Affection

Affection is responsible for nine-tenths of whatever solid and durable happiness there is in our natural lives.

- The Four Loves
Affection produces happiness if— and only if— there is common sense and give and take and “decency.” In other words, only if something more, and other, than Affection is added. The mere feeling is not enough. You need “common sense,” that is, reason. You need “give and take”; that is, you need justice, continually stimulating mere Affection when it fades and restraining it when it forgets or would defy the art of love. You need “decency.” There is no disguising the fact that this means goodness; patience, self-denial, humility, and the continual intervention of a far higher sort of love than Affection, in itself, can ever be. That is the whole point. If we try to live by Affection alone, Affection will “go bad on us.”

- The Four Loves
It was of erotic love that the Roman poet said, “I love and hate,” but other kinds of love admit the same mixture. They carry in them the seeds of hatred. If Affection is made the absolute sovereign of a human life the seeds will germinate. Love, having become a god, becomes a demon.

- The Four Loves