During the month of December, Let's Just Leave That Here presents a series of weekly word explorations on love. The ancient Greeks used four separate words to differentiate the different types. This week's word is Storge.
From Wikipedia:
Storge means "tenderness, love, affection" and "especially of parents and children". Storge is the common or natural empathy, like that felt by parents for offspring, or all humans for young mammals that are ‘cute’.The word ‘storge’ is rarely used in ancient works, and then almost exclusively as a descriptor of relationships within the family. It is also known to express mere acceptance or enduring situations, as in "loving" the tyrant. This is also used when referencing the love for one's country or a favorite sports team.
Storge is a wide-ranging force which can apply between family members, friends, pets and owners, companions or colleagues; it can also blend with and help underpin other types of tie such as passionate love or friendship. Thus storge may be used as a general term to describe the love between exceptional friends, and the desire for them to care compassionately for one another.
Sometimes the term is used to refer to the love between married partners who are committed and plan to have a long relationship together, particularly as a fundamental relational foundation after initial infatuation (limerence).
Another interpretation for storge is to be used to describe a sexual relationship between two people that gradually grew out of a friendship - storgic lovers sometimes cannot pinpoint the moment that friendship turned to love. Storgic lovers are friends first, and the friendship, and the storge, can endure even beyond the breakup of the sexual relationship. They want their significant others to also be their best friends, and will choose their mates based on similar goals and interests—homogamy. Storgic lovers place much importance on commitment, and find that their motivation to avoid committing infidelity is to preserve the trust between the two partners. Children and marriage are seen as legitimate long-term aims for their bond, while passionate sexual intensity is of lesser importance than in other love styles.
From GotQuestions.org:
The Greek word for love, storge, which relates to natural, familial love such as the love between a parent and child. In the New Testament, the negative form of storge is used twice. Astorgos means “devoid of natural or instinctive affection, without affection to kindred.”
Romans 1:31 describes sinful humanity as having “no understanding, no fidelity, no love, no mercy.” The Greek word translated as “no love” is astorgos. The other instance of this word is found in 2 Timothy 3:3, where it is translated “without love.” Paul warns that one mark of the “terrible times in the last days” (verse 1) is that people will lack natural love for their own families.
From Psychology Today:
Storge (‘store-gae’), or familial love, is a kind of philia pertaining to the love between parents and their children. It differs from most philia in that it tends, especially with younger children, to be unilateral or asymmetrical. More broadly, storge is the fondness born out of familiarity or dependency and, unlike eros or philia, does not hang on our personal qualities. People in the early stages of a romantic relationship often expect unconditional storge, but find only the need and dependency of eros, and, if they are lucky, the maturity and fertility of philia. Given enough time, eros tends to mutate into storge.
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