Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
All About Eros, Love, and Heartbreak (Episode 73)
779 Plays1 year ago
Want to become more Stoic? Join us and other Stoics this October: Stoicism Applied by Caleb Ontiveros and Michael Tremblay on Maven
"They say that love is an effort to form a friendship because of an impression of beauty in young persons at their prime..."
In this conversation, Caleb and Michael talk about the Stoics on eros and romantic love. First, they cover how the Stoics saw the nature of romantic love. Then, they look at what advice they have for us today. Finally, they end on the topic of heartbreak.
(01:35) Introducing Love
(05:36) Erotic Love
(20:18) Friendship
(27:00) Stoic Advice for Modern Relationships
(30:39) Knowing How To Say The I
(36:59) Role Ethics
(41:24) The Stoics on Heartbreak
***
Subscribe to The Stoa Letter for weekly meditations, actions, and links to the best Stoic resources: www.stoaletter.com/subscribe
Download the Stoa app (it’s a free download): stoameditation.com/pod
If you try the Stoa app and find it useful, but truly cannot afford it, email us and we'll set you up with a free account.
Listen to more episodes and learn more here: https://stoameditation.com/blog/stoa-conversations/
Thanks to Michael Levy for graciously letting us use his music in the conversations: https://ancientlyre.com/
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction and Emotional Resilience
00:00:00
Speaker
If you're not going to, when it comes to something like that, if you don't play the game, then it's like, well, I'm just not going to connect to people. Or I'm not going to romantically connect when presumably you want to, which is just not a good state to be in. So you need to be robust to deal with the ups and downs. So I did some thinking on, you know, how can still some help you be more robust for this.
00:00:18
Speaker
Welcome to Stowe Conversations. In this podcast, Michael Trombley and I discuss the theory and practice of stoicism. Each week, we'll share two conversations. One between the two of us, and another will be an in-depth conversation with an expert.
00:00:35
Speaker
In this discussion, Michael and I discuss the Stoics and Eros romantic love. We cover such questions as, does the sage have romantic partners? What dating advice can we glean from the Stoics?
Stoicism and Romantic Love: Philosophical Perspectives
00:00:54
Speaker
And finally, what techniques for managing heartbreak can we derive from stoicism?
00:01:02
Speaker
This conversation, I at least think was one of our better ones, more enjoyable ones. It covers the full range of stoic, philosophical theory, practical applications, and personal anecdotes. Without any more words of intro, here it is. Welcome to Stoic Conversations. My name is Caleb Ontiveros. And I'm Michael Trombley.
00:01:28
Speaker
And today we are going to be talking about stoicism and love. And Michael's the expert on this one, so I'm going to hand it off to him. If you want to hear about love, you got to come to me first. Don't go doing... Don't get up to any of that without some of my advice.
00:01:45
Speaker
No, but I think this is a fun topic because, you know, first of all, I think the Stoics ironically say very little about love or very little about love than we do.
Relationships and Meaning in Stoic Thought
00:01:56
Speaker
The modern obsession with love, you think of like the romantic comedy or think of like a romantic connection as providing the meaning to your life, that centers more heavily in modern culture than it does in Stoicism.
00:02:07
Speaker
in, you know, Epictetus, Marcus Aurelius, Seneca, you're getting, I think very little time devoted actually to romantic relationships. So on one hand, that's interesting, but on the other hand, it leaves this question of like, well, what do they, what do they think about those questions? Because I do think romantic relationships are really important parts of how we structure our lives, parts of how we find meaning.
00:02:31
Speaker
the way we develop a family, who we choose to have children with, if we choose to have children at all, or choose to be in monogamous relationships at all, or have our romantic life looks different to that.
Virtue vs Passion in Stoic Love
00:02:42
Speaker
These are all really important questions, meaningful and, you know.
00:02:46
Speaker
actually really important questions about identity too to many people so I like anything else when I get confused on the topic I'm going to turn to what the Stoics have to say and see look for their guidance in this sense so I wanted to pull it out and dig into what did the Stoics think about about romantic love and about relationships
00:03:05
Speaker
And I wanted to divide, so this episode we're going to divide into three sections. First is what the Stoics thought on love. So what their view is about love as an emotion, as an experience, what do they have to say on it? And that's going to be more focusing on the ancient Stoics, less on, I would say less of a practical application, more of a theoretical background, but there is some interesting things there. I do think it's, it's a unique perspective and that's one I see elsewhere.
00:03:31
Speaker
Then a bit about stoicism and relationships. So what advice can stoicism have for how to engage in relationships outside of ancient Greece and Rome in today's modern world and into our pursuit of being better people. And then third, a bit about stoicism and heartbreak because we think about stoicism.
00:03:50
Speaker
You know, a lot of people are attracted to it as, as a way to deal with extreme situations as a way to build resiliency. And I think that, you know, heartbreak is one of those situations that you're going
Vulnerability and Heartbreak in Stoicism
00:04:03
Speaker
to, as long as you make yourself vulnerable in a relationship, you're going to find yourself in the position of maybe having your heart broken or maybe finding yourself in a difficult situation. So relationships are one of the, not one of those situations where you can just abstain. It's not one of those situations where you can just not play the game, so to speak.
