It’s Not a Feeling… It’s Something Far More Demanding
Most of us think we know what love is. A rush of passion. A warm attachment. A fluttering heartbeat.
But what if we’ve been wrong all along?
For seven years, while teaching a course on sustaining long-term relationships at The School of Life in Melbourne, I asked students to imagine love, friendship, and sex as three overlapping circles. Which elements, I asked, are truly essential for a lasting relationship?
The answers came quickly for friendship and sex. But when it came to that third circle — “love” — confusion always crept in. What is love exactly? Romantic fireworks? Lifelong devotion? An emotion, a state, or something else entirely?
The Greeks had many words for it — eros, agape, philia. Yet even their nuanced vocabulary doesn’t solve the riddle. Because once the intoxicating haze of romance fades, we are left staring at the real question:
What does it mean to love someone… when you don’t feel in love anymore?
Erich Fromm’s Radical Answer
The German psychiatrist Erich Fromm, in The Art of Loving, flipped the question on its head. We obsess over how to find love or how to be loved. But according to Fromm, we’re starting in the wrong place.
Love, he argued, is not something you fall into. It’s something you do.
Not the butterflies. Not the infatuation. Not even the deep emotions we carry for family and friends. True love lives in action — in patience, kindness, attention, responsiveness, responsibility.
Falling in love is easy. Standing in love — especially under pressure, when affection feels absent — that is the real challenge.
The Work of Love
Love, Fromm insisted, is a commitment to a way of being. It’s work.
Not drudgery. Not a joyless routine. But the deliberate effort of “tending” and “attending.” Its opposite isn’t just hate or violence, but also neglect. The haunting words, “I always loved you!” mean little when love was never expressed in care, attention, or presence.
The brutal truth? The feeling of love means almost nothing without the work of love.
And yet — knowing what the most loving act is in a given moment is its own puzzle. Sometimes tenderness is needed. Sometimes firmness. Always, it requires wisdom.
Self-Love: The Harder Puzzle
The same confusion haunts our idea of self-love. In the 70s and 80s, children were fed mantras: I’m special. I can do anything. I’m wonderful. The result? Inflated egos and crushing disappointment when the world refused to echo back that “specialness.”
Real self-love is quieter, tougher, and far less glamorous. It looks like eating well. Exercising. Resting. Allowing play. Doing the daily work of tending to oneself.
Feelings of self-worth don’t create these actions — they follow them.
The Garden That Dries Up
Here’s the danger: because we believe love is a feeling, we panic when the feeling fades. We assume the love has died. But what if the problem isn’t the person, or the relationship, but our failure to water the garden?
Yes, there are bad relationships that must end. But often, love doesn’t fail — we do. Habit creeps in. We stop seeing each other with fresh eyes. Neglect replaces attention. And slowly, silently, the garden dries up.
Love survives only when we choose, again and again, to attend. To tend. To notice. To act.
The Empty Vessel Myth
When single, it’s tempting to imagine a soulmate as salvation. We think: I’m incomplete until someone fills me with love.
But here’s the paradox. They’re imagining the same thing. Two empty vessels cannot fill each other.
If we cannot give love now — in our daily lives, in how we treat ourselves, in how we treat the world — what makes us believe we’ll suddenly pour it out in abundance once “the right person” arrives?
Extravagant gestures and grand declarations may impress for a moment, but they are desserts. Not the daily bread that sustains love.
Love is a skill. A discipline. A practice.
Love Beyond People
Even without a partner, we can practice the art of loving. The mechanic who lovingly restores a car. The artist who tends to the canvas. The poet who captures beauty in overlooked places.
Love exists wherever attention and care are applied. And it vanishes wherever neglect takes over.
Mindfulness itself is love — noticing what is here, right now.
As Henry Miller once wrote: To paint is to love again. The painter’s gaze shows us the truth: love isn’t about possession. It’s about seeing. Seeing so deeply that you must share what you’ve seen.
The Impossible Ideal
We will never love perfectly. Our attention is limited. Our wisdom flawed. Our selfishness stubborn.
And yet… the pursuit matters. The striving makes us better partners, better friends, better humans.
Love, in the end, is not the sweet emotion we think it is. It is an art — relentless, demanding, and endlessly rewarding.
Not a feeling.
Not a fantasy.
But a way of being in the world.