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Love is probably the most discussed and misunderstood concept of human relationships. From early childhood, people learn that it is an essential component of life. Yet, very few really understand the complexity of love. Sometimes, people are ready to accept and forgive some extremely inappropriate behavior because of the belief in love. In reality, this mindset is a psychological trap that ruins families, relationships, and people. Raymond Carver dedicated much of his writing to love and the mistakes many make for the sake of it. Understanding what constitutes love will help correctly interpret Carvers message regarding love, families, and boundaries.
First of all, before studying Carver, it is important to outlay the definition of love. Today, society attributes this word to so many things that it becomes hard to narrow down to a specific explanation. Burunat argues that the emotion of love has little to do with feelings. In fact, she argues that it is not even an emotion (1892). It is a physiological motivation that works like hunger, sleep, and thirst. Just like wanting to eat makes people emotional about food, the desire to feel affection makes them emotional about love. Therefore, it is a mistake to attach importance to intrapersonal feelings.
Nevertheless, many people are too willing to see passion as love. As a result, when passion is fleeting they desperately look for signs of affection. What they fail to realized is that love comes in many flavors, not all of them being romantic. Fisher notes that romantic love is a relatively new concept in history (5). More specifically, its acceptance as the norm is not the traditional take. Across most of the history, marriages were organized based on arrangements and practical considerations. However, recent centuries witnessed idealization of romantic love. In many ways, mass culture, including films and books, has led to the unprecedented obsession with love.
It is a problem because it is easy to give into feelings. Unfortunately, most people are not emotionally mature enough to recognize passion. They constantly look for the feelings of extreme affection and when it is missing, they feel unhappy. Like with drugs, the high wears off, causing people to do everything to feel such sensations again. One of the consequences is the desperate lookout for signs of affection from other people. At this point, there is the risk of mistaking questionable behavior for love. People start to tolerate abuse, negativity, and deception because they believe that they signify love.
This is exactly the focus of Raymond Carvers short story What We Talk About When We Talk About Love . The story revolves around two couples, who experiences different relationships and have disagreements regarding what they truly were. One of the characters is Terri, who is into her second serious relationship. Her previous relationship was abusive, yet Terri defends her former boyfriend. She explains his beating of her as an expression of love. Moreover, her ex-boyfriend has committed suicide, which she also presents as an act of love for her (Carver 172). Another participant of this conversation is Mel, who wholeheartedly disagrees with Terri. He recounts a story about an elderly couple, which has suffered a car accident. They survived with serious injuries, which left them maimed. They were heartbroken because they could not physically see each other (Carver 183). Mel and Terri have drastically different views of love.
These stories showcase the different types of love. Terri is misguided, hungry for affection, and ready to endure abuse. Her desperate belief in love justifies in her eyes the violence her boyfriend subjected her to. This is the case of romantic love taken to extreme. In her character, Carver shows how blinded people can be by love (Allison 183). They are not capable of spotting disrespectful behaviour and establishing boundaries. The reason for their unhappiness lies in the belief in love and its idealization.
Mels story presents an entirely different situation. The spouses longing for each other comes from the sense of loss. It is also noteworthy that they are elderly people, meaning that they have overcome the passion long ago and have shifted to commitment. Unlike Terri, there is no hunger for feelings. Instead, they are connected by a hardship, which separates them and, at the same time, makes their union stronger. In comparison, Terris relationship only weakened her and caused her pain that she took for signs of love. Carver clearly shows the consequences of overrating love as the feeling.
Altogether, Carver used the story to express his discontent at the way society views love. His characters Mel and Terri represent different attitudes towards it, with Terri exemplifying the typical harmful fascination with love. Mel has a more reasonable viewpoint, which is lacking in the contemporary society. Romantic love can be dangerous and ruin lives, people, and relationships. The current obsession with it damages mental well-being and communicates a wrong message of what families should be built upon. Misunderstanding these basics leads to the ignorance, tolerance of abuse, and unhappiness, which is the result of the idealization of love.
Works Cited
Allison, Julia R. What We Talk About When We Talk About Love as an Affect: Framing Love an as Affect in the Process of Self-Formation. Philosophy of Education Archive, 2020, pp. 182-186.
Burunat, Enrique. Love is not an Emotion. Psychology, vol. 07, no. 14, 2016, pp. 1883-1910.
Carver, Raymond. What We Talk About When We Talk About Love, Random House, 2016.
Fisher, Helen E., et al. Intense, Passionate, Romantic Love: A Natural Addiction? How the Fields that Investigate Romance and Substance Abuse can Inform Each Other. Frontiers in Psychology, vol. 7, no. 687, pp. 1-10.
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