Name: The Love of Kith and the Love of Kin
Uploaded: 2026-03-11T15:11:35.000Z
Duration: 3 min 43 s
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Participle clauses

The words kith and kin are some of the oldest in the English language, appearing somewhere between 400 and 800 AD.

Adverbs of manner

They are now also hugely unfamiliar and odd sounding, but their meaning is simple.

Kin refers to close blood or marriage, relatives.

There's the link to the German word kind.

Your husband or wife, your children, your parents.

And kith refers to the community at large, neighbors, colleagues, the village, the city, the people you pass in the street, friends you make at work or through hobbies.

If we think about the love we're interested in nowadays, it is overwhelmingly the love of kin.

When we think of falling in love, it's with one very special person who will understand us totally, with whom our souls will fuse.

A best friend, angel, co parent, therapist, sex mate and companion all rolled into one.

Someone who will exhaust our imaginations, Someone who will render everyone else redundant.

The dream is intense, but the search for this sort of love is also notoriously troubled.

It's hugely unlikely, statistically, that we will ever feel as close to our kin, to our families and lovers as we would like.

Mother is cold, father is distant, our partner doesn't understand.

We've dated 200 people in the last four years and we're no closer to finding the bond we crave.

A huge amount of blame is sprayed around to account for the loneliness and scratchiness.

We have an unresolved trauma from childhood.

All this may be true, but eventually this blame seeking is in danger of missing the point.

Whatever the reasons, love between kin seems to be very, very hard, almost, we might say, at certain moments, impossible.

Families can't deliver and nor can lovers.

Nothing in our social or political system encourages us to question our expectations and take the next logical step.

The fantasy of the nuclear family and the romantic couple are hardwired into our calendars.

We celebrate Valentine's Day and Mother and Father's Day, but

there is no Neighbour Day, there is no Community Day.

And here we are, done an immense disservice.

Our longing for love can't and mustn't be stopped.

But it might, given the circumstances, at times, be redirected.

We've got so much love to give and would at points be so much better advised to offer it to our kith over than to our kin.

That is, to friends, to the people we've met through our work and on our travels, to the strangers we chat to at the community hall.

It's a different form of love, of course.

But it may be all the more joyful for that.

It's a love free of jealousy, exclusivity and punishing hope.

It isn't necessarily where we started, but.

But it may be the future of love properly understood.

We have tried so hard to love our kin before despairing of love, we should open our eyes to a possibility to which our era blinds us.

The quiet, glorious comforts of the love of kith.