Stop BEGGING For Love With These 5 STOIC Laws

Seneca, an old man by now, is writing to his friend Lucilius from his estate at Nomentum, out in the countryside, not far from Rome.

He tells him he has fled the city because he felt the first signs of a fever coming on and he confides something very personal.

He didn't leave for his own sake, but for his wife's, Paulina.

She insisted.

She told him he had to look after himself.

And Seneca, who admits he didn't always take much care of himself, did as she said.

He even adds a detail with a touch of humor.

The moment he left behind the heavy air of Rome, the smoke from the kitchens and the dust of the streets, he says he could feel his body changing, as if he'd got his strength back somewhere along the road.

A famous philosopher, for years an advisor to the emperor, telling his friend quite simply that he'd done what his wife told him and that she'd been right.

Then he writes a few lines you wouldn't expect from a Stoic philosopher.

He says that, knowing Paulina's life depends to a great extent on his own, he has begun to take care of himself for her sake.

that his wife's love has obliged him to love himself more.

And he adds that a man who doesn't value his wife or a friend enough to stay on a little longer in this life for them is a soft man.

Sometimes, even when you have reasons to let yourself go, you have to keep looking after yourself out of love for those who love you.

That too, he says, is the mark of a great soul.

Notice what Seneca is saying.

He isn't talking about a love that makes him dependent or a love that wipes him out.

He's talking about a love that makes him better.

Paulina doesn't complete him because Seneca isn't incomplete.

She gives him one more reason to be the best version of himself.

That's the difference we're going to explore today.

The difference between the love that holds you up and the love that enslaves you.

We know little about her.

Tacitus calls her Pompeia Paulina, and she's generally thought to have been a good deal younger than her husband.

The historian remembers her as faithful to Seneca to the very last day, in years when falling out of favor with Nero could mean losing everything.