Storge - Familial Love

According to the ancient Greeks, there are 7 basic types of love. There's love that encompasses general goodwill to all of humanity (agape); love that is rooted in duty (pragma); love that is based on friendship (philia)...

There's also love that is familial - storge.

I find myself wondering how the Greeks would characterize love of family members that is also rooted in duty?

                                                  

Yesterday, we celebrated my Dad's 78th birthday. He asked for the same thing he asks for every birthday and every Father's Day: for the family to watch a video of his choosing together. 

One year, it might be a video about how the earth is only 5,000 years old. 

The next year, it might be one about how the complexity of the human eyeball proves unequivocally that God created the earth.

Last night, it was a video filmed at his mega-church about how "the Woke movement is anti-Biblical."

I had already been descending into a dark, dark place. I was having trouble sleeping, eating, and focusing at my new job. But I sat there last night watching my dad as he played this video, and my heart broke a little.

This is the man who'd fixed my car a million times; rubbed my back in the mornings to wake me up slowly; taught me that checks weren't just pieces of paper you could write indiscriminate amounts of money on; joined a volleyball league with me in high school because no amount of work seemed to make me any better, and I desperately wanted to be part of a team.

When I went home, I started researching the Bishop behind last night's "anti-woke" video. He did, as Dad pointed out, run for President... along with 290 other hopefuls who didn't make it past the primaries. His campaign promises were chilling.

It's tempting to say, "This is manipulative and I'm not doing it anymore. You can't coerce someone into watching propaganda by co-opting their love."

But I also have a lot of compassion for people who genuinely, truly believe that their God will burn me in hell forever if they do not save me. I know from first-hand experience what a heavy burden that is, and so I find myself torn between self-preservation and compassion.

I also find myself struggling to make sense of the person my father has become and wondering how he can't see that making me watch these videos isn't saving my soul or reconciling me with the rest of the family. On the contrary, it's making me mourn the loss of the father I knew growing up and wonder how little family time I can get away with from here on out. Until... what? Until he dies?

What do you do when the person you thought you knew turns out to be someone else entirely? How do you reconcile their disparate parts?

I wonder about that with other kinds of love, too.

The Greeks say that eros is love that is sexual or passionate and ludus is love that is casual and noncommittal. Is there a love that is passionate, wanted to commit, but got screwed over and had to self-eject before the other person destroyed it?

Because I know that kind of love.

Is there a word for, "You're perfect for me in almost every way except for that you cannot give me a bunch of biological children, which is my main goal in life?"

or

"I know I ended things a year ago but decided to come back around to tell you I'm dating lots of women these days, but I'm still really attracted to you!"

Is there a word that means, "I would and could love you, but you are unhealthy AF and also emotionally unavailable?"

It really grinds my cockleburs to see people who have engaged in, like, 12 seconds of therapy find and connect with a partner after one day on an app or one set-up by friends. (Yes. I am talking specifically about former-boss and current-friend Amy, who swiped on exactly 3 profiles before finding and marrying the love of her life, Ross.) 

And whatever, even if most people don't end up spending their life with that person, they still manage some kind of human engagement for an extended period of time, which is more than I can say. I am not sure I have ever felt quite so broken. It's like the last 12 months of therapy, saving, and traveling didn't happen at all. I hate that one person can undo all that.

Maybe people really did have it right in the olden days, when they used to set up their friends with someone they already knew was a really good person. Hell, I don't even need a really good person -- maybe just someone who is emotionally available, not an addict, and committed to growth. I'm serious. If you know such a person, send him my way.