Five Tips For Relationship Happiness From Existential Philosophers

"I believe that these fundamentals aren't just interesting and insightful but they can also be used as the bedrock and guide book to having good relationships even in todays present modern world as well as in the future tomorrows."        -   Susan

IMAGE: LOVE: BEING CLOSER THAN EVER, OR YOUR HEAD IN THE SAND? (PHOTO: JOE GELONESI)

Five Tips For Relationship Happiness From Existential Philosophers

In the western world, lovers are free from arranged marriages. Yet all too often we bring chains to relationships in the form of misplaced expectations and ideals. Skye Cleary, the author of Existentialism and Romantic Love reaches for her existential classics for help, with five philosophical tips for a happy love life.

Max Stirner, Søren Kierkegaard, Friedrich Nietzsche, Jean-Paul Sartre, and Simone de Beauvoir all dealt with love and existential themes, but they all had different ideas about romantic love. Yet they all loved loving and sought to explore the sources of frustrations in romantic relationships and how relationships could be more meaningful.  Below are five key existential messages for 21st century lovers. 

The best love relationships are those where lovers are free and equal

Too often, lovers use relationships as an escape from the world, according to Simone de Beauvoir. The feeling of security is comforting, but it becomes problematic when lovers make the relationship the only source of meaning in their lives. This is a risky way to be in a relationship because love that lasts a lifetime is the exception, not the rule. 

Relationships would be better if lovers were stronger-willed, mastered their passions, and were better friends.

SKYE CLEARY, AUTHOR

Instead, de Beauvoir advised lovers not to become so dependent on one another that they can’t exist without each other. Relationships are more interesting and stronger if both lovers pursue rich and diversified lives through their authentic projects. Ideally, adopting common goals shifts lovers’ focus onto something other than themselves, enhancing their understandings of one another.

The best love relationships are those that are free and intimate

De Beauvoir’s lifelong boyfriend Jean-Paul Sartre thought that in order to know ourselves we need to know what other people think of us. Lovers are especially important because the more one cares about another, the more the other’s views matter. The more intimate lovers are, the deeper insights they give each other. Yet lovers can’t know if the other is telling the truth, so they try to capture each other’s freedom to force the truth.  This leads to sadomasochistic power games that can’t be won—we can’t possess another’s freedom. This, Sartre thought, is why love is really conflict. 

Later Sartre said that an authentic love would not try to rob the other of their freedom. Sartre and de Beauvoir attempted this by giving each other the freedom to fall in love with other people. Although their other lovers knew about the agreement, they were hurt when they realised that their love wouldn’t conquer all. It’s possible to view Sartre and de Beauvoir’s commitment to each another and Sartre’s financial and emotional support of many ex-girlfriends as contradicting their freedom. Sartre explained it philosophically as freely choosing his priorities, and practically as preferring ‘to be a fool than a jerk’.  De Beauvoir said that it was his ‘guilty conscience’. 

The best love relationships are based on friendship

Life shouldn’t be comfortable; it should be about challenging ourselves to be better people. Friedrich Nietzsche referred to this as striving towards the ideal of the Übermensch. The problem with love is that it all too often manifests as an egoistic desire for power over another and selfishly seeking to be the centre of each other’s attention. Love distracts—or even worse, actively prevents—lovers from achieving great things. Nietzsche described lovers as becoming like dragons guarding treasure or cooping each other up like exotic birds in a cage. 

Relationships would be better if lovers were stronger-willed, mastered their passions, and were better friends. Then, lovers could focus their energy on concurrent flourishing and supporting each other’s goals instead of holding each other down with petty power games.

The best love relationships are romantic and secure

Romantic loving is beautiful, extraordinary, and intoxicating—the problem is that it tends to be fleeting. Søren Kierkegaard sought to make love secure and lift it out of the realm of lusty, unrestrained and empty hedonism. Relationships would be deeper and more meaningful if lovers would stop letting themselves be pushed around by their animal instincts. He thought that lovers could turn relationships into something more stable and enduring by owning themselves and making commitments. So he recommended that lovers choose despair and marry. 

Nevertheless, Kierkegaard also recognised that marriage is no more secure than romance and risks a boredom ‘worse than death’. This is why he eventually appealed to religious love, that is, to love independently of the object of affection (which isn’t very romantic).

The best love relationships recognise that love is egoistic

Love is a sweet and enjoyable experience that makes life richer. Max Stirner thought lovers should be honest with themselves and realise that love is egoistic because when we love, we actually love loving. While we should relish the frivolity of romance, Stirner thought it a crime to become a slave to love or a lover. There’s no surer way to kill such a beautiful experience than to weigh it down with duties and sacrifices, so he advised not to turn love into an obligation, as Kierkegaard recommended. 

Instead of subordinating themselves to external pressures to be in a relationship, get married, and procreate (or risk eternal loneliness, as Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote in the US Supreme Court opinion on gay marriage recently), Stirner advocated owning and loving ourselves. This means that lovers create relationships that work for them. He thought the best relationships are where lovers become stronger through their union and achieve more than they could have alone.

