Having defined storge love as familial affection in the previous post, I have been thinking about how this kind of love, or the lack of it, has played out in my own experience.

I did not grow up in an affectionate family. Storge was not commonplace as expressed in parental hugs, kisses and the like. Like any boy, I craved the attention, but it was ever absent.

When I was very young, about eight years old, I was exposed to pornography; not as an accidental discovery, but rather intentionally by my father who decided a Playboy centerfold was a great way to teach me about the birds and the bees. I was immediately captivated. He always had porn magazines on the bookshelf easily accessible.

What I was looking at appeared to be love. Two people, be it a man and a woman or in many of these mens’ magazines a woman and a woman, were showing what to me seemed to be affection and love. Without any guidance on these matters, it was cemented in my young heart that sex and love were synonymous. Furthermore, affection of any sort from a woman became sexually charged.

Since getting married my wife has many times expressed her feelings of pressure; that any expressions of affection must lead to sex. I have to confess the arousal that I often feel. I am growing in this area. Through this study of love I am learning that there are different kinds of love.

Only agape, which is for another writing, is love of a type that cannot be corrupted by the flesh. For me, storge love, defined as affection, has been hijacked by the loss of innocence in my formative years. Now I as a man am standing up to reclaim it and show affection in the way God intended it to be: a display of my love with no ulterior motives, only to communicate my familiar affection to my wife, family and friends!