Love is a curious thing, and we as humans have studied it since the ancient times. Cultures from all over the world have their own take on what is “true love”, and it means something different to everyone. To some, love is a warm feeling in the pit of your stomach. For others, it is a trust and bond that only a select few are privilege to.
There are even some who’d say they would die or kill for love.
Mania, and the Six Styles of Love
Manic Loveless
https://manic-loveless.tumblr.com/post/105980230729/mania-and-the-six-styles-of-love
Love is a curious thing, and we as humans have studied it since the ancient times. Cultures from all over the world have their own take on what is “true love”, and it means something different to everyone. To some, love is a warm feeling in the pit of your stomach. For others, it is a trust and bond that only a select few are privilege to.
There are even some who’d say they would die or kill for love. We’re here to talk about those people.
While there have been many concepts of love throughout history, today I’d like us to focus on a more modern theory, developed by Canadian Sociologist John Alan Lee in the 1970s. It is an ideology of love that recognizes love as different styles. These styles differ quite radically, but rather than one being superior to another, he attributed these styles to resemble colors. There is no right style of love, just as to say there is no right color. However, there are colors that you may prefer more than others, and Lee argued that love can be seen in the same way. Some people like a calm blue, others a more passionate red.
Among the love styles that Lee defined is mania, an intense, emotional love. Here at Manic Loveless, we will be studying manic love, unraveling its history and its use in fiction. Before we get to that, however, we must take a quick look at the other styles first. After all, one cannot create violet without red and blue. So let’s take a look now at the three primary love styles.
The Three Primary Styles of Love
Just like colors, when you mix different love styles together, you lose a few of the old attributes to make way for new ones. The following are secondary love styles, which are made up of the primary styles but have unique characteristics of their own.
The Three Secondary Styles of Love
And lastly…
Manic love is a popular trope that we often associate with crazy exes who can never let go, or stalkers who know everything about you. They may even make secret shrines in their closet dedicated to you.
What Lee says on Manic Love
Lee calls manic love the kind of love that “strikes the lover like a bolt from the Gods”, or what Plato and the Greeks called, theia mania, “the madness from the Gods”. It is meeting someone for the first time and instantly falling in love, despite knowing very little about the beloved. This means that mania mainly afflicts younger people experiencing love for the first time, though there are cases of mania appearing in middle age as well.
Note that mania is different from the romantic eros, which is intimate, and knows what does and does not attract it. Mania, on the other hand, can cause one to fall in love with almost anyone. Where eros shows an outward passion and intensity, manic lovers become mentally preoccupied and obsessed. Almost immediately, they start planning a fictional wedding and future together, even if they haven’t been formally introduced!
Typical Profile of a Manic Lover
Closing thoughts
Of all the love styles, mania may be the most interesting. It is as tragic as agape, but more passionate. It is as loving as eros, but lacking in its self-confidence. Mania is an unhealthy love that plays for keeps, and consumes everyone involved in its destructiveness: friends, family, and of course the beloved. Without proper care and therapy, it is possible one may never move on to safer styles of relationships. However, there is hope. Lee believed an individual could recover as long as the experiences that brought on the manic behavior were identified and changed. As well, many people who first experience this type of love may evolve and mature to more healthier means of showing affection on their own. So a fatal attraction does not necessarily have to mean a fatal end!
Please join us over the many weeks to come, as we move forward and delve deeper into the heart of manic love and discuss its use in movies, books, and everything in between.
References and more information
Most of the information here has been drawn from Chapter 3 of The Psychology of Love, a compilation of many other love theories. You can also read in more detail of Lee’s theory on love styles in his book, The Colors of Love.