Welcome back to the Simplicity Diaries with me, Kim John Payne. And you might remember this is the fourth part in a series of the four kinds of love, how to talk to your teenagers about sexual relationships. And in the first three parts, we talked about first of all, eros and erotic and physical attraction, and then philos or philia, which is that friendship being into the same types of things, music and sports or, you know, films, whatever.
The third, caritas, which is this deeper giving, giving of oneself, giving without expecting to receive anything back. And in this last piece, the fourth and last, we'll be talking about agape, or some people call it agape. And agape is this love of someone's spirit, love of someone's destiny.
And this is the fourth and last part of this little mini series in the Simplicity Diaries. I'm reading from my book, The Soul of Discipline from the hardback edition, and we're on page 200. So, to the text.
Agape. The Greek term agape is often translated as unconditional love. It is considered the highest of all forms of love, and in the relationship context, it extends beyond charity to the love of a person's treasured dreams.
In agape, you are so connected to your partner that you sense his or her purpose in life, and you'll do all you can to do to help him achieve it. With this kind of love, a couple can expose their deepest fears and hopes to each other, knowing each will understand and not betray these vulnerabilities when the relationship hits a rough patch. Agape looks past appearances.
We've all seen this kind of love if we have seen a person become terminally ill, physically or mentally disabled, or disfigured, and watched his partner find a way to deal with the enormous challenge and deal with it with grace. She looks past the outer realities to who the partner is on the inside. This kind of love is free from emotional infatuations, and importantly, it's free from highs and lows.
It is often called holy love because it weaves the other three forms into a unified whole. Young people in this last phase of their teen years intuitively understand this kind of love. They long for it, and they aim for it as an ideal.
When you speak to your son or daughter about transcendent love for another person, and you hope that it'll be present before he or she enters into sexual relationship, your teen isn't likely to roll his or her eyes. At this age, idealism is strong, and setting a goal like this does not seem unrealistic. One of Shakespeare's most quoted sonnets goes right to the heart of agape.
It's often heard in marriage ceremonies and at other times when people are trying to find words to express their love and to commit to doing all they can to help their partner's dreams become reality. And this is Shakespeare's Sonnet 116. Just a snippet of it.
Love is not love which alters when alteration finds, or bends with the remover to remove. Oh no, it is an ever-fixed mark that looks on the tempest and is never shaken. So there we come to the end of this little mini-series of the Four Kinds of Love.
I sure hope this has been helpful, and coming full circle back to the conversation that I had recently with a group of parents. There were a mixed group, actually, as I mentioned, of tweens at 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, and then parents of teenagers. And it was interesting because the parents of the tweenages, whilst they weren't in that stage yet, expressed a real kind of relief at, OK, I'm going to be thinking about this a lot.
We're going to be talking about that. I'm going to talk about that with my partner, with friends. And it's great to be anticipating the conversation which is going to have to come.
And yeah, I've got a framework now to do it. For those parents who are already parenting teenagers, it seemed to give them a frame to just go right in and have that conversation. A couple of parents said, you know, we're going to have that conversation ahead of when it's needed.
Our kids are not in relationships right now with a boyfriend or a girlfriend, but we're going to try and find a moment to do that. My advice was lay in wait. You know, try and find a moment where it seems natural, when it seems like just a good receptive time to have that kind of conversation.
And I thought, yeah, that's a great idea, having that conversation ahead of time so that when the question does arise or when your kid gets into a deeper relationship, then you've already set the scene and you can return back to it. So again, I hope this has been helpful. And I just love doing these little audio diaries for our Dear Simplicity parenting community.
Okay, thanks. Bye-bye.
