Love as a Creative Dynamic Work

Love as a Creative Dynamic Work1
Given that I have written in depth about the dominant Western concepts of love I can say that previous notions or concepts in the Western culture are 'negative' - notions of love that makes a person either never satisfied and fulfilled or demands a tragic dimension that causes someone to die, sacrifice for the others or experience a great misfortune.

Western love works on the principle of 'lack', and 'lack' is defined in various philosophical, spiritual and religious history in various ways, either lack of a primordial or pre-embodied state of the divine soul (Plato, 1960: 102), a reunion of the lost twin soul (Aristophanes in Plato, 1960: 80), a purification of the human body, nature and the restoration of the divine spark (Orphism)2, as a returning and recovering connection with God (St. Paul, 1984: 463), an everlasting desire for unattainable Dame (Villiam IX. Duke of Aquitaine in Novak, 2003: 11), restoring unity of a male and female complementarity (Rousseau, 1959: 388 or 1978: 166) and a restoration of the original family (Freud, 1995: 61). Personally, I am not for any regression to some original state (divine or familial), point zero state, ‘death’ or nirvana.

And in light of the concepts mentioned, we can say that we have came a long way from chanting about finding a lost twin (Aristophanes in Plato, 1960: 80); from chanting about wild and impossible passionate and ecstatic love (Villiam IX. Duke of Aquitaine in Novak, 2003: 9); from chanting about tender, ethereal, sweet romantic love of male and female (Rousseau, 1978: 178); chanting about mother as the source of all love (Freud, 1995: 81) or chanting about love as motivation of Christian self-sacrifice for the others (Paul, 1984: 478) and last but not least to chanting about unbridled sexual pleasures of swinging, BDSM and other diverse tastes (Soble, 2001: 23) to finally reveal new, different concepts of love.

In my opinion, people just like to meet, socialize and unite, not because of biological function (evolutionary biology, endocrinology or medicine) and not because we have to get rid of the 'dungeon' of our incarnation, according to which we are not important as individuals here and now (Orphism, Platonism, Catholicism) and also not because we used to be perfect, divine, complete, eternal, peaceful and happy (Orphism, Platonism, Catholicism, Psychoanalysis).

When and how we could be supposed that since we know only our earthly existence? Our goal is also not to present man as a some kind 'perfect machine' that has 'software' and 'hardware' in it and behaves predictably in accordance with the hardware. If we look at this view, man tends to be a solid, stable, self-contained eternal, complete whole (a kind of jigsaw puzzle made up of parts or as a clockwork made up of gears). But at the same time, it also means that we are not the only and unique (specimen) of our species and therefore nothing special, much less a 'crown of creation', because we are not significantly different from others. We are just a piece of some biological species that can be interchangeable and combinatorial.

Or if I express myself about our nonuniqueness with the example of Socrates and Alcibiades from Plato's Symposium (Plato, 1960: 113). Alcibiades, a renowned soldier, statesman and a beautiful man who could have any man, fell in love with Socrates precisely because he believed that Socrates had a distinguished feature and skill no one else had - he knew how to conjure up every situation in words, a fact or thought (probable or unbelievable, real or fictitious) so that you had a ‘feeling’ as if an ‘imagined' thought or situation appeared before you’ as completely tangible and visible. Alcibiades discovered in Socrates the extraordinary convincing power of words and spirit, which he did not find in anyone else and which, according to him, made him the most attractive and desirable of all men. But we can say that for Alcibiades this remarkable rhetorical and ‘sophistic’ feature of Socrates was so appealing because Alcibiades was a politician and one of the most important abilities of a politician is precisely the ability to persuade convincingly, to display the power of verbal sovereignty and persuasion.

