The Four Loves by C.S. Lewis

I really enjoy C.S. Lewis.  I haven't read many of his books (and ironically only have read his non-fiction stuff), but I love his quotes and thoughts.  I read A Grief Observed towards the end of last year.

The Four Loves was an interesting book.  Lewis broke down the human/Godly notion/emotion of love into various parts.  I'm going to try my best to summarize them, but Lewis I am not, so to get the fullness of the book, you'll want to read it.

There are three "categories" of love that exist to make up the four loves.  They are as follows, and may exist independently but usually exist in combination with one another:

• Need-love: Exists because of the need to love and be loved.  This can be a selfish love, but not totally selfish as we need love just as we need food.  However, it may disappear once the need for it is satisfied.
• Gift-love: This love exists to be totally selfless. It is the type of love that is given without anything expected in return. 
• Appreciative-love: This love exists because of the appreciation of something.  It happens when the giver deems that the receiver is worthy of love.  

Next a quick summary of the four loves:

• Affection: This is the type of love that happens between parents and children, people who have grown accustom to being around each other (roommates, coworkers, etc).  It's the type of love you have for people you are comfortable around (in a sense).  However, a downfall to this type of love is that it can cause you to get too comfortable and lack common courtesy.  Jealousy can stem from this type of love as well.
• Friendship: This type of love is both the least common and least natural.  He states it is actually the greatest of the non-Godly loves. It does not have jealousy because sharing with more friends tends to improve the friendship.  It's also a totally unnecessary love, but one that improves our survival (we don't need friendship to survive, but it does provide value to the survival).  What was particularly interesting to me was the distinction he pointed out between companionship and true friendship.  He also said it is spiritual but not holy and that it is "the instrument by which God reveals to each the beauties of all the others".
• Eros: This type of love is often spoke of negatively by Christians.  It is romantic love which may or may not be sexual in nature.  Lust vs eros is discussed here as well (from a man's perspective because Lewis is male: lust is the pleasure a man can derive from a woman, the woman is simply the way the pleasure is delivered; eros is the desire for the woman herself regardless as to if he could derive pleasure from her or pleasure compared to other women).  He mentions that a man would stay with a woman he loved but knew would not make him happy because he thinks it would be better to be unhappy with her than happy without her.  
• Charity: This type of love is the love that God bestows upon us.  While he does not ever use the term "Agape" that is what he is meaning here.  He states that this type of love is what allows people to give their lives to God.  He goes into more detail here, but not in a way that is easily summarized.  Essentially it's loving the unlovable.  

Lewis also says that each type of love is like a garden, unless it is tended to and not just planted, then the love cannot stay good and will turn bad.  He also went on to talk about how each of the loves is trying to prepare us to love God, because we can't fully grasp how we will love Him.  There was a section in there about if we will still feel the same about our Beloveds in Heaven and it was pretty interesting as well.  (Depends on how you loved them, essentially.)

A sampling of my favorite quotes from this book to leave you with (there's a lot, I really like C.S. Lewis, especially the stuff on Friendship):

Need love says of a woman "I cannot live without her"; Gift-love longs to give her happiness, comfort, protection - if possible, wealth; Appreciative love gazes and holds its breath and is silent, rejoices that such a wonder should exist even if not for him, will not be wholly dejected by losing her, would rather have it so than never to have seen her at all." 

Nor do I question for a moment that Affection is responsible for nine-tenths of whatever solid and durable happiness there is in our natural lives.

But very few modern people think Friendship a love of comparable value or even a love at all.

But in Friendship - in that luminous, tranquil, rational world of relationships freely chosen - you got away from all that.  This alone, of all the loves, seemed to raise you to the level of gods or angels.

When the two people who thus discover that they are on the same secret road are of different sexes, the friendship which arises between them will very easily pass - may pass in the first half-hour - into erotic love.  Indeed, unless they are physically repulsive to each other or unless one or both of already loves elsewhere, it is almost certain to do so sooner or later. (Apparently Lewis buys into the "When Harry Met Sally" theory that men and women can never be "just friends")

Eros will have naked bodies; Friendship will have naked personalities.