00:04:18
Speaker
and say, well, you know, you got your feelings hurt because you cared about this thing you shouldn't care about. Relationships become really complicated because it seems like it should be the kind of thing you care about. Seems like it should be the kind of thing that you'd be committed to. So how do you do that in a way where you can love openly and vulnerably, but also shield yourself from some of the more extreme reactions if things don't go the way you want them to? Anything to add before we jump into it, Caleb?
00:04:46
Speaker
I think this is a great topic. It's a central preoccupation of so many of our lives is romantic relationships. And the stoic view on how to think about this form of love is unique. It's worth wrestling with, worth thinking through.
00:05:05
Speaker
And then, of course, they have, in addition to the theory, several, I think, practical steps or even arguments for different norms about how to think about relationships, how to think about what relationships one should enter, how to be excellent in those relationships, and so
Understanding Stoic Eros
00:05:24
Speaker
on. So I think this is a great topic and there's a lot here and I think we'll get to some of the most important bits.
00:05:31
Speaker
within you know the next fifty minutes or so but i think there's a lot to talk about for sure yeah get ready for part two or three baby before we start i want to clarify when when i'm talking about love in this episode when we're talking about love in this episode where i've been using the term romantic love what i mean by that is is
00:05:50
Speaker
I mean, a relationship with a partner, a romantic partner. So not the love you would feel for your family, the love you would feel for nature, the love you would feel for a pet. There's just different ways we can use the language. And as philosophers, it's nice to kind of get those terms set. In ancient Greek, they would speak of eros, and that's where we get erotic from. So in a sense, we're talking about erotic love, but I feel like there's almost this, there's this strange connotation in contemporary language to erotic love, which seems like almost
00:06:20
Speaker
maybe exclusively or predominantly sexual, and I don't want to limit, I'm going to probably stick to romantic love because I don't want to limit it to this conception of just being sexual. It is the way that you engage in a romantic partner, in a romantic relationship with a partner. So first question is just what do the Stoics have to say on erotic love or romantic love as we talked about?
00:06:46
Speaker
there's a really good clarification that the Stoics make that I want to get clear is they think that there is two types of love, two types of romantic love, there's a good kind and a bad kind. And this quote comes from Stobias who says, there are two senses in which one may speak of the erotic person. Again, that sense of erotic love in a romantic way, one in reference to virtue as one of the qualities of the righteous person,
00:07:11
Speaker
and what in reference to vice, as if blaming someone for love madness. So Tobias is pointing out when the Stoics talk of erotic love or romantic love, they can use it in two ways. One time they're using it to criticize people and another time they use it to say, well, that's the thing that the sage does, that the perfect person does. So there's a kind of a good type of romantic love and a bad type of romantic love.
00:07:38
Speaker
In stoic terms, there's a pathé of romantic love, which is this passion, this harmful emotion. And then there's this you-pathé, this positive emotion that even the sage will experience. So what's going on there? What's the divide? So love is pathé. So love as a negative, extreme emotion.
00:07:58
Speaker
That's that's that's one kind and the stoics say that this type of love is a passion and it's bad and this kind of erotic love is defined as a love of sexual intercourse so an obsession with Yeah, physical like physical the physical aspect of love that I guess in in a way will be this kind of pleasure this actual engaging in sex
00:08:20
Speaker
And then there's the kind of longing or the desire for erotic love for someone that isn't there. And so this is when you kind of think of, so there's this kind of obsession with the pleasure of sex. That's one kind of bad love or harmful love. And then there is this obsession over people who aren't there. And, you know, I'm not sure.
00:08:42
Speaker
Maybe, maybe there's, when we get back into these ancient Stoics, sometimes the sources are a bit light, but maybe there could be that sense that they're not there in which like, you know, they're physically gone. So you're kind of pining for them, but there also might be the sense in which they're not available to you, right? A kind of unrequited love. And so it becomes this, this obsession with somebody who is, you know, not reciprocating.
00:09:05
Speaker
I also think of the way somebody might think about a celebrity or somebody they don't even know, you know, in this kind of, maybe at its worst, this kind of stalker nests. I'm drawing these things out, but you think of this kind of this, this longing, this erotic desire for someone who isn't there that you don't have access to. That's one way in which love can be a harmful passion. And then the other sense, again,
00:09:27
Speaker
is this actual obsession or hyper focus with the pleasure of sex itself. And that's another way in which it can be a harmful or consuming passion.
Character vs External Attributes in Love
00:09:37
Speaker
I think that's a useful way to distinguish the division between love as pathé and love as you pathé is an important one to make. And I think it's always useful to remember that the Stoics do have that view of positive emotions. And of course, they don't ask us to be unfeeling like a statue.
00:10:00
Speaker
Yeah. And so that leads next, next to the natural question of, okay, well, what kind of, you know, if I can't passionately long for someone who's not there and I can't be obsessed with sexual intercourse, what kind of love is left for me? You know, what does good love look like on the stoic view? And the previous, the previous love is pathway. I was getting that from Margaret Graver's excellent book, Stoicism and Emotions. And I would recommend that to anybody looking, looking to any view of stoic emotions in more detail.
00:10:30
Speaker
This next part is from Diogenes Lyertius, who recorded Zeno's writing on love. And he says, for Stoics, this kind of good love, this Upathite, this was defined as, quote, an effort towards friendship due to the appearance of beauty, its soul and being friendship. So, I mean, this is, this is already kind of unique, right? Because we're getting friendship.