In this one finds a sensible explanation as to why Alcibiades fell so much in love with Socrates and considered him unique, (better than all the others) as he surpassed all other philosophical, rhetorical and sophistic rivals. After all, Alcibiades revealed this motive by offering a bargain that if Socrates taught him these 'agalmas' of his (hidden priceless valuables of verbal persuasion), he would offer him pleasure between the sheets. The human uniqueness called agalma by Lacan is thus revealed by surpassing: (s)he is unique as long as (s)he is better at something from all the others3 (Lacan, 1996: 16). But Socrates himself objects to this notion of uniqueness (agalma) when he tells Alcibiades that he should take again a good look if he may not be mistaken, for Socrates thinks that Alcibiades is imagining things about him and that he is not the way Alcibiades perceives him to be - what Alcibiades is supposed to see in him is a reflection of his desires and beliefs, this is not Socrates as he sees and understands himself (Platon, 1960: 116). Socrates also thinks that Alcibiades is not in love with him at all, but with someone else, Agathon (ibid.: 119) and thus gives us a notion of love as desire driven by the other who responds to our desire (Lacan, 1996: 45). Therefore for the case of agalma or uniqueness of someone as a criterion for choosing someone over someone else, we can say that it is not the foundation of 'true' love too, because we seem to choose someone as the love partner who best suits our goals, desires and intentions and which complements us and (again) makes us whole.

However, on different note, to some degree Plato proposes even more unsatisfying project when he defines love as a desire for someone or something we do not have/not posses. We could say he does not proposes a bargain Alcibiades talks about but perhaps we could say with his definition of desire it would be reasonable to argue that a rich (wo)man desires poor (wo)man, educated (wo)man desires uneducated (wo)man, an accomplished (wo)man desires unaccomplished (wo)man etc. Is that really how and why we love? Even less satisfying project based on desire wanting what we do not have is courtly love. Why would I want to desire another's men woman or another's woman woman and want to cheat on him/her? I would say that despite we have many options to get what we want not all options, like stealing or cheating are allowed.

Why we would desire to steal something/someone because it is forbidden and increase desire/pleasure by wanting something it is forbidden at all? How ridiculous that is we can show by wanting to kill someone for gaining maximum pleasure. However, troubadours propose true love on desiring someone outside their marriage and even more desiring someone unattainable. The latter to a degree coincides with Christian project. Why anyone would desire something we have no knowledge of and experience whatsoever and even call it a true love? The same is with family psychoanalysis project. Most of us did not have a happy, satisfying relationship with our parents therefore it is implausible to want to repeat something that is not successful and does not give us happiness. Why would anyone in the right mind desired partnership or marriage defined in the aforementioned ways? Do we want to buy products that do not work and are broken, do we desire to use services that do not get us where we want, do we use processes that do not enable us making what we want and even less imaginable is that we would pay in advance for something we have no presentation what in fact it is, how it works and what it does. Is this how we behave in everyday life, do we found our businesses and projects on products, services, processes that do not work, they break, diminishes, vanishes? Is this is how we call ourselves successful, accomplished, rich? Would anyone support, follow and hang out with people and finance projects (products, services, processes) that would claim their added value is in their intangibility and unattainability? Would we call such people and their projects as someone and something to be excited, enthusiastic and ecstatic about? I think not.

Therefore we can summarize, if the current concepts of love have shown that a) we cannot have a satisfying relationship on the earth (because our love does not aim at the partner at all, but the restoration of a state-relationship beyond this world); b) even if we reach a partner with whom we can go for love beyond, we die on the earth; c) no relationship can completely repeat/restore the original (family or divine) relationship; d) the first ecstatic and magical moment sooner or later fleets, then the logical conclusion is futility of human endeavour for this kind of successful, functional, satisfying love relationship. In short, all the concepts of love to date hint at, show and even command the failure, unfulfillment, dissatisfaction of a love relationship that is supposed to be driven forward by our quest to finally be happy and content only as a reassured whole. Even more, if we do find the 'right' partner by chance, e.g. Aristophanes' or Rousseau's twin soul/our half or by meeting certain criteria e.g. by being a young, aristocratic, smart boy; being opened to the gracious action of God in us; to commit adultery; being attractive beauty to have a better chance of reproducing genes or to (re)produce a family novel or indulge in an 'oceanic' feeling in the 'womb', then this partnership (again) never benefits to personal happiness, satisfaction and fulfillment of the individual, instead happiness of the both partners is skipped in order to merge into some divine, eternal, perfect, primordial entity/principle.

