By Charlotte Fox Weber
Concrete Love and Abstract Love may be related to each other, but their characters and expressions are remarkably different. Let’s imagine them as rivalrous brothers. Concrete Love is about what’s real, immediate, specific. He pays close attention to the here-and-now, and observes the vicissitudes of lived experience, textures, nuances. He’s wise about what’s tangible, open to sensory impressions, and his descriptions are straightforward and clear. We always understand what he’s saying.
Abstract Love is hugely ambitious, but he’s obscure and vague. Although he’s intellectually rigorous and imaginative, he’s often hard to follow. Abstract Love fancies himself more of a romantic, an artist, but he strays a lot from where others are, and he pontificates. It feels as though he’s talking about himself most of the time, and even when it’s about others, the descriptions are so vague, they seem impersonal, detached. Perhaps he’s one of those philosopher types who loves humanity but can’t deal with people.
Abstract Love means well, but he can do a lot of damage. His evangelical followers can make a real mess of things, expecting too much, explaining too little. So many fantasies and illusions, and so much heartbreak!
He’s most effective when he appears in poems, along with Concrete Love’s illustrations. But not on his own. Real life is full of surprises, but Abstract Love has a fixed mindset. Relationships work best for him when they’re from a distance, clearly and entirely based on fantasy, or if someone is dead – yes – we can safely embrace Abstract Love with dead people and dead artists and dead philosophers, and unavailable people. But in real relationships, in real life, Abstract Love can be a homewrecker, a troublemaker, an intruder that cramps lived experience.
He’s a rabble-rouser in the workplace, but he doesn’t necessarily know where to lead people. It can be embarrassing to watch. He’s in another world, but he’s so confident, so full of obscure conviction that he must hold onto his ideals, however far away they may be from where we are. Abstract Love is that guy in class who hasn’t done the assigned reading but he insists on talking about another book he’s read, however irrelevant. He brings all discussion back to his view of what things should be like, how life should be. Some of his ideas are beautiful, and he creates compelling ideas and concepts can be seductive. But he doesn’t always read the room, or elaborate. And he actually seems quite snobby, above his surroundings. It comes from a good place – he’s decent and principled deep down, and passionate too. He just doesn’t know how to adjust his standards with real life. So he’s always getting into trouble with his surroundings – easily disappointed and pissing people off. He exaggerates – sometimes he hates people, sometimes he’s obsessed. It’s hard to grasp the reality.
Engaging with the details of an experience – fully showing up — this is a great act of love. And it’s authentic. Concrete is a material that’s solid, unpretentious, matter of fact. It also takes shape over time. Abstract love is up in the clouds, daydreaming and staying clean and distant, and concrete love is getting muddy and expanding. Concrete Love is so immersed and unpretentious, he simply describes the granular details without needing to exaggerate or make a whole show. Abstract Love, on the other hand, is melodramatic, and full of flamboyant gestures. He has lofty ideals, and ponders about love, with obscure concepts of what it should look like, how it should feel. His language is full of what the psychotherapist Karen Horney called “the tyranny of the Shoulds.”
In the words of the architect Philip Johnson, “Concrete you can mould, you can press it to you after all, you haven’t any straight lines in your body. Why should we have straight lines in our architecture? You’d be surprised when you go into a room that has no straight line how marvellous it is that you can feel the walls talking back to you, as it were.”
The same could be said for relationships. They’re fluid, lively, multifaceted. Concrete Love doesn’t expect straight lines or fixed meanings. He makes rough surfaces and bumps and cracks interesting.
Relationships can blossom like a thirsty plant when people notice and recognise each other – when they can observe each other with acceptance and appreciation; The humanist Carl Rogers said if only we could view people as we watch sunsets – we notice the composition of colours without criticising the entire layout. Rogers wished we could be more accepting of ourselves. Concrete Love champions this approach, embracing lived experience. When couples are disconnected, abstract statements of love mean so much less than attuned observations. It’s the difference between showing and telling. In relationships, it’s an Aha moment when one person says “I see.” Seeing is understanding. Concrete Love is about seeing.
