A true friendship between spouses is one of the deepest and most beautiful relationships in human life. We don’t always speak of the relationship between married or dating individuals as a friendship, but it can be considered a type of friendship.

Thus, any insight into the nature of friendship can shed light on the nature of the friendship involved in romantic relationships. Aristotle famously explained the different grades of friendship in “The Nicomachean Ethics.”

• The friendship of utility. The lowest and weakest type of friendship, this consists of a relationship between two people based solely on how they benefit one another. “Now those who love each other for their utility do not love each other for themselves but in virtue of some good which they get from each other,” Aristotle writes. A work relationship might fall into this category. If you’re friends with an influential person simply in hopes of advancing your career, that’s a friendship of utility.
• The friendship of pleasure. When two people are friends simply because they find each other charming and pleasant to be around, or if they’re friends solely because they find the same type of activity pleasant, they’re engaged in a friendship of pleasure. This friendship has more substance than the first, but remains somewhat egotistical, since the friendship is about the pleasure the other person can provide. Young people are particularly prone to this type of friendship.
• The perfect friendship of the virtuous. “Perfect friendship is the friendship of men who are good, and alike in virtue,” Aristotle writes, “for these wish well alike to each other qua good, and they are good in themselves. Now those who wish well to their friends for their sake are most truly friends; for they do this by reason of their own nature and not incidentally.” This perfect form of friendship involves desiring whatever is good for the other person, rather than just seeking utility or pleasure from them. It is altruistic. It’s also built on the friends’ shared love of virtue, their recognition of virtue in one another, and their efforts to help one another live virtuously. While it contains elements of the utilitarian or pleasant friendship, it also greatly transcends those elements.

These distinctions, while referring to friendship in general, can certainly be applied to romantic relationships, offering us a deeper look at what makes for a healthy or unhealthy romance. Karol Wojtyla (before he was Pope John Paul II) did precisely this in “Love and Responsibility,” taking Aristotle’s ideas about friendship and applying them specifically to romantic relationships. We’ll make use of his thoughts in understanding the romantic implications of Aristotle’s ideas on friendship.

Corresponding to Aristotle’s first level of friendship, some couples date one another for purely utilitarian reasons, seeing in their partner a means of raising their own social status or increasing their wealth. Aristotle says this friendship is fragile and impermanent because as soon as one person becomes non-useful to the other, the friendship has no grounding and it dies. The same holds true for romantic relationships in this category.

Other couples date one another for the pleasure they give each other. Relationships based purely on sex appeal and sexual gratification fall into this category, as do relationships where the couple just finds one another fun to be around, but don’t necessarily connect on a deeper level. Like the romance of utility, the romance of pleasure proves deeply unstable – as soon as either of the participants changes and becomes less pleasant, the relationship is in danger of ending.

Wojtyla describes the process and its causes:

It is difficult, however, when each or for that matter either of the persons brings to their ‘mutual love’ only a ‘consumer’ attitude, a utilitarian intent. A woman and a man can afford each other pleasure of a sexual nature, can be for each other the source of various enjoyments. However, mere pleasure, mere sensual enjoyment is not a good which binds and unites people for long, as Aristotle has most justly observed. A woman and a man, if their ‘mutual love’ depends merely on pleasure or self interest, will be tied to each other just as long as they remain a source of pleasure or profit for each other. The moment this comes to an end, the reason for their ‘love’ will end, the illusion of reciprocity will burst like a bubble.

This lies at the root of many modern divorces. Because the architecture of the marriage was built on the sandy foundation of mere pleasure or usefulness, it collapses when that foundation shifts – as it inevitably will.

Finally, the best type of romantic relationship, while it certainly can contain elements of utility and pleasure, will greatly transcend them. A true romance involves not merely desire or pleasure, but altruism and self-sacrifice. The man loves the woman for who she is, not merely what she can give him, and vice versa. That being the case, they both desire and pursue what is best for the other. They wish to see the beloved flourish simply out of unselfish love. This commitment occurs at the level of the will, not merely the appetites or emotions, and for that reason it’s diamond-hard, immovable; it doesn’t change with shifting moods. Wojtyla writes:

Love between man and woman would be evil, or at least incomplete, if it went no farther than love as desire. For love as desire is not the whole essence of love between persons. It is not enough to long for a person as a good for oneself, one must also, and above all, long for that person’s good. This uncompromisingly altruistic orientation of the will and feelings is called in the language of St Thomas amor benevolentiae or benevolentia for short, which corresponds … to our concept of goodwill.

Of course, a true romance will also involve desire and a yearning for what the other person can provide in terms of pleasure and joy. “[Desire] results from the fact that the human person is a limited being, not self sufficient and therefore … needs other beings,” Wojtyla writes. The man and woman complete one another, providing something the other is lacking. Ultimately, however, man and woman cannot fulfill one another completely. “Realization of the limitation and insufficiency of the human being is the starting point for an understanding of man’s relation to God,” Wojytla adds.

Even though mutual desire between man and woman is natural and good, love cannot stop there. It must go further, especially as the couple grows older. “The love of person for person must be benevolent, or it will not be genuine,” Wojytla argues. “Indeed, it will not be love at all, but only egoism.” It must transform into something outward-looking and reciprocal, bringing together both desire and self-sacrifice. “Reciprocity brings with it a synthesis, as it were, of love as desire and love as goodwill.”

This synthesis of desire and goodwill is the key to escaping the withering of romantic relationships. It provides the necessary stability. “So then – it comes back to Aristotle’s thought – if that which each of the two persons contributes to their reciprocal love is his or her personal love, but a love of the highest ethical value, virtuous love, then reciprocity assumes the characteristics of durability and reliability,” Wojtyla writes.

That stability, that eternal love and commitment, is what all lovers yearn for, ultimately. Aristotle, interpreted by Wojtyla, helps us see the path to this kind of ideal romance. Difficult, challenging, yes, but worth striving for.

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This article was made possible by The Fred & Rheta Skelton Center for Cultural Renewal.

Image credit: Pxhere