It should be added that all the mentioned concepts (Orphism, Platonism, Catholicism, Courtly Love, Romance and Family Novel) present love's focus on the 'past' (earliest childhood and youth, previous life or the afterlife or fulfilling a certain function in relation to a partner) as some kind freeze of the life flow into an ideal structure that will not be subject to changes in time – those concepts try to prevent the many tiny and/or huge influences, a variety of experiences (metaphorically speaking in the form of slow turtles, stinging hedgehogs, ferrets, cunning foxes, diplomatic monkeys, strong lions), various scents (fragrant violets, blooming magnolias, sweet roses) and various spices (cinnamon, oregano, marjoram) on the relationship. Due to the incarnation, man has the experience that what (s)he builds, it breaks down sooner or later and that therefore (s)he needs to either work on maintenance or start anew to move things forward in this way man has always a feeling that (s)he moves forward by going a little backward (two steps forward, one step backward, sometimes two steps backward and one step forward).

Summa summarum, we can say that man's definitions of love 'paint' life as unworthy living and that we must give it up in favor of a supposedly better past, an unknowable better future, or even some other extraterrestrial world. I also think that when thinkers included divine into in a human relationship that presented someone as subordinate/inferior or dominant/superior - someone thinks (s)he is better and (s)he should be worshiped by the other, but if both persons are from God, no one wants to worship the other and both expect to be worshiped. And what happens? They distance themselves and do not perceive each other as a worthy equal partner, disillusionment follows from the original fascination, enthusiasm and excitement and relationship breaks up. But the fact is that no one is more or less worthy and it seems that values, such as equality, reciprocity, freedom have always been something that the human race did not know how to handle them in relationships. It seems as if humanity has not yet discovered the non-hierarchical principle of community organization and/or relationships.

But love is an active, equal, free and creative co-creation of the daily pleasant co-habitation of both partners, which is focused mostly on the present and partially on the future, and sometimes it must also learn something from the past (so memory is also important). We wish to be with someone we have a good time with, who is pleasant, kind, humours, does not dominate, cheat, exploit, lie or manipulate. We must emphasize that we are discussing love and loving and not infatuation that is alive as long as the feeling of the first moment lasts, the excitement of the new, which wants to keep this new feeling of the first infatuation with someone again and again. Love ‘starts’ where the infatuation ends, it is a kind of continuation of infatuation and maintaining a partnership that continues to be interesting, passionate, diversified and exciting. In love, the criteria of infatuation no longer applies.

In love, it doesn't matter what and how much you miss or lack, how much a person reminds you of your mother or father, how much spirituality someone does, how much money, education or wisdom they have under their thumb/mind or how unique and different a person is from the others, but simply the ability to accept a fellow human being as her/himself and nurture her/him in a relationship with yourself.

Love is about consciously (maintaining) movement, excitement, setting and achieving everyday small and big goals and desires for coexistence and co-habituation. This is not about ‘chemistry, electricity, construction and transport’, as some like to define love by analogies and metaphors (especially cognitive philosophers, such as Lakoff and Johnson4). Nonetheless I will use one metaphor that describes well why we insist on someone - that is a metaphor of magnet. The person with whom we decide to be in a partnership is like a magnet that constantly attracts us and keeps us close and that is why we call her/him partner (we could call him/her a 'Magnet'). However even magnet can 'worn out' at times, therefore it is even more important what Denis de Rougmont5 calls a conscious decision to hold on the relationship. Namely, Rougemont thinks that chances to meet the exact right partner is like winning a lottery and for this reason he believes that more importantly for maintaining a relationship is our conscious decision to stick to each other no matter what (then endlessly searching for our 'twin soul').

That is why I advocate in my concept of love that anyone can have a successful and happy love relationship (if they really want to). Gender, sexual orientation and sexual identity does not matter either because partners do not have to meet any other (previously mentioned) conditions/criteria except the decision to insist on each other for whatever reason and without harming each other. Of course, that there are certain personality traits that attract us more than the others and it is easier to get along with like-minded people in the long run, but it may be true that this kind of relationship could want some additional 'challenge' and excitement that comes with diversity, although of course there are also differences between similar people. In short, the concept I am proposing does not need halves, it does not need complementarity of differences, it does not need a teacher and a student, it does not need a God, it does not need 'good' genes to be loved and desired – but it does need that each partner is seen, heared, cherished, understood.

