ground than Abilify This drug given to control depression can cause suicidal thoughts; some of these drugs can cause cancer. And now Tylenol ads tell us simply to feel better. In the case of Cymbalta, you may turn yellow, have suicidal thoughts and nourish a cancer. Can medieval medicine top this? Here is the kicker: modern psychoactive medications are associated, if not compatible, with breakup advice, long distance relationships, divorce help, cheating spouse’s marriage problems and relationship counseling. We begin to see how difficult it is to define love, but I predict we will have no better luck with the word “relationship,” which is usually stressed in organic philosophy of the sort that Stephen Pepper develops in his World Hypotheses. This view looks at how integrated the parts are in relation to the whole, and this goes for learning and love and the world itself. In education, we refer to teaching to the whole child. The view of truth here is cumulative. In this view we speak of its elements fitting appropriately, all the while we are integrating our experiences, and this may lead to a better understanding of the love relationship.