The First Effects of Love

04 May, 2026

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EduFamilia

Voices

16 January, 2026

14 min

The First Effects of Love

How Love Illuminates the Universe and Transfigures Even Flaws

1. Because of love, the universe shines.

The radical affirmation of the beloved person, the main core of love—as we saw in the previous article—presents two clear manifestations:

one composed of the effects of love that could be described as positive;
and another in which the effects of love go hand in hand with “negative” realities.

I will now explain the positive effects of love, leaving the analysis of what could be called negative effects for another writing.

The radical core of love manifests itself first
through positive effects.

Radiant confirmation

The joyful confirmation of love is most evident in falling in love.

When one falls in love or when one continues to fall more and more in love—which is the destiny of marriage, the development of love—it is not only that the loved one turns out to be wonderful, exceptional; it is that the entire set of everything that exists shines with an unprecedented light, with a brilliance, with iridescence absolutely unknown outside the condition of being in love.

And here we could recall countless poems and songs that intuitively express the particular brilliance of all nature because of the transformation experienced by someone who goes mad with love.

The well-known Latin American song clearly illustrates this point:

Today everything seems more beautiful to me; today the nightingale sings louder… I am happy; I don’t know what I feel! I go singing like the river and like the wind…!

As are Alberoni’s insightful words:

The lover desires love even if it causes suffering, even if it torments him. Life without love seems sterile, dead, and unbearable to him.
- The beloved person is not only more beautiful and desirable than others. They are the door, the only door to enter this new world, to access this more intense life.
- Through it, in its presence, thanks to it, we find the point of contact with the ultimate source of things, with nature, with the cosmos, and with the absolute.

Well, as Gautier points out—and I consider the statement to be of uncommon depth, although it may be difficult to perceive or accept it—, “it is already a great happiness to be able to love, even if it is not reciprocated.”

The loved one is the only door
that provides us with access to an enriched world.

Reasons?

I will try to point out the deep reasons for this enrichment derived from love.

I don’t think it’s easy, so I ask the reader not to worry if they don’t quite understand what I’m explaining.

A long time ago, in a specialized work, I came to the conclusion that beauty could be conceived as “being brought to fullness and made present”: unfolded to its culmination and brilliantly manifest.

And it showed, in accordance with the most classic thesis of the West, that such fullness requires integrity.
That an artistically unfinished work is hardly beautiful.
And that, on the contrary, what we know as the master touch, that final detail characteristic of genius, can transform a work, even one physically unfinished, into a marvel of beauty.

Well, the one I love would be like the brilliant touch of the cosmos itself.

It is precisely the loved one who completes the world, brings it closer to me, and makes it all reverberate with a vigor and intensity that moments before falling in love were impossible to predict.

The loved one is like the universe’s brilliant touch,
completing the world,
bringing it closer to me,
and making it resonate
with unimaginable vigor and intensity.

Transfiguration

When the wonderful vigor of love takes hold of us, everything revives and is transfigured: it increases its category, it manifests its radiant and deepest brilliance.

Regarding married life—where the unfolding of love is meant to manifest itself in a privileged way—Rafael Morales has aptly expressed it:

I was beside you. Silently, the landscape blazed at sunset, and the heart of the world was fire in the warm silence of the countryside.
- A certain secret, deaf and blind, filled me with love; I, lost in thought, was fixed on you, not understanding the profound mystery of your lips.
- I placed my mouth on its pure insistence / with a tremor almost of light, of a bird, / and I saw the landscape turn into a wing / and my forehead burn against the high sky.
- Oh, madness of love! Everything was already transformed into flight and caress… Everything was beautiful, fortunate, open… and the air had already become almost human.

Alberoni’s words are also revealing

Indeed, when the stirrings of love awaken within us, when the beloved enters our lives,

Our entire physical and sensory life expands, becoming more intense; we smell things we didn’t smell before, we perceive colors and lights we didn’t usually see, and our intellectual life also expands because we discover relationships we previously thought were opaque.
A gesture, a look, a movement from the loved one speaks to our innermost being; it tells us about them, about their past, about when they were a boy or a girl; we understand their feelings, we understand our own.

We experience, then, desires

…of being in the other’s body, a living and being lived by him in a corporeal fusion, which extends as tenderness for the beloved’s weaknesses, his naiveté, his flaws, and his imperfections. Then, we manage to love even his wound, transfigured by sweetness.