The existential philosophers proposed that falling in love throws existence into a new light and opens up new dimensions of possibilities and experiences. They suggest that best relationships are likely to be ones where lovers throw themselves wholeheartedly into romantic loving, but also master their passions, and are mature enough to allow each other the freedom to pursue their own goals and interests.

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The Power of Monogamy: 10 Surprising Claims Regarding Modern Love

Never underestimate the power of someone who has your back: It’s the message in Love Sense: The Revolutionary New Science of Romantic Relationships, the book by Ottawa clinical psychologist Dr. Sue Johnson, slated for release on Dec. 31.

Her thesis, based on decades of neuroscience research into human emotion, is that just like the bond parents have with their offspring, monogamous love makes sense as a survival code.

“We’ve understood so much about the power of adult love relationships, how this emotional bond creates a safe haven for us in life, allows us to grow and function on an optimal level, as well as how emotional isolation and disconnection are extremely costly to us as a species,” Johnson said. (Johnson is a psychology professor at the University of Ottawa and founder of the not-for-profit organization the International Centre for Excellence in Emotionally Focused Therapy, which trains mental-health professionals – not to be confused with Toronto’s vibrator-waving sex educator Sue Johanson.)

Monogamy, she says, makes sense, and yet “there are so many forces pulling us away of being aware of relationships.” Among them are porn, a robust friends-with-benefits culture and attention-splicing technology, she says. Just as parenting has undergone a radical shift over just several generations, Johnson is hoping for an overhaul in the way North Americans think about love.

“In the last 40 years we’ve really started to understand exactly how much impact a parent can have on a child’s development,” she said. “The revolution that we went through in parenting, we have to go through it with romantic relationships.”

The Globe asked the author about 10 of her more surprising claims regarding modern love.

Our culture exalts independence even though it’s not natural

“We are supposed to live in a rich social environment, and part of it is long-term bonds with special people. It sometimes feels like modern society is just determined to forget this,” said Johnson, referring to the high rates of solo dwellers in North America. (Census figures released last fall showed that 27.6 per cent of Canadian homes have just one occupant, a massive shift from decades past.) “We don’t live in little villages any more. People now often depend on romantic love as their main source of social support.”

Romantic love is a bonding attachment like that of a mother and child’s

“We are not wired to face the perils and uncertainties of life by ourselves. Our brains are designed to use the people we love as physiological and emotional safety cues to make the world a safer place. What our society does with that is, as children we have parents, and then we have life partners as we get older. These are the bonds that we count on,” explained Johnson. “In that sense we never grow up.”

Emotional dependency is healthy, not ‘clingy’ and pathological

“Secure attachment – having one other person you can count on as an adult – is related to almost every index of good functioning, happiness and health,” says Johnson. She cites the physical and mental-health implications of social isolation and loneliness, from increased risk of anxiety, strokes and heart attacks to elevated heart rate and increased levels of the stress hormone cortisol, which impacts the immune system. “Having no one to confide in at all literally is going to stress your body out all to hell.” The caveat: “You don’t have to be glued to each other, that’s not healthy, but you have to be available.”

People are at their best when coupled up, not isolated

“It’s been shown in research but we know in our gut that with somebody valuing us, loving us, listening to us and supporting us, we are the best we can be then,” said the author. “We take risks, believe in ourselves and deal with problems better. If you’re securely connected you’re more assertive, more trusting, confiding … you’re better at dealing with ambiguity.”

Secure relationships breed independence

Beyond health, the benefits of monogamy extend to “emotional balance,” says Johnson. “The safer our relationships are, ironically, the more independent we can be. Closeness and independence are two sides of the same coin. They’re not opposed.”

Attachment styles can change, depending on their partner

“Yes, people can change,” says the psychologist. The thinking used to be that we receive a relationship template from our parents, a model we would then use our whole lives. Newer research suggests “we’re adaptable animals,” says Johnson. “If we have new experiences and we’re open to them, we can change our template.”

The novelty of open relationships is ‘overrated’

Friends-with-benefits relationships don’t “make sense” as a survival code, says Johnson. The trouble with polyamorous arrangements, she says, is they don’t fulfill the physiological bonding needs people have for “someone in the universe to depend on, who we come first with.”

Porn is a bad teacher

“People who don’t trust other people are into performance and sensation. The trouble with that is it’s endless: You need more and more performance and sensation because you’re emotionally numb,” said Johnson. “What we’re creating in our society is this empty, formulaic, going-through-the-motions sexuality. Porn is a lesson in how to be a really bad lover.”

Monogamy yields the best sex

“The people who have the best sex, enjoy it the most and have sex most often are people in long-term committed relationships,” says the author, citing the survey research of University of Chicago sociologist Edward Laumann, who found that monogamous couples were the cohort having the most sex, and so also the happiest with their sex lives.

Technology erodes our relationships

“Look at couples courting on dates: They’re on their little screens almost half of the time,” says Johnson. She argues that technology should be used as a tool, not a replacement for more intentional relationships. “What you don’t use you lose. Face-to-face conversation is an essential in human life. It’s not an incidental.”

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