Seven Love Types (Part 8) LOVE #7: Mentorship (Guiding-love)

Mentorship is the last of the Seven Love Types:

Epithumia, liking-love,

Xenia, hospitality-love,

Storge, belonging-love,

Philia, friendship-love,

Eros, romantic-love,

Agape, giving-love, and

Mentor. guiding-love.

Mentorship, guiding-love

This may be overlooked as a type of love, but the mentor/mentee relationship actually contains much love. Mentorship is an ancient human practice in which a more experienced person teaches an apprentice, trainee, student or protégé. It is found in the arts, crafts, sports, spiritual and religious organizations, building trades, and, increasingly, in the business world. Anywhere that expertise needs to be passed on, mentorship is found.

Mentorship has its origins in Ancient Greece.

In Homer’s Odyssey, Odysseus leaves his family in Athens, to venture to Troy. His son, Telemachus, needs to protect his mother from unwanted males. Telemachus also wants to find out what happened to his father. To guide this young man, the goddess Athena takes on the appearance of King Mentes. From this we derive our word “mentor.”

Since then, stone masons have mentored apprentices, military leaders have cultivated protégés, music teachers have taught students, and religious sages have guided acolytes. Not all such relationships are examples of mentorship, sometimes it’s just teaching or training, but when it becomes a deep commitment to an art or a cause and a belief in wiser and a belief in the upcoming person it can become a long, strong, caring form of love.

But it is also an everyday type of love. Mentorship is present whenever we guide someone close with our expertise be it a child, a younger sibling, a love-partner, a work colleague or friend.

Mentorship guiding-love combines the shared liking of a skill or subject (epithumia), a “stranger” expert-protégés relationship (xenia), who becomes like parent and child (storge), a degree of mutual friendship (philia), and a sense of serving a higher purpose (agape). It uniquely adds guidance, wisdom, practical know-how and a shared commitment to excellence. When mentor and mentee work together on a project, it may be akin to oxen yoked together, with the stronger guiding the weaker around tough corners.

Mentorship, in its essence is a non-sexual love, but it often moves into eros. Famous historical couples began their relationship in a mentor/mentee relationship: writer and socialite George Sand and protégé Frederick Chopin, scientist Pierre Curie and student Marie Sklodowska, artist Willem de Kooning and student Elaine Fried, Mexico’s artist Diego Rivera and student Frida Kahlo; and theologian Pierre Abelard and Helöise. Then there’s writers C. S. Lewis and Joy Davidman, sculptors August Rodin and Camille Claudel, and scientists Antoine Lavoisier and Marie Anne Paulze among many others. Athletes may end up in long-term relationships with their coaches, and university lecturers may end up in relationship with a former student.

Caution. Due to the power imbalance, the novice in the relationship – music student, academic student, art protégé, or office trainee – is vulnerable to exploitation and mixing of Love Types. Many organizations rightfully enact protocols forbidding these liaisons; abuse in this area can happen as in any other when sex and power imbalance clash. At its heart, however, mentorship is a noble Love Type.

In many professional sports, an athlete or football player (say) will follow a coach from club to club because of the expertise they share, the ideas they embody and the mentoring guiding love that is shared.

I have had the privilege of experiencing mentorship in a variety of contexts, both as mentor and mentee. As a composition and piano student, I learnt much from my mentors, and I have been a mentor to several students. Here I wish to share my mentee experience with my conducting teacher.

Italian conducting Maestro and Fulbright Scholar, Giampaolo Bracali taught composition at the Manhattan School of Music, New York City. We felt an instant kinship in being foreigners who shared a common artistic aesthetic. Bracali was to teach me composition but quickly saw he had more to offer by teaching me more conducting skills. Occasionally we would share a coffee and engage in after-concert criticism, or talk about family, music and life experiences. I was a substitute lecturer for him while he was conducting orchestras on tour. Over the years, we shared affection based on striving for excellence in music, and an appreciation of certain aesthetics. I felt a deep sense of loss when he died.

Something special of the mentor lives on in the mentee: an artist’s sense of color, a stone-mason’s precision, a designer’s flair, a violinist’s bowing technique, a footballer’s mental toughness, a conductor’s approach to rehearsing, and more.

How do we mix up mentorship with other loves?

With mentoring comes responsibility. All school teachers, university lecturers, music teachers, sports coaches and business mentors need to ensure their intentions remain noble. Positions of power can be used to exploit others for personal gain, ego expression or sexual gratification.

Particularly in the teenage and young adult years a student, learner or protégé can easily mix up mentoring love with emerging sexual feelings. As encapsulated in the song When I kissed the Teacher, this can cause confusion and complications. I explain how we mix up loves more in my youtube video on the Love Types.

Yet, we all help out and guide each other somewhere. Parents naturally guide their children, love-partners naturally guide each other in different areas of life and share their expertise, older siblings may guide younger, senior colleagues guide juniors, and we even help strangers just by giving directions. We are all in this thing called life, together, and we all benefit from each others’ individual and specialized expertise. Sometimes, it’s good to see that mentors are around and have special skills to help us out.

Love to you.