These days it has become more common for us to fall into the trap of thinking that love is nothing more than a pleasant feeling, an experience we might be lucky enough to have, or something nice that comes along for some but not for everyone. Erich Fromm thinks differently: he believes that love is an art, in so much as it requires wisdom and a fair amount of effort.
Another common misconception is that love means being loved more than actually loving. These people end up looking for ways to find someone to love them, trying to make themselves loveable and desirable to others. Some people seek power, wealth or prestige, others work hard on their appearance, and others go to great lengths to appear interesting. They do everything they can to make themselves attractive, to possess a certain number of desirable qualities, but they fail to realise that those aesthetic or intellectual qualities depend heavily on the period in history we live in.
In addition, many people think that loving is easy, and that the difficult part is finding the right person to love and be loved by. People seem to be very confused by the initial experience of falling in love and the long term state of staying in love. In the beginning of a relationship, everything seems to go swimmingly, but, as couples become more intimate, and get to know each other better, the initial excitement and lovely synchronicity become replaced by differing opinions and personality clashes.
All these erroneous beliefs about love create confusion, leaving us feeling crestfallen and disoriented. To overcome such feelings, the first thing we need to do is understand that love is an art, just like painting, music or poetry. If we really and truly want to love, we need to approach learning this art as we would any other art that is important to us.
