INTRODUCTION TO THE DEVOUT LIFE

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PART III, Chapter 18: Flirtations Or Fickle Love

When these foolish friendships are between persons of different sex and without any intention of marriage they are called flirtations. In fact, there are only some miserable specimens or phantoms of friendship. They do not merit the name of friendship or love due to their unequalled vanity and imperfection. By these, the hearts of men and women are taken up, engaged and entangled with one another in useless and foolish affections, based on these frivolous exchanges and mean pleasures of which I have just spoken.

These foolish loves usually melt and lose themselves in sordid sensuality and lustfulness, even though it was not the original intention of those who engage in them. Otherwise it would not be flirtation but open obscenity. Those who are affected by this folly may sometimes spend several years without anything directly contrary to the chastity of the body. They remain with only soaking their hearts in desires, sights, flirtations and such other foolishness and vanity, under different pretexts.

Some have no other purpose than that of satisfying their hearts in giving and receiving love, according to their amorous inclinations. These pay no attention to the choice of their love except their own taste and instinct. When they meet with a pleasant person without examining his interior attitudes or his conduct, they begin these amorous exchanges. They thrust themselves into these miserable traps from which they will have difficulty to extricate themselves. Others allow themselves to be led into it by vanity, thinking that it is no small glory to seize and bind hearts by love. In making their choice for their own glory, they set up snares and spread their nets in noticeable, elevated, rare and illustrious places. Others are carried away both by their amorous inclinations and by vanity. Although their hearts are inclined to love, they do not wish to engage in it except for the sake of acquiring some glory.

These friendships are all evil, foolish and vain. They are evil as they lead to and finally end in sins against chastity. They steal away love and consequently the heart from God, from their wife and from the husband to whom it belonged. They are foolish because they do not have either foundation or reason. They are vain because they give neither any profit nor honour, nor satisfaction. On the contrary, they waste time and compromise honour, without any other pleasure than that of an eagerness in striving and in hoping without knowing what they desire or seek after. For these mean and weak minds always esteem that there is something – I do not know what – to be desired in these reciprocal expressions of love given to them, and they are not able to say what it is. Hence, their desire for it cannot end but always urges their hearts to perpetual distrust jealousies and anxieties.

St. Gregory Nazianzen, writing against frivolous women, says admirable things on the subject. Here is a short passage addressed to women indeed, but quite good also for men:

Your natural beauty is sufficient for your husband. If it is for many men as a net spread for a flock of birds, what will happen? The person pleased with your beauty will be pleasing to you, you will return glance for glance and look for look. Soon smiles and little words of love will follow, let loose stealthily in the beginning but soon you will become familiar and pass on to open love-making. Beware, my talkative tongue, of saying what will happen later! Yet let me say this truth. Nothing of all that these young men and women say or do together in these foolish intimacies are exempt from serious stings. All the rubbish that makes up flirtations stick to one another and follow one another, neither more nor less than a piece of iron drawn by a magnet draws many others along with it.

How rightly does this great Bishop speak: What do you think of doing? To give or not to give it? No one gives love willingly without receiving it necessarily. The herb called aproxis receives and conceives fire as soon as it sees it. Our hearts are the same. As soon as they see a person burning with love for them, immediately they are aglow with love for him.

I wish to accept some love, someone will tell me, but not much of it. Alas! You deceive yourself. This fire of love is more active and more penetrating than it appears to you. You think of receiving only a spark of it, and you will be astonished to see that in an instant it has seized your whole heart, reduced all your good resolutions to ashes and your reputation to smoke. The Wise Man cries out: Who will have compassion for a snake charmer stung by a snake? (Sirach 12:13).

I cry out with him: Foolish and senseless people! Do you not think of taming love so as to manipulate it at your will? Do you wish to play with it? It will sting and bite you grievously. Do you know what people will say? Everyone will mock and laugh at your wish to take love. With a false sense of assurance, you wished to put in your bosom a dangerous snake which has stung you, to ruin you and your honour.

What blindness it is to gamble the principal power we have to no purpose, on such trifling stakes. Yes, Philothea, God seeks man only for his soul, his soul only for his will, and his will only for his love. Alas! We have scarcely enough love even for what we need, I mean, we need it infinitely more to love God sufficiently. All the same, miserable as we are, we lavish and pour it out on foolish, vain, trifling things as if we have enough and to spare. This great God has reserved for himself the whole of our love in gratitude for creating, preserving and saving us. He will demand a very strict account of these foolish deductions which we make from it. If he makes such an exact scrutiny of idle words (Mt. 12:36) what will he do with idle, insolent, foolish and harmful friendships?

The walnut tree is very harmful to the vines and fields in which it is planted because being so big, it draws the whole moisture from the soil which afterwards is not able to nourish other plants. Its leaves are so dense that they make a large thick shade. Finally it attracts passers-by to itself who, to pluck its nuts, spoil and trample down everything around it. These amorous affairs cause the same damage to the self. For they occupy it so much, and draw its movements so powerfully, that its strength becomes insufficient and it is incapable of doing any good work. Their leaves, that is, the talks, amusements and love-making are so frequent that they waste the whole spare time. Finally, they cause so many temptations, distractions, suspicions and other consequences that the whole heart is trampled down and spoiled by them. In short, these love affairs banish not only the love of God but also the fear of God, weaken the spirit and spoil the reputation. It is, in one word, the plaything of the court but the plague of the hearts.