00:10:56
Speaker
not necessarily romantic. Again, we're seeing this kind of dropping out of this sexual desire, the sexual longing. We're seeing the soul end being friendship. And then we have this line about, well, it's due to the appearance of beauty. And you might think, well, what does beauty mean? And then Diogenes goes on to say,
00:11:15
Speaker
and beauty the Stoics describe as the bloom or flower of virtue. So when they're talking about beauty, the way I read this passage, and Cale we were debating this a bit beforehand, but I read this passage as
00:11:29
Speaker
Not even, not even, wow, that person is aesthetically pleasing. That person is a, is a physically beautiful person. I want to be friends with them, but that person is an internally beautiful person. That person has virtue, has a wonderful character. Either it's blooming. I can tell the potential for that. If they're a young person, I can, I can tell they're on the right way to the right track to be a great person, or they already are. It is flowered and I want to be friends with that person. And that's, that's how they defined erotic love.
00:11:59
Speaker
Another quote here, they say that love is an effort to form a friendship because of an impression of beauty in a young person at their prime. That is why the wise person is also an erotic person and will fall in love with those worthy of love.
00:12:14
Speaker
Chrysippus wrote a book called On Love that we've lost, and Zeno wrote about the topic in his book The Republic, and this is what Dodgeneas Lyertus is reporting on. I should note that the second definition focuses on attention towards young men, so the second quote was, you know, an effort to form friendship because of an impression of beauty in a young person at their prime.
00:12:36
Speaker
And so this is, you know, this is referring to older men falling in love with younger boys, which is a very Greek specific thing, right? That's very culturally specific. Margaret Graver argues that wise love, you know, this healthy kind of love is not necessarily an educational or mentorship relationship. And it's certainly not necessarily male to male, and it's not necessarily a mentorship relationship.
00:13:01
Speaker
As Graver puts it, the wise fall in love for no other reason than that it's their nature to want to be intimate with those they see as beautiful, beauty being that excellence of virtue. So we think of stoic erotic love or romantic love as a kind of soul to soul connection rather than this body to body connection. And it's to say, I see your soul as being beautiful.
00:13:26
Speaker
defined as being a virtuous one or having the potential for virtue. And I love that. And so I want to be friends with you or being, I would say, a relationship with you, which is to say, I want to spend time with you. I want to engage with your soul in that way. This all sounds rather abstract for romance, but I suppose that is the way, you know, that's the way the Stoics were. They were very focused on the internal, the character, instead of the kind of the drama or the external.
00:13:54
Speaker
Well, maybe another way to think about it is, so we have on Love Is Pathé, it's a focus on these external aspects of people, their body, how we feel in their presence, maybe even facts that are tied up to our reputation when we're with them or their reputation. And then contrast that with
00:14:20
Speaker
love as you, Pathe, what we're focused on a person's character, how they use externals, not just the externals
Admiration for Virtue in Stoic Romantic Love
00:14:29
Speaker
themselves. I think that's the, you know, the beauty is evident in the person's choices and their way of life rather than these other indifferent matters. I think that's basically the difference we're talking about here, right? Yeah.
00:14:49
Speaker
You know, very non-stoic approach to love would be like, wow, I love him. He has such a nice car. Or even, you know, I, even, I love him. He makes me feel this way. He makes me feel happy or something like this, or she makes me feel happy. This is kind of this focus on these results, these, as opposed to this thing where the stoic view is, you know, I love them. They are, they're beautiful. Like they're, they're excellent. They're an excellent person.
00:15:16
Speaker
I try to take a swing at it in normal language so we get a bit away from the abstractness and I have here, Stoic love is the desire to be intimate with another person because you recognize the genuine good in them. That's a Stoic love. So that's their virtue or character or their potential for excellence, their potential for an excellent character. And sex could follow from this, but that's a preferred indifference. The actual virtuous love is good in every context.
00:15:44
Speaker
And to desire and respect their excellence of character is good in every context. Sex preferred indifference. Sometimes it's good, sometimes it's bad. Sometimes it's appropriate, sometimes it's inappropriate. But that actual love, the sage can have it because it's always the right thing to do is to, you know, desire to be intimate with a person of an excellent character.
00:16:07
Speaker
And normal relationships are not like the wise because normal relationships value, you know, the things you were saying is kind of reputational goods or things like this. But as Margaret Graver puts this, they also value physical nearness, touch and contact, the short-term pleasure or happiness of being around people, you know, that kind of transactional love.
00:16:26
Speaker
I don't think it's wrong to say why I love them because they make me happy. That's a preferred indifferent or they make me feel good. But there's a kind of transactional nature where you say, in a way you can break that down to say, I love them because they bring me pleasure in the moment, which is kind of this Epicurean view.
00:16:45
Speaker
Whereas the wise only values the internal qualities and activities of others, which is to say their character. So that's the position on erotic love.
00:16:57
Speaker
Yeah, I think it's also important to note that it also has this motivating aspect. Diogenes Laertje says it's an effort towards friendship, and it almost has this protreptic force, or this protreptic means it aims to motivate you, and what's it motivating you towards? Towards being virtuous yourself.
00:17:23
Speaker
you can distinguish between these forms of love where one kind might motivate you to act viciously, where another one would motivate you to act virtuously. And something that just came to mind to me as you were speaking about this is that the Stoics see virtue as the application of knowledge. It's a kind of expertise almost, right?