No one wishes to be with partner who does not cherish her/him, who is not interested in what partner thinks/feels/does/say and of course partners need to be recognized and accepted, which means, partners stay the way they are since it was that that made someone attracted to the other but at the same time they can grow and become better, precisely because of the relationship in which they are. Partner(s) can encourage(s) him/her to improve, supplement, perfect, grow, upgrade if that is what (s)she wishes for and if that means that partnership becomes more pleasant for both partners involved.

Let be the motto of our partnership that we are happier and/or better people both personally, in partnership, in the family, as well as in the neighborhood, community, nationality, state and, last but not least, in cosmopolitan sense because we love and are loved. Of course, someone could accuse me that this is naive, idealistic and in contradiction with the thesis just given that everyone can be as (s)he is and be loved in such a way regardless of what and how (s)he is. Of course. I'm not saying that each partner has to develop in a specific direction - some simply want to be and stay the way they are; for some it's good to be honest, good and truthful; for others it is good if they are cunning cheaters, calculating and convincing manipulators; for others it is good if they are picky pentathletes and hedonists; for some to be successful business leaders and creators of social trends, for some to be good providers and parents and so on. The partners in the relationship agree on what they want to develop, design, upgrade and improve – there are not upfront and beforehand obligatory formulas, schematics and theories of what is right and wrong, how things should be, how partners should feel, think and do, however the core point is not to harm each other in any way that would cause physical and psychological damage and harm partner's integrity.

So personally, in addition to the excitements and joy of the first moments - the first meeting with the eyes, the first smiles, the first kisses, touches, exchanged words, the first meetings, first intimacies -, I am mainly interested in all other moments that make up the content of our relationships. Why not simply perceive each other as an extraordinary gift that has been entrusted to us as something precious in our lives - something we want to preserve and protect in our lives. Maybe you have not perieceved a newly discovered lover/partner as that way before but you surely get that attitude after you lose your loved one by tragic accident or an act of aggression.

When we realize that beloved one is one of the greatest gifts we can see love as a non-perfect, though sometimes perfect; it may seem non-complete, although it gives a sense of completeness; because it is placed in space-time, it is non-eternal, although it sometimes stretches over everything and becomes and gives the feeling of being eternal; perhaps, after many years of a long-term relationship, it seems non-ecstatic, repetitive and boring, although it can sometimes still be very ecstatic, inspiring and enthusiastic; though sometimes disappoint, it can also make you fulfilled; perhaps to a certain extent it gives a feeling of full commitment and thus (non) freedom, but it gives all the freedom within the committed relationship; sometimes because of certain differences it seem to exist a non-understanding in relationship, although through the seeming ‘veil of clouds’ it sometimes offers an abundance of understanding and empathy; sometimes it triggers conflicts, but through them it triggers the desire to communicate and resolve them, and therefore grows and builds a relationship into a dialogue; sometimes we are very close to each other, then something takes takes us away and we become distant for a while and which makes us want proximity again, and last but not least, sometimes we seriously think about how it might be better with someone else, and then an event occurs that reminds us how happy and grateful we are to have such partner. In order for latter to occur it is best we have a realistic outlook on our partner from the start and not initially place her/him on a pedestal to crash her/him later by throwing her/him off the pedestal and change for another person to worship. It is important to understand we are all just humans with our strengths and weaknesses and that no one is perfect, including us.

Love is precisely the coexistence of partners in all dimensions and understanding that it is part of the personal, partner and family coexistence that makes us happy and which creates us even more successful, diligent and hardworking person than we would otherwise be. Thus in love defined this way, there are no right or wrong partners, no partners destined to meet, no losers or winners, but if I express myself metaphorically only 'runners' for short or long distances. The latter are the most interesting to me, as the power, force and quality of love is shown by 'the long-distance runners'. For love happens and is happening, and it is therefore not a single event (the first moment, the first meeting, the first confrontation, the first kiss, the first quarrel or misunderstanding occurs and everything ensuing in the relationship is happening over and over again).

