Erich Fromm’s The Art of Loving critiques several prevailing—yet deeply flawed—conceptions of love in contemporary Western society, often presenting them in a satirical or critical light by contrasting them with the idea of genuine love.
He argues that these modern understandings actually represent a “disintegration of love.”
He writes:
“No objective observer of our Western life can doubt that love is rare, and that its place is taken by a number of forms of pseudo-love, which are in reality are many forms of the disintegration of love.”
He says we often treat love like a commodity, focusing only on two things: being loved and being lovable
This leads men to chase success, power, and wealth, while women cultivate attractiveness. But these are STRATEGIES!!!!!! (I’m going to write about strategies one day)
Fromm sharply points out how capitalism has influences our character:
The owner of capital can buy labor and command it.
The owner of labor must sell it or starve.
He says this mindset is tied to the idea that finding love is simple—that the hard part is finding the right OBJECT
He argues our entire culture is built on capitalism, and our idea of love follows it. We emphasize the importance of the OBJECT against the importance of the function. Our culture revolves around mutually favorable exchange.
Happiness?
Fromm says it lies in the thrill of looking for the best and buying all that you can afford. In dating, this translates to a neatly packaged “attractive” set of qualities sought after on the personality market. And what makes a person attractive? That depends entirely on the fashion of the time both physically and mentally.
In the 20s, a drinking, smoking, tough, and sexy woman was attractive.
Today? The fashion demands domestic coyness.
At the turn of the 20th century, a man had to be aggressive and ambitious.
Today? Social and tolerant.
But either way, the sense of “falling in love” is just people feeling like they’ve found the best object available on the market, given the limitations of their own exchange value.
We’re out here marketing ourselves. And the OBJECT must be desirable, socially valuable, complete with hidden assets and future potential.
This was written in 1956. My grandmother was 4. My grandfather was 6. And yet it feels like he could have written this yesterday. We’re still following the same tired pattern of exchange that governs the commodity and labor market—and we’re still calling it love.
Then Fromm drags another contradiction:
The idea that love is just a spontaneous feeling or an “irresistible emotion,” especially when it’s mixed with sexual attraction. He says this mindset completely neglects the importance of WILL.
Love, he insists, is a decision, a judgment, a promise.
If love were only a feeling, then loving someone forever would be impossible.
The only forever is an ACT.
Love is an act of will. A commitment.
And fundamentally? It does not matter to who.
Let me bring up another contradiction that caught me:
Fromm breaks down different kinds of love—Love of God, Mother, Father, Brother, Erotic Love.
What stopped me in my tracks was his take on Mother Love vs Father Love:
- Mother Love is unconditional love. Love for the helpless.
- Father Love is earned. Conditional. Merit-based.
He even shows this in how religious systems reflect it.
Matriarchal religion? That’s Mother Love: all-protective, all-enveloping, unconditional. We are all equal before Mother Earth.
Patriarchal religion? Father Love: making demands, setting rules, establishing laws.
Then he speaks on Brotherly Love—love among equals. He writes:
“If I love my brother, I love all my brothers; if I love my child, I love all my children; no, beyond that, I love all children.”
Each kind of love is different, but by their very nature, they aren’t meant to be limited to one person.
Erotic love, though? That’s the craving for complete fusion with ONE other person. It’s exclusive—not universal. Why?
Fromm directly challenges the belief that love is just the byproduct of sexual pleasure. He says just because two people learn to sexually satisfy each other doesn’t mean they love each other. Sexual desire is often mistaken for love. People think they love someone when really, they just want other.
But fusion isn’t just physical.
He says love is not the result of good sex—what we’re really seeking is relief from the painful tension and anxiety of separateness.
Without love, physical union never leads to true connection. It remains orgiastic and transitory, leaving two people “as far apart as they were before.” So we keep chasing the high with a new person. A new stranger. Over and over again. Because closeness, like novelty, fades.
Yo!!! Like… are you feeling that in your chest too?
I damn near cried.
Then Fromm goes in on Freud. Freud claimed:
“Man, having found that genital love offered him his greatest gratification, made it the central point of his life.”
That idea was revolutionary in the 1890s—but Fromm calls it conformist. It completely misses the mystical essence of love: the root of intense union with another person—the feeling of fusion, of oneness—the “oceanic feeling.”(im definitely going to write about the oceanic feeling or the sea of orgasmic bliss)
To Freud, love was irrational. And the thinkers of the time?
They were busy trying to prove capitalism matched the natural state of man:
- That we are naturally competitive, insatiable, hostile.
- That we’re driven by limitless desire for sexual conquest.
- And that only society prevents us from going full feral. ( and they have the nerve to call anyone savage)
So love, hate, ambition, jealousy?
Freud chalked them all up to variations of the sexual instinct.
Sound familiar?
I’ve been trying to tell y’all—you only think the way you think because you live here, and some old fuck told you to.
This brings me back to Yurugu (which I will write about one day).
Freud didn’t see that the key to understanding life is not the body, or hunger, or sex, or possessions—it’s the totality of human existence. That’s a very Eastern thought, one that echoes in the Tao and ATR.
Fromm ties this all together and says:
Our character (in capitalism) is shaped by the need to exchange, to barter, to consume.
Everything—material and spiritual—becomes an object of exchange.
We are automatons with personality packages who have forgotten how to love. We seek security in the herd—and in not being different: not in thought, not in feeling, not in action. Everyone tries to remain as same as possible while remaining utterly alone—racked by insecurity, anxiety, and guilt.
Our palliatives? A strict routine of bureaucratized, mechanical work—where you remain unaware of your desires, unaware of transcendence, unaware of unity. You overcome your unconscious despair with the routine of amusement, passive consumption, and the hollow satisfaction of buying new things—then exchanging them for others. You are sedated, compliant, obedient—and you like it. Hoping for a fair bargain.
This shows up nowhere more clearly than in marriage—a union structured like a corporate team.
In the Victorian age and in many other cultures: love was not a spontaneous personal experience that might lead to marriage. Marriage was contracted by convention, and love was expected to follow after the paperwork was signed. This is the background of what we call marriage: a contract to exchange objects.
The ideal partner is well-functioning employee: independent, cooperative, and tolerant, and yet ambitious, and aggressive. Intimacy is but as a refuge from unbearable loneliness. We enhance “collaboration,” by adjusting our behaviors for mutual satisfaction, pooling common interests, and teaming up against a hostile world.
But this, Fromm argues, is pseudo-love.
It’s the disintegration of love. True love, he says, is an art—one that requires discipline, concentration, patience, care, responsibility, respect, and knowledge.
And it is completely incompatible with the consumerist, market-driven, alienated society we live in.