00:17:47
Speaker
And one thing that's always so interesting about romantic love is that you mentioned the stalker earlier. There are some ways to describe behavior where it's unclear whether you're describing a stalker or a devoted lover. They came to see me where I live. It was a surprise and so on and so on.
00:18:11
Speaker
Maybe some people have stories where they rejected their partner on one occasion and then the partner was persistent and they showed up at some other time and eventually they somehow successfully woo the person. What's making the difference between the person who shows up
00:18:33
Speaker
unannounced to the person's house and is acting like a stalker versus the person who shows up unannounced
Consent and Misunderstandings in Stoic Love
00:18:39
Speaker
and is treated as a devoted lover. There's a number of things, of course, but one just is that knowledge of the other person and how the other person
00:18:49
Speaker
would react and you know all these details about the situation involving you know what time is it what's your appearance well yeah the difference external like the diff the immediate difference is consent right it's like does the person want you there or not but then when you well yeah i mean that consent's too fast because sometimes people you know are they just show up and they're not asked to or something like this right i mean there are cases like this and then they're looked on that's that's a you know
00:19:18
Speaker
not something that they did that was improper because they knew the person had they asked would have. It's consented, I suppose, is one way to put it. Yeah, that's what I mean. When you show up, nothing's happened until you knock on the door. They open the door and they see you. It's like, is this a good thing or a bad thing? It depends on if the moment, do they want you there or not? In the moment, has that been appreciated? Is that a good thing? There's a kind of
00:19:45
Speaker
So there's that consent aspect, not pre-consent, but during consent, I suppose. And then there's that, cause then you, I just built on what you were saying, Caleb, you think of it as a craft, as a skill, as an art. Well, the skill to that then is like enough self-knowledge by yourself and knowledge about the other person to understand if that's the thing that they would want, but to be able to anticipate that. And that's, I guess, as you said, is the nature of like good gifts and good surprises versus like,
00:20:11
Speaker
I don't know, a terrible gift or a terrible surprise is that ability to, you know, understand that other person. I think that's a really, I think that's a really insightful point. Yeah. Yeah. That focus on knowledge. And I suppose that comes to this other line, like, look, love is motivating. It's inspired by beauty and what's it motivating you towards, towards a kind of friendship.
00:20:32
Speaker
and friendship necessarily involves knowledge of the other person and their life plans, their character, their personality, and so on. Yeah. I also think of friendship as this interesting. There's a couple of things I want to stay on with this topic for a while because when I think of friendship, I think of friendship as being less, I think in contemporary society, there's this desire for romantic relationships to be very fulfilling.
00:21:01
Speaker
And to complete, like you complete me, whereas often when I think of the ideal of friendship, I think is like, well, I see them for who they are, you know? And like, maybe, you know, when I think of my best friends, I think of people that I understand who they are. I understand the things that they're good at, they're bad at their strengths, their weaknesses. And I kind of accept them holistically, where I think in romance, we can have a tendency to idealize our romantic partners, especially at the start of the relationship, especially in that kind of honeymoon phase.
00:21:31
Speaker
So I think it's interesting this framing, this friendship where it's this, I think it speaks to that knowledge point of like really seeing the other person for who they are, really loving the other person for what they are. I think that's a cool thing to look up to. That's just coming to me now as we're talking, but I think that's an interesting part of stoic love.
00:21:49
Speaker
Yeah, one question I have about this is, so what's the difference between the kind of love people may experience in a non-romantic friendship and then one they would experience in a romantic one for the Stoics?
00:22:07
Speaker
Well, I think the non-romantic friendship wouldn't be, I guess it wouldn't be, this is me guessing, it wouldn't be Eros, which means it would be kind of a less intense kind of love. And it would be a less intense kind of love because what you're loving is less beautiful, I guess. So maybe you would have a, when you love a friend who's just somebody you've known since childhood and your, what you're loving there is a flawed person.
00:22:36
Speaker
Whereas romantic love for this age is of a... I guess because you can love somebody that's flawed, right? Again, you non-romantically can love somebody that's flawed. I tried to carve this out to just be romantic to make it easier, but you have to bounce them off each other. And I think for normal people, you can romantically love someone who's flawed. I think people do that all the time. People end up in relationships with not just flawed people, but actually
00:23:02
Speaker
actively terrible people, right? And this stoic romance, I think that for the non-sage, stoic romance is about focusing on the internal. It's about prioritizing, loving, and being attracted to your partner's character over these kind of external things, whether that's their appearance, their
00:23:24
Speaker
reputation, their money, things like this. Right. And I think that's really good advice. But when we're talking about the, cause we're talking here about what love the sage experiences and the love the sage experiences is a kind of love that's always good and always right to desire because it's a love of an actually good thing. Right. It's like an admiration for a beautiful thing, which is another virtuous person or that potential for virtue in them. That's all pretty abstract, but I guess that's the difference is like.
00:23:54
Speaker
I would think it would be, it would be a virtuous kind of love and a more intense, I guess, feeling because it's the object of it is different instead of this person that you maybe respect or admire for some, for some reasons. Like maybe that's it, as you would say, maybe again, I'm guessing here, maybe the stoic would say you respect or admire your friends or you feel a closeness with your friends, but you, maybe you love the virtuous person.
00:24:22
Speaker
There's a sense in which the sage could have an erotic love towards people that we might not culturally understand as romantic. Does that make sense? They would just have this deep kind of love to see people's, to see the beauty of people, but it wouldn't necessarily be the kind of thing that results in a romantic relationship.
