Professor Giddy speaks of love

“I assume everyone here is interested in falling in love?” began the Thursday night lecture given by Dr. John Patrick Giddy, Professor of Philosophy and Ethics at the University Kwazulu in Natal, South Africa. Dr. Giddy’s lecture explored the idea of love and how it is perceived among men and women.

Giddy states that there are two concepts when falling in love: imagination and fantasy. These elements help to project what a person is longing for in love and life. He explianed definitions about what falling in love really meant, but began to capture the attention of the audience as he started to speak of a survey done of 3,000 students. The result of the survey showed that among the students, falling in love only lasts for three years, from the beginning of the first “head over heels” love, until the very end. Between these three years, the concept of actually being in love never takes place.

The comparison of classics and movies were a huge part of the lecture in which Dr. Giddy showed how romantic love works. Within the romantic love, according to Dr. Giddy, is a false diversion from serious love. There is no commitment from either side and both man and woman are free to do as they please, concerning whether to stay, or to drop the other person and continue to find someone else. However, if the romantic love stays between the couple, this can move into a long term relationship where they can take their romantic love to another level.

Dr. Giddy brought up a few examples relating to the medieval period where romantic love was found all over the medieval courts, especially in knights and ladies of the court. The lady would choose a knight who seemed to steal her heart at first sight, and in return the knight would fight for her honor. As she longs for her knight, the lady is already promised to another, leading into the false diversion of serious love. In this case, the romantic love could never attain the level of a serious love. In the movie “Tristan and Isolde,” the notion of falling into romantic love holds true for Isolde and Tristan, where the lady is already promised to Tristan’s friend and king. These stories describe immature situations of love.

The proposition that no one comes close to your perfect counter part in which you have fantasized about became the next big topic in the lecture. Dr. Giddy presented two situations of romantic love where it can either be side-by-side or face-to-face. “Friendship and love are considered to go side by side because the reason two people are friends are because of a common interest that they both share. Once someone drops that common interest, the connection between the two is broken, and there is a chance that this love could be headed toward a meltdown, where only friendship comes of it,” proposed Dr. Giddy, “The romantic love shares a face to face connection between the couple where one person focuses on the interest of the other in order to maintain a common interest.”

However, Dr. Giddy warns that this relationship could head toward becoming conditional where one person dictates what the other should change, therefore changing who their partner is, in essence. These relationships cannot work when they are conditional and couples should stay way from this type of romantic love.

In the end, falling in love can be viewed as an argument with your self, or a dialogue one shares with them. As long as you stay with youe significant other, there is a good argument as to why there is love between you. When a relationship does not last, you can argue with your self as to whether it was a worth it, and prove to your self the justifications for both. When everything boils down, Dr. Giddy explains falling in love as “The capacity of the inner life, where if you want to be realistic, you have to have characteristics from everything to share.”