Platonic Love: The Perennial Desire For What We Don’t Have

Plato said that we only love what we want and that we only want what we don’t have. It seems that already at the time of this famous philosopher, from which the ending Platonic love derives, there was the devastating feeling that is still present today and is strengthened in each of us: the perennial dissatisfaction with one’s life.

It is as if something is always missing. It doesn’t matter if in the eyes of others our life appears enviable or completely problem-free; in us there is a void that we do not know how to fill.

This feeling is often created in couple relationships. There are many people who need a tailor-made, perfect, ideal love. This nostalgic and romantic vision of relationships, this falling in love with a non-concrete person is what makes them perpetually dissatisfied. Their idea of ​​love is not based on reality, but on the fantasy of what it could be or have been.

Sometimes, but rarely, this platonic love becomes reality. It is then that the individual enters a state of exaltation in which he feels drunk and in which he believes he has filled the deficiency that he previously suffered so much.

The problem is that, after some time, the person begins to lose interest and the same Platonic dynamic to which he was accustomed resumes: wanting something unattainable and wallowing in his own pain.

Desire and pleasure

A great many people derive pleasure or contentment just by wanting. It seems that yearning, dreaming, deluding oneself and idealizing is the engine that makes them come alive. However, when they get the object of their desire, they get bored. Once we have what we thought completes us, there is no more room for desire and projection.

What we have achieved is something purely real, imperfect, which does not respond to the expectations we had by wanting it.

What happens in the end? The person in love with a platonic love leaves. She runs away in search of a new dose of deficiency, of that desire that makes her feel alive, even if she suffers; for her it is about a sweet, addictive suffering. He thinks there must be something better, something that keeps his illusion alive day after day as if it were the first and, if not, it would mean that then he has not yet found the right partner. His mission will therefore be to resume research.

Too many times we believe that happiness is somewhere else and that if we had access to this place that is waiting for us, our dissatisfaction would find an end. But then we discover that this is not the case, that in reality we already have everything we need to feel full and that, if we were able to change some small nuances of our daily life (changes almost never related to money) we should not seek happiness elsewhere.

The problem is that making these changes often frightens us, causes us anxiety and insecurity and we cling to the thought of “what could have happened …”.

Learn to love what we have

The desire to achieve what we have not yet achieved is always legitimate and is often also a source of positive motivation. But when this desire turns into a need and, consequently, into a painful suffering, we freeze and feel empty, perpetually discontented and waiting.

Paradoxically, this way of life does not let us live. We are not free, but slaves to an idea that tells us how our life should be.

It is therefore necessary to learn to love what we have, what is already in our life ; it can be your partner, work, friends, our city. Each of these elements contains a multitude of positive aspects that many people, in turn, would like to have. It is a particular vision of oneself, we must clean our glasses fogged by routine and disappointment, voluntarily change the aspects that do not work. And all of this must be filled with hope and using fear as a form of motivation as much as possible.

If we are able to appreciate and thank each day for what we have in life, the feeling of emptiness will stop relegating us to constant waiting. We will live in the present, we will rejoice in what happens to us, we will accept adversity and we will always draw a lesson or a positive aspect.

Abandon the mental journeys into the future, the constant and repeated complaints, hated even by the most stoic of people. Stay where you are, take risks and change what you don’t like about your life, but don’t aim for perfection, for something impossible that will never come. What you have is already perfect, it is what it has to be. Why don’t you start appreciating and enjoying it?