As we said before, it is important to understand the difference between infatuation and love, infatuation occurs, love is happening. They say it’s hard to get to the top, but staying on top is the hardest - the same is with love, it’s relatively easy and quick to enter into a relationship when you’re in love, but to stay in it for a long period of time is like surfing the ‘wave’ (as long as possible) - on a 'wave' from which you can easily 'fall' (as proved by the large number of divorces in the first years after marriage) and more importantly that if you 'fall' you should quickly return to the wave, catch the rhythm again and (as long as possible) continue surfing - this is the art of love (of the long runners) and this is the art of life, one of the biggest 'constants' of which is change. And maybe that is why one of the things I have noticed in a partnership is that people often want 'innovation' and change as if the nature offers innovation every day. In nature, innovations are rare, so are in human history of love concepts.6

Thus my concept of love does not strive for eternal and perfect harmony and equalisation of differences within similarities but it also does not seek constant change and excitement through novelties; it does not want to get the other person in permanent possession but it does not use her/his shortcomings and mistakes to feel confident and (forever) desirable, last but not least, it does not use partner for her/his own worship, salvation and exaltation, but each of the partners live and coexist with her/his advantages and disadvantages, strengths and weaknesses7.

Also, the partners do not want to merge and reunite, although living together and orgasms in sexuality give a feeling of unity, however meeting, choosing and being together as partners were made on everyday, mundane event when a mutual friend introduced them one evening at the annual film festival (this is completely arbitrary event, but at the same time a probable and realistic idea of a meeting. Of course I could also decide to present an extraordinary event or place that gave their first meeting a rather special meaning): despite they were both single, they were not really looking for a new partner, they happened to be in the same place at the same time when they met and started conversation initiated by mutual friend and through conversation found out they perceived each other pleasant, interesting and attractive.

Therefore they are not together because they are sinful, untrue, half, sentient, and would use each other as a means to an end, such as cleansing, salvation, merging, or even raising a social status (which I haven't mentioned yet it is one of the oldest prevailing idea for partnership). Therefore 'this' pair is together because partners found each other by coincidence, but nothing would be wrong if they didn't find each other, they would just meet someone else. It is important, however, that when they found each other, they decided to stay together because they found each other attractive, enthusiastic, exciting and interesting.

This decision was not made on the ground what they should do together, without excessive ambition what to expect from each other (this constant burden with the function either of reproduction or status relationship has burdened partnership and marriage for millennia, although I should emphasize that in this concept sensuality and sexuality are as important as spirituality and intellectuality), but it all happened spontaneously: if they decided to marry and have children they got it, if not, they do not; if they attend social and cultural events together, it’s okay, if not, it’s okay too; they may not even go to film festivals or other cultural events together anymore, however if they agree to still doing it, that’s fine too; if they have business together and that suits them, it is okay to do business together, if they are for diversity and inclusiveness it is okay. They still think for themselves, dream and fantasize in each their own way, but since they have been together, they share thoughts, dreams and fantasies about some things and also make them come true together, and this is to their greatest joy, satisfaction and fulfillment. They have never felt so happy, joyful, free and self-fulfilled with anyone, each of them is for themselves and at the same time they have each other so they can grow and fulfill their dreams and desires together and achieve their individual and common goals.

In short, there is no big reason why they stayed together - they might not, but they said to each other why not and sticked to their decision to maintain the relationship because they like and love each other, their touches and kisses are delicious, sensual and passionate, they like the way they smell to each other, their tone of voices resonate with each other and they like the way they talk to each other, their thoughts and beliefs are similar, they like what they do professionally, as well as their education and general outlook at life. And so they happened together and each for themselves - everything they (did) and what happened to them has been love - that is, to be together in good and bad times (they listen to each other, support and encourage each other, understand and empathize with each other)!

But at the same time, this does not mean that their relationship is a matter of 'sole spontaneity and coincidence', the most important is, as it has been said, the decision: after the infatuation fades the most important is the decision to continue, work and insist on a partnership (for better or worse). Work includes adaptability, patience, persistence, trust, kindness, conversation, humor and creativity – that is which gives the most success, happiness and satisfaction in a partnership. Therefore we can rightfully say that love is creative, intellectual, philosophical, sensual, and sexual work – it is something as going with the flow and at the same consciously deciding, shaping and co-deciding, co-shaping the flow. In fact, love as creative and dynamic work shape different forms of meeting, exchanging, socialising and coexisting between people which include profound and subtle proximity and intimacy. There are other forms of socialising and meetings, such as business association, social organization but only love includes intimacy and profound proximity.

