The Shape of Love

Wassily Kandinsky, Variegation in the Triangle (1927)

I’ve been thinking about the different ways to diagram love. Both what love consists of and what two bodies existing together looks like in space. At its simplest, love to me is two playing cards leaning against each other, helping each other withstand the wind of the world. When there is a solid foundation upon which these two people exist, that is the third card, the bottom card. These two cards are in careful agreement, a careful dance, upon which they must trust the other card fully, and give their full support back as well. Without this, they will blow down. Alone, each card cannot weather the storm as well, no matter how much they try, it will never compare to the structure of them together. I lean on you, you lean on me. Between us there is an agreement, a mutual understanding of what’s at stake, a grim awareness of what becomes of us if one falters and leaves - we fall down. We can bring ourselves back up but we now know how much more vulnerable we are alone. I’m so sick and tired of this idea that humans can handle isolation. We are meant to be together, there for each other, facing the world together. It does not make one weak to seek company. With isolation, proliferation dies.

A friend, upon listening to me discuss this topic for a bit, also expanded upon the notion that love is revolutionary in a capitalist society. Here, unity is discouraged because it would destroy the current model that serves those at the top. To love is to be revolutionary. “Love is profoundly political. Our deepest revolution will come when we understand this truth.” - bell hooks.

However, when I think about this diagram in terms of representing love, instead of the lovers, it must always consist of three cards or else it is not complete. Where one card exists is not important, any card may be the foundation, any card a side wall. The walls are physical love, emotional love, and intellectual love. When there are just two, the triangle feels its lack of completeness. The heart feels unfulfilled, or the brain, or our body. To build the structure is to create harmony, within oneself and within the communion of the relationship. Only when all three exist, can each be fully realized itself. Without the trifecta, the full force of the relationship cannot be fully realized or felt by either party, for one will be withholding in one aspect, and the others will follow suit, knowing it is not safe to fully commit. Full love is to give oneself over fully. Not in terms of ownership, but in terms of full committal passion and devotion.

When I looked up “diagrams of love”, I was met with images of locks, hearts, and a multitude of venn diagrams. Some with only two circles, others with up to four. How different shared intentions and involvement create different types of relationships - friendship, intimacy, romance. This particular diagram I reference uses its three circles as commitment, affection, and passion. Another; sex, love, friendship. Another, of course, lists what love is in terms of Christianity, which I must argue is less a diagram of any kind and more like a flower with petals and love as the center face. Worth the google for the laughs alone, in my opinion.

At last, I find some diagrams that resemble mine, a triangle. Perhaps I gravitated towards a triangle because even if love can’t be represented fully by a three-sided shape, at its core, a triangle represents unity. The concept of unity, of course, calls forth the Aristotelian view and story that we are merely halves trying to find our other half so that we may join together and become whole again. While I am personally of the belief that we are not roaming around existing in halves, trying desperately to become whole again and thus achieve salvation through partnership, I do enjoy the proposed peace that comes with such a relationship. Through unity, your struggles become mine, and mine yours.

When I add “philosophy” to the end of my search, some new shapes and images appear. This time with concepts like eros, agape, storge, and philia. Concepts I first learned about my freshman year of college in my erotic philosophy class. There is also a chart that displays the type of love that is theorized through famous philosophers; Platonic love is ideal, Descartian love is methodological, Marxian love is revolutionary, and so on and so forth. Admittedly, I laugh a little at this graphic, but it also makes me desire to see how each of these forms of love would be represented in movies and novels. With a full plot and fleshed out and flawed characters, what would Descartian love even look like?

Erich Fromm writes that love is an activity, not a passive affect; it is a “standing in”, not a “falling for”. The active character of love can be described by stating that love is primarily giving, not receiving.

By that notion, it makes sense to me that whatever physical manifestation or shape I try to represent love with, it ultimately needs to agree with the concept of support; rather than, say, two people jumping off a cliff and blindly “falling” for or into love. At its simplest 2D shape, a triangle has the previously mentioned aspects of emotion, intellectual, and physical love, but if we go a step further and look at a triangular pyramid, it gives spaces for other aspects deemed important by writers and philosophers. For bell hooks, these dimensions were: care, commitment, trust, responsibility, respect, and knowledge. For Erich Fromm they were: caring, responsibility, respect, and knowledge.

Maybe the best way to represent love is just two dancers, moving together, lifting each other, holding each up against the weight of the world as best they can.