00:24:47
Speaker
what might make it romantic would just be the character of the relationship. And perhaps, and this comes back to something we are debating off air, whether any of this beauty recognized in the person is physical or cool.
00:25:04
Speaker
Indirectly points to the fact that you're in a loving relationship that is, and that maybe it's not the physical thing itself, but the physical is a symbol that your relationship's romantic, not a non-romantic friendship.
00:25:20
Speaker
Okay, so let me try this. Let me try to throw this back. The sage could have an erotic love for anybody with virtue or with the potential for virtue. And then they might also have a romantic love or a kind of a sexual love for people that they happen to also be mutually, physically attracted to.
00:25:40
Speaker
And then that's you, you take that kind of physical part, you put it aside as this kind of preferred and different. If it works, it works. If it does, if it's both people are into it, then it happens. But if, if it, if it's not, and then it's not preferred or beneficial in that situation, then you're just staying at that kind of like loving each other's souls and character level. I think so. It's something like that. Yeah. Yeah. That makes sense to me. I think, I think in, in, in summary of that, it is a.
00:26:09
Speaker
It is a different way of thinking about love. It kind of conflates or challenges our conception of this thing of like romantic versus platonic. It's kind of getting this mixing of them together. And I think if we're right that this erotic love can be often asexual, then, which is the same, not physically reciprocated in any way, then the stoics are putting a type of non,
00:26:37
Speaker
romantic love actually at the pedestal as the the the you pathway the the correct kind of love for a sage to have which is an interesting interesting thing definitely different than what we do today where i would say we put romantic love at the pedestal i would say well i love for our family is important but really the romantic love is kind of the the defining type of love in a life cool so the next section i i say well
00:27:05
Speaker
That's
Applying Stoic Principles Today
00:27:06
Speaker
good. And that's, that's interesting. I think it's interesting, but we don't know. We're not all sages. Many people listening to this podcast might not even want to be sages. Now I say, I've got some things to learn from stoicism, but I don't plan on being a perfect stoic anytime soon. I both hard to reach and also maybe I don't even want to reach there. I just want to get a little bit more stoic. And for myself, I'm certainly not a sage.
00:27:28
Speaker
So I thought it would also be good to talk about for non-stages, you know, what does stoicism have to say about relationships, our romantic relationships in the here and now, in the modern age? What can we learn from this stoic approach to love? The first thing I have here is like, you want to make your romantic relationship more stoic.
00:27:47
Speaker
probably doesn't sound that appealing to most of the people. But if you want to, I guess, approach your romantic relationship like a stoic, the first lesson I would say from this is that socialism is a healthy tool for relationships because it encourages you to value what the sage values and what the sage values is your partner's character over their more superficial qualities.
00:28:08
Speaker
Just, just bar none is like you can be a better partner. If you spend more time focusing on loving your partner's internal character, then the external qualities be that their, their, their appearance, as you said, their reputation, you know, the benefit it has to being associated with them.
00:28:29
Speaker
Or even, you know, maybe the way they make you feel in the short term that that kind of short term pleasure transactional thing and more of this kind of profound admiration and love and respect for who they are as a person moving towards that. And I think about that, you know, you see sometimes these news stories where.
00:28:46
Speaker
somebody's partner gets in a horrible accident is disfigured and person's like, well, I'm obviously not breaking up with them. You know, never even crossed my mind. People put that on a romantic pedestal. And I think what's romantic about that is this idea of, well, you know, I've committed to this person. I haven't committed to their body, you know, even if they've been terribly burned or something like this, or that hasn't changed them. And I think that's a really beautiful stuff. Like Epictetus has that line of.
00:29:14
Speaker
You can harm my body, but you can't, you know, you can't control me because I'm that part inside. And if I think about loving another person, it's like, well, you know, they can age their, their body can change. They can lose their job. They can go through all these ups and downs, but that, if that, if you're committed to that core, that internal part of them, them, then those external things don't really matter. And I think there's something really beautiful to that.
00:29:40
Speaker
Yeah, I think that's right. And that's a great example. I think common date advice given to young men is just that they overvalue the attractiveness of their partners or potential partners. And, you know, you don't have to be stoic at all to see the kind of wisdom in that advice. Yeah. And again, we're talking about beauty here as a preferred indifferent, I would say, which is to say
00:30:08
Speaker
You know, don't, don't like, don't actively pursue people intentionally that you're not attracted to or do. And I don't do anything weird like that. It's just to say, it's just to say, look, you know, that's a nice bonus if it's there, but that's not really the, the most important feature. As you say, we, you don't even have to go that extreme. As you say, just probably most people are overvaluing it, right? Would be this when, so the stoic perspective is to just.
00:30:35
Speaker
However you value things, shift the value a bit more to the internal. Yeah, to the internal or to other facts about whether it would be a good partnership, good relationship and so on. Yeah, absolutely.
00:30:51
Speaker
Cool. So one thing, one line I like from Ayn Rand of all people is to say, I love you. One must first know how to say the I, which gets to this sort of philosophical idea of knowing thyself and whether that is necessary for romantic love.