Of course, there are different love forms, intimate socializing and coexistence between people: one night stand, occasional, casual meetings, infatuation, open relationship, polyamorous long-term or monogamous long-term relationship and different forms of partnership according to sexual orientation and sexual identity of people, heterosexual, bisexual, homosexual, pansexual or asexual partnership. Some character traits, values, beliefs and judgements of the partners also contribute to a happy, successful, fulfilling and long-lasting partnership - similarity of the character, similar values and beliefs indicate greater success and happiness of a partnership. But, of course, too much similarity is not good either, as it can contribute to boredom, thus some diversity is also important, which means that love expresses a certain degree of 'slight imbalance', thus maintaining the dynamics, creativity and desire for progress and improvement, as opposing to imagined ideal partnership where strive for perfection8 suppresses the dynamic and leaves no room creativity. Slight imbalance creates a complex structure of partnership, a structure whose connections are not so easy to see and decipher, as would appears at the first glance, which makes relationship more fulfilling, interesting, wise and requires more communication, knowledge, experience, investment, effort, insistence and cooperation.

Therefore the proposed love structure is a structure of creativity and dynamics, semi open structure of different possibilities that arise and test the pleasantness of different and similar beliefs, values, views, touches, tastes, contacts, encounters and coexistence. In addition, it is a relationship that favors a successful, fulfilled, and happy long-term partnership or marriage (with or without children).

In this way, my concept has little or no connection with any of the tragic notions of love (for example, the ancient, tragic, courtly or passionate concept of love) and even less with any of the sacred notions of love, as I am talking about a completely everyday working partnership for here and now, which is based on philosophical ethics and in no way relies on ‘miracles’, ‘irrationality’, ‘complementarity’ or vertical ‘hierarchy’. Partners who do not intend to get together and/or coexist and make each other happy and offer satisfaction, pleasure, support, understanding and empathy, have nothing to do with each together. Also this relationship allows everything that both partner mutual agree and where consent is the most important and relationship is valid to cease to exist if (verbal, physical, financial) violence, disrespect, neglect, cheating and disloyalty is involved.

And let me add another aspect to this: when love is given as coexistence, whose function ('instruments and compass') is not given in advance, such love is (can be) also as a 'free adventure and innovation' and discovery of hitherto unknown personal landscapes' (thoughts, emotions, actions), but that does not mean that it is not serious and binding for both partners. Therefore, all those who are not ready for this kind of 'creative dynamic adventure' love, in which hunting lions, prickly hedgehogs, slow turtles, cunning monkeys and trapping crabs, metaphorically speaking, can lurk on partners both from outside and inside should avoid such kind of a 'progressive' relationship and stick to a more 'traditional' relationship.

Thus I may say that my concept of love offers no special, ecstatic, alleviating feeling as well as neither commanding, universal or hundred pages long debating about the depthness and wideness of love but what offers is creativity, dynamics and sort of 'adventure' because this kind of love involves active creative partners who negotiate, consent and work on the type of the relationship they mutually agreed with aim of one and only one motive, that the partnership would be happy, peaceful and satisfying for both partners and would not allow violence, abuse, inequality, exploitation, cheating, manipulation in any way whatsoever.

Why I argue for such position? Because people in partnership may experience some sort of abuse, manipulation, inequality, cheating and exploitation and all sorts of emotions preeceding these, from envy, jelousy9, to anger, sadness and alike. Personal love has typically been seen (not only by philosophers) as a source of a moral danger because of its partiality and form of vulnerability it involves, which make a connection with jealousy9, envy, anger or any other emotion and the role these tumultuous experiences play in thought about the good, and the just of romantic relationship itself.

Let me conclude. Until now, the concepts of love were mainly those that did not give instructions how to make partners truly happy and satisfied. I have mentioned such concepts several times, precisely in order to make people aware of them and not to repeat them. I also tried to make my concept simple, understandable, dynamic and creative, so that people could include their own vision, knowledge, experiences and wishes into it - thus it is also inclusive, diverse, free and democratic. And as this concept of mine does not reflect big words and ambition, I do not think people in general have big ambitions, ideas, desires, and efforts about love either, and I do not believe they have ever had. However, there were certain individuals throughout history who had a certain vision of love, but at the same time they were also very good PR people themselves or had friends who took care of their public relations opinion and in this way made lots of people aware of their vision of love.

