We all love different things. Our most recent book, What’s Your Temperament, discusses how our temperaments determine what we like, and more importantly, what we love. We made a distinct point that one of the defining characteristics that we have is our temperament, and implicit in each temperament is a distinct tendency to love something. Analysts love truth (and seek to solve problems; caretakers love property (and seek to protect it); players love experience (and value physical engagement), and lovers love people (and seek connections). You can read more about these identified temperaments in some previous blogs or catch a bit of it free at Amazon if you like. Instead of plowing the same ground with temperament, I want to suggest that we do, indeed, love different things although it may not always seem like love. While there is never anything wrong with loving something, this actual loving can lead people into difficult situations, sometimes personal, sometimes interpersonal, sometimes physical, and sometimes emotional or intellectual. I’ve been reading a lot of philosophy lately and found it interesting that the actual word philosophy from the Greek words for love (philos) and wisdom (sophia), which is a reference to the goddess Sophia, the goddess of wisdom. With the danger of too much repetition allow me to summarize the “loves” of the different temperaments, the values of this loving, and the dangers of this loving. Then we will progress into other, perhaps more mundane and day-to-day loves that are good at heart and sometimes difficult in practice:

The loves of the different temperaments

Caretakers:

• Basic love: property
• Value of this kind of loving: providing safety for the world
• Danger of this kind of loving: materialism, busyness

Analysts:

• Basic love: truth
• Value of this kind of loving: finding truth and bring it to the world
• Danger of this kind of loving: independence; too often finding too much fault

Players:

• Basic love: experience
• Value of this kind of loving: fun and learning from experience
• Danger of this kind of loving: intrusion into others’ lives

Lovers:

• Basic love: people
• Value of this kind of loving: connections, sacrifice
• Danger of this kind of loving: giving in, dependence, and ultimate resentment

Other kinds of love

• Play:
  • Value: relief and restoration
  • Danger: physical and emotional danger to others
• Alcohol:
  • Value: enhancement of life
  • Danger: alcohol dependence
• Talking:
  • Value: communication
  • Danger: failure to listen
• Listening:
  • Value: hearing other people
  • Danger: failing to reveal one’s own feelings
• Working:
  • Value: production
  • Danger: fatigue, physical danger
• Saving:
  • Value: protection
  • Danger: miserliness
• Spending:
  • Value: joy and fun
  • Danger: irresponsible spending
• Ideas:
  • Value: possible solutions to problems
  • Danger: not ever doing anything significant
• Family:
  • Value: care for one’s own
  • Danger: getting lost in family problems
• Quality:
  • Value: doing something right
  • Danger: never satisfied with good enough
• Quantity:
  • Value: having lots of things
  • Danger: having too much, lack of quality
• Reading:
  • Value: learning
  • Danger: always learning, never practicing
• Sports:
  • Value: joy, physical improvement, comradery
  • Danger: lost in sports trivia
• Working out:
  • Value: physical improvement
  • Danger: physical becomes dominant in one’s life

Examples:

1. Jack is a real hard worker, often working 80 or 90 hours a week in his trade of accounting and related work. He is a millionaire several times over largely due to his hard work. Jack has lost his wife and at least one, if not two, of his children in the process because he has been so busy all the time
2. Janice is a real loving person. She loves to love and does it with vigor. She sacrifices herself easily and freely. She really loves her family. There is no one who is more sacrificial. Unfortunately, she has indulged her children to such an extent that they can’t think for themselves, much less do for themselves.
3. Sam is quite bright, perhaps one of the brightest people I know. He did quite well in his profession for a number of years. Sam also loves sports and came to love drinking quite a bit, usually getting drunk daily, passing out, and then waking up to watch TV. He has no one significant in his life because he couldn’t find a way to translate his brilliance into a relationship, much less govern the use of alcohol.
4. Peter really loves women. He is quite handsome and becoming and has been quite successful in attracting women, often bedding them, with ease over his years of life. He has not, unfortunately, been able to establish for himself a lasting, meaningful female relationship. He is good at getting, and not so good at maintaining and improving.
5. Frank is a pastor and has done quite well in his work over his 50 odd years of professional life. Unfortunately, he hasn’t really developed much else in his life, like a good hobby, good long-term relationships, and abilities beyond preaching and teaching. Now in his semi-retirement years he feels quite lost and has finally come to realize that he hasn’t been the best of husband because his focus was so much on being a pastor.

Consider what you love, the goodness of your love, and the fact that you may actually love something or someone better than most people. Then consider that you might be “loving to a fault” and might need to broader your loving to things beyond what has become easy and natural for you.