SPIRITUAL LOVE: There is nothing much to say about this kind of love except the fact that it is also an Interpersonal love. Basically, we all love God and we have a relationship with HIM and this kind of love is what I classify as the Spiritual love. It is an Interpersonal love because it is between you and God, you love God and HE also loves you back.

FAMILY LOVE: This is actually supposed to be the first type of Interpersonal love that is meant to be practiced and taught. Right from the moment you were born, your parents have shown you love and to the moment they will seize to exist, they will continue to love you. There is a special affection between mother and son, father and daughter, brother and sister, and this affection or compassion makes us feel loved. Family love is always the first earthly love that we human can come in contact with. The concept of affection and compassion will be first shown to us by our family. Family love is said to be the strongest of all love and this can be backed up with the popular saying “Blood is thicker than water”. Literally speaking, blood is thicker than water but the “BLOOD” in this saying refers to the Family bond that you share among your parents and siblings. Your blood is your family and this is why you can argue that Family love is the strongest form of love you can encounter. For you to understand the concept of true love, Family love is something we must have and appreciate because some of you have it and yet don’t appreciate it.

FRIENDSHIP/PLATONIC LOVE: This can be said to be a relationship between two or more people who care about one another but such definition doesn’t do much justice to the concept of friendship right? Okay then let’s give proper meaning to what is regarded as the most important relationship someone can ever have. A friend is the first person you want to call when you hear that good news and also a friend is that person that will follow you on the most boring errands and still find a way to make it fun.

NOTE: Friendship is meant to be a matter of choice not force or influence.

There is no limit to the number of friends that you can have, it all depend on your choice and reasons for wanting to keep them. Friends care for each other in a great deal and this makes us feel loved. Platonic love is a wonderful and a great kind of love and trust me, much ink has already been spilled in citing the virtues of having a friend.

NOTE: True friendship is not an easy thing to have and maintain because it demands time and effort, the more you value and appreciate yourself the more your friendship grows.
As a friend you are required to sometimes put someone else before yourself. A friend is also required to show an immense amount of support and comfort both in good and hard times. The kind of love that you have for your friend is different from that which you have for your parents or even your siblings. Friendship is the most common kind of love you will find everywhere because every person needs a friend no matter how bad he/she can be, a friend is always needed.

ACCIDENTAL/ COINCIDENTAL LOVE: When you find yourself in this kind of position it is always advisable to fall back and ask yourself if truly you are in love. Accidental love is when you fall in love with the opposite sex accidentally or coincidentally. This is when you develop a sort of emotional feeling towards the opposite sex and this occurs mostly when we tend to be friends with the opposite sex. At first it turns out to be a platonic love but later you will notice that your feelings and affection towards that person has increased and you suddenly don’t feel like a friend anymore instead you feel something stronger and more emotional. As good as accidental love seems to be, I will advise that if you find yourself in this kind of situation, take your time to know if you are compatible with the person. I know you might say since you didn’t plan it, it happened coincidentally, then you are compatible but “what if you are not compatible?” not all who have great emotional feeling towards each other are compatible.

ROMANTIC LOVE: Yes I know what you must be thinking right now but trust me it is not what you think it is. Romantic love is a relative term but generally accepted as a definition that distinguishes moment and situation within intimate relationships as contributing to a significant relationship connection. This kind of Interpersonal love is not simply about affection, tenderness or strongest of all, passion. It is way deeper than that and contains a lot of feelings that include honesty, trust, and reliance etc. in the real world. Romantic love is what is referred to as the LOVE RELATIONSHIP between a male and a female gender, boyfriend and girlfriend,wife and husband.

Before you can get romantically in love with someone, you must have passed through these two stages of love. These stages of love are what all of you are aware of, but I have noticed that some of you don’t understand it in full while some of you just module it together and that is why I have decided to straighten it up. The stages of love are as follows:

INTRAPERSONAL LOVE: Intrapersonal love is the love of oneself, that means the affection and compassion you have for yourself. This kind of love forms the basis of any kind of love and this can be backed up by the popular saying that goes thus “Love your neighbour as yourself”. The statement “As yourself” is what is referred to as Intrapersonal love and this simply states that before you can love anybody you have to love yourself first and loving yourself is the key to loving other people. So before you can say you are in love with someone else, you need to ask yourself if you love yourself first, I know you might be like “why won’t I love myself”. Trust me when I tell you I have met people who don’t understand what self-love is. You see if you are the type of person that always go into a relationship simply because you need someone to love and make you happy, then I’m sorry to say, you’re one of those who don’t understand the concept of self-love. To love oneself, is the ability to make your own self genuinely happy without the endorsement or dependent on anybody self. Just to add to this, this is not something that can be taught, it something that must come from within, you need to dig deep and find that thing that makes you happy without , for me it music.

INTERPERSONAL LOVE: The love between human beings, be it girl or boy, father and daughter, mother and son or even same sex is what I call Interpersonal love. This kind of love is a love that involves at least two people which means that we are extending our love to someone else and by so doing we are moving from INTRAPERSONAL to INTERPERSONAL LOVE. The love we have for God, friends, teachers, parents and any other person we relate with is simply known as INTERPERSONAL LOVE. This form of love is what gives birth to every other form of love that we have today and that is what I will be talking about next, the Kind of Interpersonal Love that we have.

Now that you have a clear understanding of what the stages of love are, join me next week as I talk about the major Kind of Interpersonal Love that we have.