00:31:17
Speaker
And I think there's a strong case where I'm thinking that for these higher levels of love, some sort of stronger bonds, you do in fact need to know yourself, know what you are looking for, what you are creating. And if you look at
00:31:41
Speaker
either, you know, maybe examples you have in your personal life of relationships that haven't gone so well or characters in fiction. Often what you see is there's a serious lack of self-awareness or some reticence to commit a particular idea of themselves or idea of their relationship that does form in a serious obstacle to love and whether, you know, that person is capable of entering a loving relationship. Yes.
00:32:10
Speaker
I mean, I love that. I think like, you know, the unexamined life is not worth living. That's a Socratic thing. Know thyself. That's just, I mean, that's the Oracle of Delphi, but that's a Socratic thing. So this idea of self-knowledge as an underpinning of love, I think is really important. I always used to think about this, this is a bit of a tangent, but I always would think when I was younger, how ridiculous people would say things like, I will always love you.
00:32:37
Speaker
Because I would be like, I would think you could tell I did a philosophy degree because I would think things like well, so the you you the best way you will commit to is the you you are now will always love the day they are now.
00:32:52
Speaker
But there's such a degree of, seems to me like people will transform so much that you won't even be yourself in 10 years. You'll be somebody different. And so how can you commit to that? And he sort of claimed like that. I think as I get older, I'm getting like a more secure sense of self. So I think these things can become a bit more in place, but it's this idea of, yeah, if love is a relationship between two people, understanding who you are and what you bring to that relationship, what you value.
00:33:17
Speaker
That dynamic is incredibly important and a thing that I think should be prioritized in order to have a healthy relationship. Absolutely.
00:33:25
Speaker
Yeah, I think so. I think that's a good example too. I think part of what might make just over the top pronouncements of love somewhat cringe-worthy is that it seems like a person doesn't know what they're saying, right? And they can't properly commit themselves to that. And because of that fact, they're doing injustice to the phrase.
00:33:49
Speaker
That's it. And I didn't have the vocabulary yet, but that is what is cringe. I feel a bit of cringe and you're exactly right. I feel cringe because it's like you can't commit yourself to that. It's like you're yelling two plus two is five with this full commitment and you mean it. It's so earnest and genuine and felt, but it also doesn't seem coherent. And I suppose in a sense that's stoic passion, right?
00:34:12
Speaker
it's earnest it's genuine it's felt but in a sense it's it's incoherent and yeah which is you know not to be judgmental of anybody who's ever said anything like that but i think there's there is this sense of self-transformation as a part of it and
00:34:28
Speaker
Yeah, I think that when somebody makes extreme claims like that, you're not taking into account the importance of that self-transformation, or you seem to me to be betraying a lack of self-knowledge.
Transformation and Relationship Roles
00:34:40
Speaker
That transformation is possible. I think that's actually the cringe part.
00:34:44
Speaker
is the lack of self-knowledge that goes behind a statement like that. Especially when somebody like that maybe is the kind of person who said that a year ago to somebody else. And now they're saying it and meaning it just as much this new time. And there's that kind of lack of self-knowledge that, Hey, maybe this is a thing that I say that I don't know what I'm saying, or I'm not able to commit to. So that lack of self-knowledge makes the cringe. That is the philosophical analysis of the cringe there.
00:35:10
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. Maybe there's also another thought that this deeper, robust form of love isn't actually possible. So it's almost cynical, like what pronouncements of love are is just the sort of thing one says in relationships. And to be slightly autobiographical, I think what I've
00:35:34
Speaker
made mistakes with that phrase. That's essentially the view I had was that, oh, this is just what people say in particular, uh, relationships, you know? And it just, but that, I think that cynicism was, was too fast. And there, there is, there is something, you know, maybe somewhat small C conservative, but something to bringing back the wet weightiness of the phrase, if you, if you will.
00:36:01
Speaker
Yeah, I'm with you. I'm also for pushing back against the cynicism. I can sympathize with feeling that way, feeling that cynical way when I was younger. I think it just also comes down to this view of love as an action, right? Right. Like it's like you're running and you're like, I will never stop running. And it's like, you don't know, like you're, you have to participate in this. It's not just a thing that you are, right? You are just, you just, you aren't just are in love with another person. It's a thing that you participate in.
00:36:29
Speaker
It's an action. And so if you change, if they change, then the action changes. So I think it's the thing where you can say, I will commit myself to this action. Like I'm committing myself to giving my all to this relationship, to, to making it work, to, to working for it. But I think that's a different thing where that other phrasing that like, I will always love you or that kind of stuff makes it feel more, I think a bit more passive and more or less participatory. For sure. Yeah. Interesting.
00:36:59
Speaker
When another aspect we were talking about before off air is that how can you make this kind of erotic love, this version of the sage's love that's really like a pure interest in the person's character, the beauty exhibit by their character and the motivation that's felt when that character is seen. How can you make that useful for non-sages like ourselves?
