The 2,000-year-old philosophy of love that still rings true today

Valentine’s Day is traditionally a time of heart-shaped balloons, overpriced roses and fully-booked restaurants. Couples kiss and hold hands, smiling selfies celebrate a day of public displays of devotion.

Why do so many of us feel such pressure to offer grand gestures, buy pricey gifts, and go through elaborate displays of affection? Presumably, to prove our love. Valentine’s Day is a showy, one-day-a-year demonstration that promises to do just that.

For the ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle (384-322BC), however, this approach misunderstands the nature of love. For him, the true form of love wasn’t intense passion or grand gestures on one day of the year. Instead, it’s a steady commitment to help your beloved grow into their best version through everyday practices of care.

Aristotle wrote extensively about love, friendship and their place in a good life. His main book on ethics, the Nicomachean Ethics (350BC) – affectionately named after his son – is a classic work on virtue and happiness.

As a keen observer of human life, Aristotle’s philosophy was based on a real understanding of human beings – our emotions, needs, habits and the ways we live alongside each other. Humans are social animals, he argued, so we must live in a society and work toward a common good. More than this, we are “pairing” creatures. Coupling and sharing a life matters deeply. Interestingly, he believed this means learning to love ourselves, as well as others.

Aristotle said we should love ourselves the most. This could sound like a celebration of narcissism, a gospel for the selfie age. But Aristotle meant that truly loving someone means loving them as another self, extending our self-love to another – a process with five parts.

First, loving yourself means desiring and promoting your own good. Do the same for your loved one. Desire and promote whatever is in their interest. Second, work for their own safety and security as you would your own. Third, self-love means enjoying your own company and taking pleasure in reminiscing about past times and looking forward to good times to come. Desire and enjoy their company, too, in a shared life of interests, commitments and hopes.

Fourth, make sure your desires are rational, and only desire things that are part of a “fine and noble life” – a life that is virtuous, rational and filled with meaningful relationships. Fifth, openly express and experience your pains and pleasures. Consistently pursue what brings you pleasure and avoid whatever brings pain. For your beloved, recognise and share in their pains and pleasures, as if they were your own.

Love, Aristotle says, comes from the sense that the lover is “mine”. If that sounds icky to a modern ear, the point isn’t about ownership. When I say “my beloved is mine”, I mean “we belong together in a shared life”. I do not own my finger, it belongs to my hand, which is a part of me. Likewise, I don’t own my beloved, but they belong to our loving relationship, of which I, too, am part.

Aristotle also described lovers as friends – not any old good friends but each other’s other halves. Like friends, lovers hang out, have each other’s back and support one another. As lovers, they treat each other as a part of themselves. Aristotle thinks it’s a big red flag if your lover doesn’t care as much about your feelings and needs as their own, no matter how grand their gestures and gifts.

Love was not a passive feeling for Aristotle, but a practice requiring skill. A lover, he argues, makes themselves better for their beloved, unlike a carpenter who makes a table for himself. Loving is a practice of constant self-improvement for the sake of another person. Being a good lover means striving to be a better person, so that you and your beloved bring out the best in each other.

For Aristotle, love is not about how your Valentine makes you feel on a single night of the year. Gifts and gestures are nice, but the real proof of love is nothing you can buy. Loving another as much and as well as you love yourself is the real proof, one that takes time and practice. To quote Aristotle, “one swallow does not make spring” – nor does one magical night really show our love.