And as Plato said in the Symposium and we keep forgetting it, the fact is that in every age there are always several different concepts of love (today more than ever before), but only one concept usually prevails. Plato did not answer why this happens, but I think it is precisely because some are better and more convincing in self-promotion than the others, and this is aided by general social circumstances that are more conducive to a particular concept of love at a certain period of time. I hope that my concept will also appeal to nowadays readers.

References
1 Despite I had two long-term ex-girlfriends I most learned about the unconditional love (to care, protect, love, feed and be with them and for them all the time) my three animals, dog Ron, cats Anja and Venčeslav. They have been my true companions. Namely, I have been single and without friends since January 2009 therefore this article is dedicated to my aforementioned animals.
2 Orphism contains the predisposition of the doctrine of Eros, as can be seen from the central myth of Zagreus or Dionysus. This myth speaks of Zeus' decision that his son (Zagreus or Dionysus) would take over the world. But when Zagreus was still a child, he was captured by the Titans and devoured by them. Zeus punished them for this by striking with lightning and destroying them. He then created the human race from the ashes of the Titans. The latter part of the myth is interesting to us because it contains an explanation of human dual nature that is both similar to the deity and in a hostile relationship with it. This dual nature explains man's double origin: created from the ashes of the Titans, humanity dislike God, but because there was also something divine in their ashes (remains of devoured Dionysus), there is also something divine in Man. Man thus belongs to two worlds by his origin: he is an earthly being with a titanic nature which has a divine spark in him. This divine element must be freed from the shackles of the earthly and sensual body. Namely, in order for the divine mind or divine soul of man to return to the divine life he must free himself from the sensory and earthly shackles. In Orphism, for the divine soul, the path of salvation is the path of purification and catharsis with the purpose of the final union of the soul with its divine origins. Or to put it another way: man is a descendant of God, with the rational part of his soul being part of the divine cosmic reason. All a man has to do is remember his original state, know the true self, and ascend to the deity (Nygren, 1953: 163–164).
3 Like love is some kind of olympic discipline who is better lover/partner from the other.
4 Lakoff, George, Johnson, Mark 1999. Philosophy in the Flesh, NY: Basic Books.
5 Rougemont, de Denise 1956. Love in the Western World, NY: Pantheon Books.
6 On the list of the above-mentioned concepts, dating back to 2,400 B.C. there are only three innovations, the rest are modifications of the previous concepts.
7 After all, how imperfect we are is revealed by the very mentioned concepts of the halves, teacher-student, child-mother relationship, etc.
8 In fact, perhaps this world never wanted to be made in the ‘perfect image’ (and being aware of the imperfections of this world, some people imagined a perfect divine afterworld). This world expresses an essentially creative, dynamic, evolutionary principle through ‘slight’ imbalance' and as we have not yet discovered and do not know, for example, a perfect washing powder, perfect toothpaste, perfect technological or IT product, so we also don't know the perfect love, partnership and the perfect partner. In fact, we do not even have an idea of what is supposed to be perfect and thus we imagine the idea of perfection in relation to the previous known level of (im)perfection(s) - what we know are 'partial' 'perfections' and what we have so far been able to determine according to the descriptions as superb, excellent, great, well, bad, deficient and invalid. In short, the success and happiness of a relationship can only be measured in the relative sustainable form of partnership as mutually agreed ‘good/great configuration of a particular relationship’. However, this still does not mean that we do not measure the longevity of a partnership by the desire for a long-term partnership or that other forms of partnerships are less successful and happy. They are less successful only relatively - if partners only want casual meetings, it is successful and happy for them; if the partners want to swing and meet other partners, or be in a long-term monogamous or polyamorous relationship then such types of relationships are happy and successful to the mentioned types of partners.
9 Emotions suggest also a central role for the arts in human self-understanding: for narrative artworks of various kinds (whether musical, visual or literary) give us information about these emotion events and emotional histories that we could not easily get otherwise. »This is what Proust meant when he claimed that certain truths about the human emotions can be best conveyed, in verbal and textual form, only by a narrative work of art: only such a work will accurately and fully show the interrelated temporal structure of emotional 'thoughts'« (Nussbaum, 2001: 22). Narrative artworks are thus important because of what they do in the emotional life. They do not simply represent that history, they enter into it and educate people about the emotions.

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