“Being any kind of happy is better than being miserable about someone you can’t have.”

~Leah in Breaking Dawn

Stephenie  Meyer

In the Twilight Saga, Jacob loves Bella, but Bella loves Edward.  However, she loves Jacob, too.  If we were to pull out the Greek words for love, I think we’d be using three different words in this triangle.   Bella’s affections for Jacob are like a family attachment: storge.  Her feelings for Edward are sexual: eros.  Jacob’s feelings for Bella suggest a bit of agape, but also the comradry of philia.  There is a lot of complexity going on as these different kinds of love all simmer together, complicating things.

So Jacob can’t have Bella the way he would like, and Leah thinks anything is better than nothing.  Each of the words above is a fragment of attachment, one can have several of them at once.  What do you think?  Is one better than nothing?  Is each valuable in its own way?  Do you have to have all or a majority of them in one relationship to make it valuable?