Happy New Month my loves! It's the second month of 2020, the month of February.
As we all know, Valentine's Day falls within this month. A day of exchanging gifts, expressing love and gratitude to people we really care about. But I think that we shouldn't limit all this display of love to one day. So for EuniqueBlogs, I've deemed this month:
THE MONTH OF LOVE
Everything we're going to discuss and learn about in February will be centred around this topic of love. Exciting, huh?
Well, the first thing I think we need to do is, to understand what love is and learn about the different types of love that there are. Yes guys, love has many variations and whether you realise it or not, we all exhibit these various types of love.
So what exactly is love?
Love can be described as a deep or intense feeling of affection towards someone or something. So you can love your parents, your pets, your new dress, your car. Anything that you can feel a strong affection for.
There are actually so many different types of love, but I'm going to focus on the main ones that we all tend to exhibit. To define these, I'm going to be using the Greek terms, because they have different words and different meanings to the word we just call love.
1. Agape love
I'm sure you might have heard of this type of love, especially in church or when someone is preaching on this topic. Agape love is used to describe an unconditional, sacrificial type of love for something. Usually we use the love of God as an expression of Agape love. And it makes sense, because God's love is unconditional, sacrificial and eternal. He loved us before we were created, He loved us even in our sinful states to the extent of sending His only Son to die for us, and He will love us until the end of time.
God expects us to show this love to humanity. He wants us to show kindness, empathy and have a heart of sacrifice to help those in need. Just as He showed this type of love to us, we are expected to mirror God's love and show it to others, regardless of who they are.
2. Philia love
This kind of love is the one you show to those close to you; your friends, siblings and family. It's a platonic, brotherly/sisterly kind of love that comes from a feeling of comfort and openness to those that are around you. We all have friends and people in our life that we enjoy being around and who make us happy, although we don't see them in a romantic way. For these people, the kind of love you feel for them is Philia love.
3. Storge love
The Storge love is usually exhibited between a parent and their child. It involves a kind of bond that is stronger than the Philia love. Naturally, mothers have this strong connection with their babies from the womb. They have the natural instinct to care and provide for their children. Although fathers don't share a body with their child like a mother does, they still develop a sense of protection and care for them. This close bond and feeling of affection that we have for our parents and that they have for us is the Storge love.
4. Eros love
I'm sure this is one of the main types everyone thinks of when the word love is mentioned. When a friend asks you if you love a guy that you've been spending time with and getting close to, your mind will ultimately go to this kind of love, known as Eros.
Eros love is a romantic love usually associated with passion, sexual desire and attraction. We all feel this type of love as humans. We've all had a crush before or met someone that we instantly felt some strong attraction too. This type of love can be dangerous though, especially when not controlled or handled well.
5. Philautia love
Philautia love simply means self-love. We've all heard people say that "Self-love is necessary" and that "We must learn to love ourselves before we love others". And all that is true. How we feel about ourselves and how we treat ourselves ultimately has an impact on how we'll treat others.
Self-love in this context isn't talking about a selfish kind of love where you think of only you, you, you and disregard the feelings and needs of others. Self-love here talks about what you think of yourself, how you carry yourself and what exactly you see when you look into the mirror. Loving yourself goes a long way in determining how we view those around us, and I'll talk more about that in later posts.
There are many other types of love that you can look up. But these are just 5 that I want to focus on during our Month of Love. So sit back and get ready to explore and get a deeper understanding of love during this month of February. If there's anything you'd like me to treat as well regarding love, feel free to message me or write in the comments below and I'll try to possibly do a post on it.
Leave your thoughts, questions and views on the different kinds of love we've discussed today down in the comments section below or feel free to email/message me on social media. Don't forget to share. Love you guys.
Stay blessed and stay a blessing.
