For most of my life, I thought love was pretty simple.
You met someone. You fell in love. You built a life together. You stayed committed through the good times and the difficult ones. Somewhere along the way, I started to realize that love isn’t nearly that simple.
There are different ways we love people. Different things we look for. Different things we give. And sometimes two people can genuinely love each other while experiencing love in completely different ways.
The ancient Greeks had several words for different forms of love, and one commonly discussed framework describes seven styles: Eros, Philia, Storge, Agape, Ludus, Pragma, and Philautia. I find the idea fascinating because it suggests that love isn’t one emotion. It’s more like a language with different dialects.
Eros is the love of attraction and desire. It’s the chemistry that makes you notice someone across a room. It’s excitement, passion, physical connection, and that feeling of wanting to be close to someone. Eros can be powerful, but it can also be temporary. Sometimes we mistake the intensity of attraction for the depth of a relationship.
Philia is the love of friendship. It’s the person you can talk to for hours, laugh with, trust, and genuinely enjoy being around. There is something beautiful about realizing that the person you’re romantically involved with is also someone you actually like. Attraction may start a relationship, but friendship can give it somewhere to live.
Storge is the quieter love that grows through familiarity and belonging. It’s often associated with family the love between parents and children, siblings, or people who have shared a life for so long that they become part of one another’s history. It isn’t necessarily dramatic. It’s the kind of love that can exist simply because someone has been there through so many chapters of your life.
Agape is love given without expecting something in return. It’s compassion, generosity, and the desire for another person’s wellbeing. Parents often experience this kind of love, but it can also exist between friends, communities, and even strangers. Agape reminds us that love isn’t always about what we receive. Sometimes love is simply what we choose to give.
Ludus is playful love. Flirting. Teasing. Laughing. That wonderful feeling of being a little silly with someone because you don’t always have to take life so seriously around them. I think we sometimes underestimate this kind of love as we get older. We become responsible adults carrying responsibilities, schedules, mortgages, careers and families and forget how important it is to simply have fun with another person.
Pragma is mature, practical love. It understands that relationships aren’t built on chemistry alone. They require communication, compromise, shared values, patience, and a willingness to work through difficult seasons. Pragma isn’t necessarily the most exciting form of love, but it may be one of the reasons some relationships survive long enough to become something deeper.
And then there is Philautia: love of self.
This one might be the most misunderstood.
Self-love isn’t narcissism. It doesn’t mean believing you’re better than everyone else. It means recognizing that you are worthy of care too. It means knowing your boundaries, respecting yourself, forgiving yourself for mistakes, and not abandoning yourself simply because you want someone else to love you.
Maybe that’s the one I’ve understood most differently as I’ve gotten older.
When I was younger, I thought being a good partner meant giving everything I had to the relationship. I learned that love requires effort, compromise and sacrifice. But eventually, I also had to learn that loving someone else shouldn’t require losing yourself completely.
Perhaps healthy love isn’t about choosing one of these seven styles.
Maybe it’s about discovering how they overlap.
You can be attracted to someone through Eros, become friends through Philia, build a history through Storge, have fun through Ludus, create a life together through Pragma, give generously through Agape, and still maintain Philautia, the ability to remain yourself inside the relationship.
And maybe that’s what makes love so complicated.
We don’t just love people one way.
We bring our history, our fears, our hopes, our expectations and our understanding of ourselves into every relationship we enter. The person we were at twenty may have understood love very differently from the person we become at forty or fifty.
I know I do.
Maybe growing older doesn’t mean we become less capable of falling in love.
Maybe we simply become more capable of understanding what love actually requires.
Not just butterflies.
Not just chemistry.
Not just sacrifice.
Not just companionship.
But attraction, friendship, familiarity, generosity, playfulness, commitment, and self-respect all finding their place in the same relationship.
And perhaps the real question isn’t simply:
“Do we love each other?”
Maybe it’s:
“How do we love each other?”
Because sometimes the difference between two people isn’t whether love exists.
It’s the language they’re using to express it.