And, elsewhere, he writes:

Falling in love makes us love the other person for who they are; it makes even their flaws, their shortcomings, and their illnesses endearing.
- When we fall in love, it’s as if we open our eyes. We see a wonderful world, and the person we love seems like a marvel of being. Each person is, in and of themselves, perfect, distinct from all others, unique, and unmistakable.
- This is how we thank our beloved for existing, because his existence not only enriches ourselves but also the world.

The influence of love makes
even the flaws of the loved one endearing.

2. The flaws of the loved one, softened by love

In light of what I have just pointed out, it is better understood what happens to the defects of the loved one because of the love we profess for him.

Specifically, those of the spouse, which are possibly the ones that cause the most problems.

In three stages

Half-jokingly, half-seriously, a friend told me that something very curious happens with them.

During the courtship period, we can naively come to believe that the loved one has no flaws.
Or rather, it is possible that we start from such a conviction and remain firm in it.
- And not because our boyfriend or girlfriend makes any particular effort to hide them or simply disguise them.
- But because the moments we spend together, preceded by the longing to meet the one we love most, are the best of the day.
- Usually, we find ourselves especially relaxed and full of joy. And, moved by genuine affection, just to make him or her happy, without intending to and sometimes without even noticing, we show the best and most attractive side of ourselves.
Later on, even on the honeymoon or on the wedding night, those flaws are shown to us in all their starkness, stubborn and resistant.
- It could be the unexpected snoring of the person we just married, their constant tossing and turning in bed, their unnoticed tendency to take our rightful place in it…
And, since we hadn’t discovered them in the months before marriage, since we didn’t even imagine them, they disconcert us and tend to distort the somewhat idyllic image we had forged of the loved one.
Furthermore, since we find it easy to avoid them—because it is not our own faults that truly seem invincible to us—we may even conclude that our spouse acts in this unfortunate way precisely to annoy us!

From “he has no flaws”
We could move
to “he only does it to annoy me”.

More flaws!

Unfair, unintentionally.

Although it is fundamentally an obvious truth, we often fail to realize that the only flaws that require effort and struggle from each of us are our own.

Our own problems seem insurmountable, and we easily excuse them, precisely because we clearly perceive the difficulty of eliminating them: we experience that conflict firsthand!

On the contrary, those of others, if they do not coincide with ours, seem easy to suppress.

That’s why, if we’re not careful, we might dismiss them as eccentricities and childish whims. As unjustified obsessions, especially in someone to whom we are bound by the sincere ties of love.

Or, taking it a step further and bringing it to our own ground, as a particularly hurtful, unfounded, and untimely way that those around us use to make our lives impossible.

A real flaw

On the other hand, we cannot consider as someone’s fault simply what bothers us because it clashes with our way of being.

A genuine defect always represents a real harm to the person who has it, which incapacitates them from the harmonious development of their humanity.

To all of the above, we should add that, ordinarily, we will have lived for years within our own family of origin, with relatively stable ways of acting.

So, in a semi-conscious way, since we don’t know any other way, we conclude that this, the way in our home, is the normal and good way to do things for everyone!

As a result, on many occasions, after the wedding, there will be a number of behaviors of our spouse—born and raised in a different environment—that confuse us, make us uncomfortable, or even seem inappropriate, wrong, and ethically reprehensible: bad! And worthy of being corrected.

We are being unfair to him or her,
and without even realizing it!

Distinguish, and you will succeed

In short, to get out of this predicament, one would have to clearly distinguish between genuine defects, simple limitations, and mere differences in the way others are and act, including the loved one.

What happens if we don’t take those distinctions into account ?

Well, such trivialities as sleeping with the window open or closed; reading or not in bed; setting the table, cutlery, and food in one way or another; having a fixed schedule or a wide range of flexibility depending on needs, availability, or even mere habit or desire…

Such trivialities, and others of the same kind, can become insurmountable mountains, almost insurmountable obstacles that ultimately destroy a marriage that had every chance of succeeding and bringing great happiness to its partners.

How to get the most out of them

One last comment. I have suggested on a couple of occasions, in previous articles, that we love with all that we are and with all that we lack!

And I was referring, very particularly, to this type of shortcoming: our defects.

The truth is that they can become unbearable, especially for us, who have endured them for so long. But also that, with the experience that comes with the passing years and a serene struggle against them, we can transform them into a new and highly effective instrument of love.

Firstly, because they should make us more understanding of other people’s quirks.
Furthermore, because—with a touch of good humor: laughing at ourselves—it is not very difficult to use them to make life more pleasant for those around us.
- For example, by bringing them up scandalously when one of our children, or our spouse, feels down or discouraged from falling into their own faults again and again.

If both members of the marriage are truly willing to fight, the fight itself almost serves as justification for the husband or wife’s fight with themselves and with each of their children.