00:37:29
Speaker
One thought I have is Musonius Rufus is like one of the
00:37:37
Speaker
spends a decent amount of time talking about marriage and how he thinks the typical Roman should be married, they should be good husbands and wives and you know he's Roman so he's going to be skeptical of all this Greek talk about you know the beauty of young men and their prime and so on but what I think he does
00:38:00
Speaker
offer is this thought that romantic relationships, they're a specific kind of social relationship and it brings you back to this role ethics and this demand to be clear about, you know, whether there are so many different kinds of romantic relationships, but be clear about
00:38:24
Speaker
what kind you're in, what it looks like to be excellent in that role. And I think that would be a very useful thing if I think about things to tell younger versions of myself that might be most useful. That's some of that motivation to always be clear about
00:38:46
Speaker
what kind of relationship you're pursuing, both with myself and with the other person, and then ensuring that I am as good as I can be at that kind of role. I think that's great. I've never thought of it that way, but that's really... I'm gonna start doing that. Well, you think of something like a fling. If both people know it's a fling and participate on the grounds of it being the fling,
00:39:13
Speaker
That's fine. But if somebody, you know, thinks about this relationship in a different way, then that's, that's when there starts to be this tension or this friction, or, you know, if a relationship is a serious relationship and you're treating it frivolously or not giving it the respect or way it deserves. So this kind of, this kind of, this is very common sense way of thinking about it, right? Which is to say, what kind of thing is this? Are we both on the same page, what kind of thing it is? And definitionally,
00:39:43
Speaker
There will just be a kind of understanding of what that entails. We don't need to reinvent the wheel. There's just a kind of understanding of the way you treat certain types of relationships. So if we're on the same page, I can either like, I, you don't judge different kinds of relationships. You judge your capacity to, to be, to be a good person to have a fling with, or to be a good person to have a serious relationship with, if that's what you've committed to, to doing or something along these lines.
00:40:07
Speaker
I think that's a cool way of thinking about that. I think that's the stoic way of thinking about a lot of navigating indifference, but I've never thought about it in terms of relationships. It makes a lot of sense there. Yeah, I think so. I think so. And I think in maybe like more serious dating, it looks like talking with the other person about what kind of relationship is this. Of course you have questions about kids, but I think that is those sorts of questions about
00:40:34
Speaker
determining what kind of relationship it's going to be, what's going to constitute it. I think as you just said, common sense questions that can easily be missed because we're in the grips of a passion that is so pleasant and we don't want to lose hold of the other person.
00:40:52
Speaker
Yeah. And then it's, but there's this definitional game of like, what are we, you know, what's the label? But then there's these like responsibilities that come with the label and it's like living up to those, I think is like, uh,
00:41:06
Speaker
Yeah. So there's like this, like, I don't want to, I don't want to play the label game too early in case you're messing things up or you're in the, as you said, the kind of romantic grips of passion. But also once you've, once you've committed to the label saying, well, what does that require of me? What is the right way for me to live up to that? That's cool. Sweet. All right. Well, let's chat a little bit about services. I'm in heartbreak. We don't have too much time, but what do you got? What do you got for us
Managing Vulnerability and Breakups with Stoicism
00:41:31
Speaker
there? Yeah. Well, I wanted to talk a bit about.
00:41:35
Speaker
I wanted to talk a bit about just like a lot of people I think have difficulty in relationships because they can be sad, right? Anytime you make yourself this, I mean, this is part of stoicism. Anytime you make yourself vulnerable, which is to say you commit yourself strongly to something outside of your control, then you can, you can get upset or it can hurt. You can get your heart broken, right? It's the basic way of putting it.
00:42:01
Speaker
And I think the thing with that is that you want to, A, that feels bad, but you also want to avoid the kind of cynicism or, I don't know, defeatism that comes from not being emotionally prepared to put up with the ups and downs and the bumps, right? Because if you're not going to, when it comes to something like that, if you don't play the game and it's like, well, I'm just not going to connect to people or I'm not going to romantically connect when presumably you want to, which is just not a good state to be in.
00:42:29
Speaker
So you need to be robust to deal with the ups and downs. So I did some thinking on, you know, how can Stosism help you be more robust for this? I think I've been in my own life and some of the ways that Stosism has helped my own life. First thing is not catastrophizing. So one thing we talk about all the time in Stosism and mindfulness is this idea of telling a story or adding something to a fact.
00:42:51
Speaker
So, you know, I've been broken up with or this relationship has ended becomes my life is ruined. I'm never going to be with another person. This was the best thing that happened to me and now there's no chance at it or, or it can be even more directed, right? Like I'm, I'm really angry with this person. This person's a terrible person or things like this. You can start, you can start adding these kinds of stories to things and kind of building these out.
00:43:17
Speaker
And I think one thing Stos has been helpful for me is just, it's just kind of pulling those back, not catastrophizing, not adding stories, just being descriptive. Because often when you're descriptive, things are a lot better. You know, the, the actual fact of the matter is a lot better than the negative story you're telling. And one thing you can do is, is if you imagine, you know, how you would feel if this situation happened to somebody else, a lot of times you'd be sad for them, but not like.
00:43:46
Speaker
destroyed, that's too bad, but they're going to be okay. And trying to apply the same kind of reasoning to yourself, the same kind of view from above, essentially, right? Where you can, if you can view a friend from an external perspective, you do a view from above, you can view yourself from that external perspective and get more grounded. So that's one thing.
