The famous segregation between the romantic love and the love that is exercised with people whom we are encouraged to call “just friends”, pertain to the exclusivity of the first—monogamous romanticism as previously discussed, a concept which I happen to find vapid, repugnant and contradictory to human nature. I would agree perhaps on love having degrees, different in intensity, but not so different in its origins eventually.

This unexplained historical struggle in trying to segregate these types of affection, has found its difficulty in all love being a purely subjective experience:

“The bonds between ourselves and another person exists only in our minds. Memory as it grows fainter loosens them, and notwithstanding the illusion by which we want to be duped and which, out of love, friendship, politeness, deference, duty, we dupe other people, we exist alone. Man is the creature who cannot escape from himself, who knows other people only in himself, and when he asserts the contrary, he is lying.” __Marcel Proust.

Again, serving self-interest (as demonstrated in the Proustian quote) can be interpreted—not necessarily in a given certainty, as the main hidden and less flattering motive for all types of human networking, which can cancel the existence of an absolute selfless love.

Proust offered a good illustration for the problem of solipsism “The bonds between ourselves and another person exists only in our minds.” Basically, love (regardless of its forms) does not exist—independently and on its own conditions, outside our minds. And it is again an interpretation of love in his novel: love was portrayed always, as one’s projection of the idea of love, a delusion that one is experiencing a set of feelings which allowed him to affiliate to that universal thing called romantic love, and thus it was a motive for him to seek love as a way to enclose his search for aestheticism or more broadly, meaning. Love did not eschew to ego-centricism as well, that feeling of ‘finding love’, the affiliation or the belonging to that ‘superior’ universal realm of lovers, did not cancel that the hero would have felt his experience to be more unique or superior to his peers who are also in love.

Aristotle has described Eros as the type of love that is experienced with sexual partners, Philia as the type of love that exempts sexual feelings, for friends. The historical conundrum of separating Eros from Philia—for the two can intersect, has lead—for the sake of an unstudious simplicity— to require the presence of sexual activity or the lack of thereof as the ground parameter to form its distinction. Eros then, is a prerequisical love; it requires sexual intercourse, if one is ‘in Eros love’ with someone who does not reciprocate (perpetually) those sexual feelings, then it is not romantic love, “It’s a disaster”, Alain de Botton christened. A creed that Romantics have also adopted.

As suspected, the common cross-gendered phrase “just friends” is an honest euphemism for “this intercourse does not extend to sexual practice”. And it is met socially by a belittlement to the unconstrained realm of Philia. However, human interactions are far more entangled, the polymorphism of the human feelings and its broad spectrum call for more than two strict categories ‘Eros and Philia’.

In Victorian age it appeared what it was called then ‘romantic friendship’, it was practiced mainly among women, although some crossed-gendered examples existed. Romantic friendship historically landmarks a fusion between the friendship we know now, and some romantic practices of courtship without extending to a sexual intercourse. Some French and American Victorians had the habit to move in with women who wished not to get married, and accompanied them for the most of their lives, their living rooms bustled with works of art and literature and were an open intellectual space for cross-gendered and same gendered interactions.

The modern movement of polyamory has emerged later, also, as a fierce example of a diverse way of loving, and even though these examples are not as prevalent as the idea of monogamous romantic love, they offer a broader, more tolerant—and certainly more revolutionized, practice of love.

Oh how quickly my eyes roll to the back of my head when I am expected to comply to those vexing aphorisms; such the likes of the Oscar- Wildean “There is no friendship between man and woman”, I love Wilde’s eccentric literature, however this statement is comical (like it was originally intended to be) and absurd.

The common wisdom about the inevitability of the existence of a sexual attraction between friends of opposite sexual poles has been inseminated without being thoroughly questioned, and is still rendered a solid social construct. It’s spurred from a dogmatic thinking that, among the attractions which bring two people together, a sexual attraction ‘must’ exist at some point. In any of the cases, in any temporal or geographical circumstance, the development of such friendship would inevitably end up in the rupture of a pure platonic intellectual interest. It seems impossible to have the intimacy of being close and exempt sexual involvement at the same time.

It is—to say the least, farcical to assume such absolutism with scarce evidence. A historical example lies in how Freud’s theories in view of this inevitability have been renounced by Jung who refused to adopt the premise that all drives and motives must track back to the libido. Psychology is still too young a science, or it is too occupied by more urgent pathological cases to correct its mishaps of precision, as to decide on a global answer.

The ‘I’ in all this.

I have gone through battles with myself to come to acknowledge that, relationships (romantic or not) between men and women are as equally susceptible to be ruined, to be pathological, to come to an end, as much as any of the other forms of mortals relationships.

It is because I am very used to question everything, that I am now questioning the legitimacy of these anciently rooted ideas: are they natural or nurtured? Are we born romantics and selective when it comes to love or were we lured to this famous monogamous ordeal like we are lured to objects by commercialism? I would take in La Rochefoucauld’s maxim: “people would never fall in love if they hadn’t heard love talked about.”

This idea that humans have become capitalistic, and are enslaved by seductive entertainment, emphasized by many, including David Wallace who based his panoply on that premise. An idea I considered and repeatedly encountered. Erich Fromm in his The Art Of Loving recapitulated: “In a culture in which the marketing orientation prevails, and in which material success is the outstanding value, there is little reason to be surprised that human love relations follow the same pattern of exchange which governs the commodity and the labor market.”

“It is hard enough to remember my opinions, without also remembering my reasons for them!”

_Nietzsche

If we were to dissuade ourselves, we are to admit that most philosophies are experience-borne, mostly from the unpleasant ones, thus the pain and confusion that unrequited love has prompted (romantic and other, other more than romantic) was a motive to this dubious inquiry, I strongly believe in how that pain can take unusual forms, how it calls for strong empathy, how it cannot be understated or ridiculed for its illogic.

Closeness comes with a price; a price of comprises and sacrifices, and it can beget painful misunderstandings, it can elucidate unnoticed differences—in personal endeavors and expectations, and if the communication were poor, a rupture between the people involved can occur.

Romantic love is no less delusional than close friendship, yet I tend to find the latter a less arduous, a more unconstrained ordeal, natural at a very young age, a simple pleasure that remains unbounded to the burdens of the outdated, ragged remnants of the 18th century romance pillars.

I don’t have a precise answer as to why I grew to find it a superior form of connectedness, and that love and friendship should not be widely segregated. As mentioned before, it is because I have experienced an extraordinary pain; the aftermaths of attachments, of unmonitored passions for people, can prove to be truly intoxicating, yet I don’t regret being close to any of them, I have gained with what I’ve lost and I’d like to view that as a balance.

Unlike Epicurus, I cannot build a school for people to attend to learn my ‘unorthodox ways’ of exercising companionship, I certainly don’t have idealistic friendships, nor do I think that such thing exists, and it would be (again) farcical, if I preached about something that I’m being morbidly skeptic about.

Perhaps the most immediate and less complex solution to this social clamor is to adopt Proust’s “We exist alone.”, “Each of us is trapped in our bodies, and there can be no true union between two individuals.”_ One of the people Andrew Solomon interviewed would complain.

Solitude as a quiet sanctuary, can be chosen over this tumult of attachments and pains. When one chooses to exist alone one is readily giving up on a lot of possibilities of beautiful experiences—possible pleasures, one is denying one’s nature as a social animal, however, this expense can be fruitful not in only avoiding the pain, but as to seek higher purposes of creativity, of arts, or other personally-custom forms of transcendence.