When both spouses are determined to fight,
their own struggle helps them to better understand
the struggle of the other member of the marriage.

And even more!

Let’s return to the flaws and the normal itinerary of a normal marriage, in which both seek the happiness of the other, putting all the springs of love into play.

In such cases, if the relationship continues to be nurtured and genuine affection grows, things eventually return to normal:

Driven by a more mature love, husband and wife strive to avoid anything that might disturb family peace and harmony or upset their loved one: their spouse and children.
- They don’t change radically—except on rare occasions—because that kind of change is quite difficult among human beings.
- But they are improving: they are looking for ways to make those details that they can barely avoid less burdensome for their spouse.
And that effort to please him evokes genuine tenderness in the spouse.
Then, as Alberoni stated, we managed to love even a wound of his transformed by sweetness.

In summary, and expressly linking it to education and human development:

We humans are capable of perfecting ourselves proportionally and as a direct consequence of the love we receive;
- We progress quickly when we are loved a lot, and it is almost impossible for us to improve if no one truly loves us.

We improve as people
Proportionally, and as a direct consequence
of the love we receive.

3. Our own improvement, derived from the love of the beloved person

Personal improvement = increased love

But there’s more.

Riding on the back of love, not only is what surrounds us polished and enhanced, but also, and especially, the loved one.

The beautification is total.

We also completed it ourselves; we changed our key, our quality.

In an old book aimed at teenagers, Dr. Carnot asserted, regarding the love that arises in them:

One day, for no apparent reason, you feel cheerful; you feel better. Everything around you seems friendlier. You feel like laughing and singing, like walking briskly through the streets. You’re in a better frame of mind for work.
- At the same time, we discover within ourselves an unknown force that drives us to the desire to accomplish something great. We feel a need to step outside ourselves, to open up. We become more cordial, more generous, more enthusiastic, and more benevolent toward everyone.
- Love is born!

Perhaps these words are overly sentimental or exaggerated. But what they say is not a mere metaphor. We will see that one of the most profound truths of anthropology throughout the ages, emphasized by the best of our contemporaries, is that love perfects us, that it makes us grow to often unsuspected limits.

Moreover, only the power of intelligent love is capable of making man progress as a person. That is to say, not from sectoral points of view, such as profession, aptitudes, physical abilities, skills, self-image…; but precisely as a person.

Wojtyla maintained this since his youth:
- People like to believe that Wujek would like to see everyone married. But this is a false image. The most important issue is actually something else. Everyone […] lives, above all else, for love. The capacity to love authentically, and not great intellectual capacity, constitutes the deepest part of a personality. It is no accident that the greatest of the precepts is to love.

“Everyone lives,
Above all else,
for love.”

Different ways of rebelling

This centrality of love has had various manifestations throughout history.

As an example, consider the following reflection by Marías, derived from his consideration of courtly love:
- Men will desire and admire certain qualities in women: gentleness, compassion, and, if possible, the intellect of love; but women will also demand courtesy, skill, effort, courage, sacrifice, and the ability to speak beautifully. This is the dual driving force of mutual perfection, which unfolds, enriches, and transforms during the Renaissance, diversifying into national styles.
Or these verses by Morales, which assure us that everything—man and world—touched by the winged nerve of love, unfolds its own energy, until it gradually reaches final fulfillment:
- But you are not free; you are not a man without anyone, a man who does not love; you are alone on earth: you are nothing, oh, prisoner of divine longing. Fill your lips and your brow with love and merge your soul with another soul, and the whole cosmos will revolve with you, full of bliss, like an immense wing.

Only the vigor derived from intelligent love
makes man progress,
the beloved person,
precisely as a person.

(To be continued)

Tomás Melendo,
President of Edufamilia
http://www.edufamilia.com
[email protected]

EduFamilia

Edufamilia es una asociación sin ánimo de lucro, nacida en el año 2005. Su fundador, Tomás Melendo, advirtió que una mejora en la calidad de las familias facilitaría la resolución de bastantes de los problemas que aquejan a la sociedad de hoy. Y, apoyado siempre por su mujer, decidió lanzarse a esta aventura que cuenta con casi veinte años de vida y con múltiples ediciones de los distintos cursos formativos: Másteres y Maestrías, Expertos, cursos más breves, conferencias, ciclos culturales, seminarios y otros programas educativos. Aunque las primeras ediciones tuvieron carácter presencial, actualmente se ha hecho un gran esfuerzo por promover la infraestructura virtual para adaptarse a los nuevos tiempos y que la formación en torno a la familia alcance al mundo entero.