00:44:06
Speaker
Another strategy I use here with all my heartbreak strategies is pre-meditatio malorum, again, basic Stoic strategy, which is the pre-envisioning of evils, the contemplation of bad things before they happen. And again, not the point to be cynical, but the point to say when you're engaging in a relationship with another person,
00:44:30
Speaker
relationships often end, right? Recognizing that fact, putting that fact front of mind and not being caught in the kind of, not telling yourself being in the grips of a passion, which then makes you unresponsive to reason. You start saying things like, you know,
00:44:48
Speaker
I will love you forever this is this is perfect this will never end and then if something like that does happen something changes on either side you're totally unprepared for it because you've constructed this worldview where that was not a possibility and because it was not a possibility it was like you totally get sideswiped by it it's totally unbelievable
00:45:05
Speaker
So, A, preparing for that, but not even emotionally hardening yourself, but just seeing a relationship for what it is as two people learning from each other, engaging with each other, enjoying an experience for a time, and with no real guarantee for the length of time that might be, and only undertaking it if that is still worth it to you. So understanding what it is in its entirety,
00:45:29
Speaker
not committing like, oh, I'm going to only look at the first six months of this or the first two weeks or whatever, not only seeing part of it and saying, I'm going to go headlong into this and I'm not going to anticipate or kind of see it for its entirety. So the premeditation of evils or the contemplation that these things can happen, I think is really good. And the third thing I wanted to mention was Socratic intellectualism, which is intellectualism is this idea that
00:45:57
Speaker
Everybody's always doing what they think is good. You know, if you thought what they thought, you would do the same thing. People are only ever making the choice that they think is the good choice and the choices that's been given to them and the situation that's presented to them. And so I think this is really helpful when you feel scorned or angry or confused with somebody else, which is often what happens at the end of a relationship or in enduring relationships, there can be a lot of confusion about this other person. It's just remembering, you're not ascribing any sort of like evil,
00:46:26
Speaker
thoughts or judgmental thoughts, but just remembering that this is just another person trying to navigate their life and doing what they think is best. And if your values are so different than what they think is best is so not understandable to you, then it's probably, you know, probably a good thing that things ended in that sense. Yeah. I think those are three good strategies sort of for becoming more robust to breakups.
00:46:55
Speaker
One note I would add in terms of if you just experienced heartbreak and you're at that point already, then
00:47:03
Speaker
some of these cognitive interventions may be less useful at that point in time. And it's as useful to remember that the Stoics saw heartbreak, this kind of romantic grief as a kind of madness. And that means that reason has been overpowered and you can say use non-cognitive strategies ideally at that point.
00:47:27
Speaker
you wouldn't try to convince your friend to not catastrophize when they're in the depths of grief, perhaps. But instead, you might take them out to walk through a sunny park or this sort of thing. And of course, there are many good kinds of non-Congress strategies people have for
00:47:47
Speaker
managing grief, the central one of course being letting time do its work from exercise to taking up new projects to spending time around loving friends. That's the kind of thing that is worth thinking about in addition to these cognitive strategies. Yeah, to say something in favor of non-cognitive strategies, I remember in high school somebody was broken up with and
00:48:14
Speaker
I remember all their friends was like, that guy's the worst. He's awful. We all hate him. And I remember being like, that's not true. You're all just lying. What's going on? Why are people just making this up? And then the first kind of hard breakup I had, I was like, okay, now I see the value. Yeah, you can tell me these lies. These are non-cognitive.
00:48:36
Speaker
which is to say they're not true and they're not necessarily attempting to communicate something true, but they're a kind of way of, I don't know, maybe meeting somebody in their madness, maybe connecting to somebody emotionally in that, in that tumultuous area, or maybe even just kind of showing sympathy by kind of getting to the same level of them and kind of like emulating what they're feeling or giving space for them to think those things. It's a kind of, I have more sympathy for these non-cognitive strategies when
00:49:03
Speaker
You know, when, what matters in that moment is kind of a short-term effectiveness, not the kind of thing you'd want to base your life around. I mean, your example of like a nice walk in the park, that sounds, that sounds better, but even these more extreme ones of, you know, going out partying or things like this.
00:49:19
Speaker
There might be a space for them in that extreme madness moment right after, right? Not the kind of, again, not the kinds of things you want to do long-term as a coping mechanism, but there could be something to be said for, I'm more sympathetic to non-cognitive strategies, you know, as I've gotten, as I've experienced more, basically.
00:49:38
Speaker
Right, right. Well, that's our discussion on love, how the aesthetic saw erotic love, some of their notes on how to be excellent in romantic relationships, and then some, you know, some final thoughts that are useful for those of you who have and will experience more heartbreak. All right, yeah, I think I'll say that. Maybe that last line was thinking out so good.
00:50:09
Speaker
Oh, I hope not. I hope people, I think, I think it's a fun topic. I think it's a, I think the philosophy of love is so great because it cuts through so much, but I'm hoping people here are not experiencing heartbreak, but good luck if you do. All right. Awesome. Thanks, Gil.
00:50:28
Speaker
Thanks for listening to StoA Conversations. Please give us a rating on Apple Podcasts or Spotify and share it with a friend. And if you'd like to get two meditations from me on Stoic theory and practice a week, just two short emails on whatever I've been thinking about, as well as some of the best resources we found for practicing Stoicism, check out stoaletcher.com. It's completely free. You can sign up for it and then unsubscribe at any time as you wish.
00:50:58
Speaker
If you want to dive deeper still, search Stoa in the App Store or Play Store for a complete app with routines, meditations, and lessons designed to help people become more stoic. And I'd also like to thank Michael Levy for graciously letting us use his music. You can find more of his work at ancientlyer.com.
00:51:21
Speaker
And finally, please get in touch with us. Send a message to stoa at stoameditation.com if you ever have any feedback, questions, or recommendations. Until next time.