Instructions: Without conducting any outside research or readings, write an essay answering and supporting your positions on the below questions.  Your response should be no longer than 3 typewritten pages and should be submitted through the course website. Make sure that your essay is a cohesive composition with complete paragraphs and sentences (not numerically organized answers), with proper spelling and punctuation, and satisfying all of the homework formatting requirements.

1.What is love?  Are there any requirements or goals of love?  In what ways is the love that you feel for a parent or sibling the same or different than the love you feel towards your lover, spouse, boyfriend or girlfriend?

2.What is friendship?  Are there any requirements or goals of friendship?  Do you think it is possible to have a meaningful friendship with someone you have never met?  Why or why not.

3.What are the top three things that you believe are crucial for a successful marriage? Why?  Under what circumstances do you think a marriage should end?  Why?

(1) Love is an emotion experienced by a large segment of the human population, and quite possibly by other intelligent animal species. To love is to feel a fondness, at least (although often it is a far more intense appreciation) for a facet in one's environment, be it another human, an animal, a plant... or even inanimate objects such as possessions, or works of art. One can even love an abstract concept, such as “God” or “surrealist poetry”. Love is hard to define (especially when instructed to use no outside sources!) because it is a very subjective experience. But if something brings you happiness, and you feel that your life is improved by its existence; and conversely if its absence would cause sorrow or pain‒ then it could be postulated that you “love” said entity.

While love can be a very powerful emotion, and has been glorified in literature and other media for millennia, it is a little harder to discern the practical uses of this aspect of our consciousness; as opposed to fear, for example. The evolutionary advantages of fear are obvious. With love it is more subtle. Parents' love for their children certainly makes the difficult job of raising them more palatable. A love for one's country can't hurt if you're going into battle to defend it. It “oils the machinery” in a sense; makes many of the challenges of life more bearable.

But we can love things that are bad for us: junk food; smoking, drinking and other vices; (or someone else's spouse). And therefore love can become a negative factor, maybe a dangerous obsession (just as healthy fears can morph into phobias). Love can rob us of our reason, sometimes literally.

There are many commonly referenced “goals” and “requirements” of love, but they have to be seen as generalizations. Most people want companionship, a partner, someone to share happiness with  It is said that one has to give love to receive it back, and often it works that way. But there are endless exceptions and variations, and so many types of love, that a ”guidebook” can hardly suffice (albeit that many books and magazines attempt such, and indeed profit from it).

I see the major difference between familial love and the love of a spouse/girl- or boyfriend as one of romance. (That's another very broad term to try and wrangle in, but we know it when we feel it). The early stages in romantic love are often highly erotic , and (Freudian theory aside) we don't normally have such impulses for family members. The sex drive will eclipse one's love for family; it is, after all, how new families get started. Romantic love is intense but relatively shallow; love for family is often “under the radar” but deeply rooted.

(2)  Friendship is a subtler variety of love. For me it implies an absence of romance, supplanted instead by a mutual admiration among the parties involved. Shared interests, common goals, similar positions in life‒ these are common foundations of friendship. While not as profound, usually, as romantic love, a strong friendship can often be more enduring than the love we feel for family or a lover. Ideally, there is a symbiosis between friends; the relationship is stronger than its components.

I've been a professional musician for almost 40 years. Not surprisingly, a large percentage of my friends share that inclination, or are fans of those burdened with that calling. There can often be strong competition between us, but at the end of the day, the respect is a sort of given. We share experiences that are unique to our craft, good and bad.

The question of “is it possible to have a meaningful friendship with someone you have never met?” would not have even been a valid one before long-distance communication become a reality. While one could argue that the telegraph, radio, and/or telephone made it theoretically possible, I think the much more modern “social media” has been the first real technological factor in making this a “gray area”. My answer is a highly qualified “yes”. With the ability to see, hear, and otherwise communicate with citizens around the globe, in some instances I think a real friendship connection is possible‒ but not quite as good as a face-to-face meeting. But virtual reality is just around the corner.

(3)  I've been married three times. The first two lasted less than three years apiece; the third is going strong at 20-plus. It's safe to say that I've learned a few things about the process... but in fairness to myself and my two exes, we were too young (early- to mid-twenties). There was a child with the second wife, which made that marriage's demise exponentially more emotionally challenging.

(a) Trust is key. It's the #1 component. While even my current wife and I have betrayed each other on rare occasions, there were far worse dishonesties (mutual) in the former two. When you wake up and realize that you don't even know who you're sleeping with, it's time to seek other options. 

(b) Shared emotional and intellectual interests are also crucial. Sex will not sustain a long-term relationship. As a musician, playing on the road in the 1980s, I had numerous sexual encounters with women whose names I barely knew (and have since forgotten). It was fun, and meaningless...

My Debra and I, at 55 years of age, have become more friends than lovers. We can talk about anything. We routinely finish each other's sentences, and share all sorts of likes in literature, music, and a host of other topics (politics being a strong one of late). We can hike on the Carl Sandburg estate here in Flat Rock NC, never exchanging a word, and feel a total bond nevertheless.

(c) You have to know how to fight in a marriage. My first wife was a major introvert, like me. We never argued about anything. And tensions built to the point of no return. My second wife and I rarely argued either. And the sinking feeling is, we just didn't care enough about each other to bother...

My current wife will light into me with abandon when I'm out of line. Even though I bristle under it sometimes, she's usually right. When she's wrong, her example has enabled me to actually raise my voice and return the favor. And that sums up my major criteria‒ an absence of any of these three constitutes my grounds for the serious re-thinking of a marriage's future. There's no love without them.