Simone de Beauvoir’s Authentic Love
Houston Sex Therapy | Houston Sexual Trauma Therapy | Houston Anxiety Therapy
Simone de Beauvoir was one of the few women revered for her views on existential philosophy in the 20th century. As I explore connections between existential psychology and sex therapy, her work is naturally an area of consideration.
In her book The Second Sex (1949), Simone de Beauvoir suggests that for a relationship to be healthy, the freedom of the two individuals must be augmented and enhanced rather than diminished. She states that ‘authentic love’ requires respect & reciprocity, not enforced self-sacrifice. She argues that for us to value our own freedom, it logically follows that we must also value the freedom of others. From the viewpoint of a sex therapist, this freedom seems to be a necessity. Being able to express who you are authentically is a key component of exploration in sex therapy.
The idea of love for many people is an ambiguous concept. For many even still, love is practiced through the thin-veil of desire, pain and need. Beauvoir proposed that love’s ambiguity fueled exploitation. In practice, she felt that it was abused to legitimatize forms of hierarchy and power dynamics that were the antithesis of love. She believed that this abuse could lead to two unhealthy forms of love: narcissistic love and devotional love.
Narcissistic Love
With brilliant insight, she envisioned the narcissistic love as ‘loving oneself and loving in the other, the love he has for you.’ She posited that the collapse within narcissistic love is that it disregards the fact that there are two people involved. She expressed that the narcissistic love is deficient in understanding that love must embrace the good of the other, not just the one.
Devotional Love
By contrast, she saw devotional love as a subjugation of the self where the lover’s own consciousness is disregarded for the consideration of the other. The devoted lover wants nothing except the other person. The devoted lover provides and lives only for the other. In omitting oneself, his love fails to accommodate the two individuals as the love is unidirectional. Simone de Beauvoir believed that a love of absolute devotion is a subtle form of self-imposed slavery, for it is often presented as ‘selflessness’ or ‘duty’.
By deferring absolutely everything to the other, the devoted person relinquishes control over their own freedom.
From the societal standpoint
Outside of love, she believed that we limit our freedom, consciously or subconsciously, by living according to the opinions of others. She reminds us that we can authentically create (or recreate) ourselves through free choice as opposed to outsourcing our decision-making autonomy to convention & society. In viewing this through the existentialist lens, this is incredibly common and creates a thinly veiled resentment within the self.
Simone de Beauvoir - Existential Philosopher
Authentic Love
Houston Sex Therapy | Houston Sexual Trauma Therapy | Houston Anxiety Therapy
Simone de Beauvoir was a proponent of authentic love. By practicing authentic love, we become capable of forming relationships that promote individual freedom and growth as opposed to constraint. Authentic love consists of reciprocity. When there is equilibrium, there is a giving of the self without a loss of self. Simone de Beauvoir stated that authentic love was ‘not a subordination’ of one vs the other. On the contrary, it is a relationship where one embraces and uplifts the other while fostering independence.
Reference
de Beauvoir, S. (1972 [1949]). The second sex. Harmondsworth: Penguin.