What is love?

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All my life I've never felt the need to be romantically attached to anyone. I mean, why would you need another person when you can do everything by yourself, the way you want it to? Of course, I've felt lust and infatuation during my teenage years but I always attributed that to hormones. From my observation of love in media and human interaction, I've managed to organize it into two main categories:

"Evolutionary" love:
-"natural love"; essential to the development of social structures and relationships
-maintained by hormones such as serotonin, oxytocin, vasopressin, and dopamine
-also known as infatuation or limerence
-affected by sexual orientation

"True" love:
-the willingness to die for something
-cannot be applicable to objects, only ideas or concepts (e.g. Patriotism means going to war (and dying) to defend the integrity of the concept of the area of land known as your country in its current state)

But obviously this is not true. So, could anyone please help me to understand what love is and why it's so important?

Love is sleeping on the wet spot.

Also, I don't know, I suppose.

".... lady don't hurt me. Don't hurt me, no more."

as much smarter people than I have stated one way or another, "there is a time for proust, and a time to skip it." many people come to a time in their lives when they see something beautiful, something interesting, something amusing or entertaining, and think "I sure wish I could share this with somebody." they may toil at work and have nothing but videogames to look forward to at home, nobody to talk to or bounce ideas off of, nobody who worries about them or cares or about them and nobody in turn to worry about or care about. that is what I've been dealing with for the past several decades, only recently being rescued from this anomie by another wrong planeteer this most recent love I am hard-pressed to come up with a name for, but it is a mixture of romantic and filial love. what my late mother sacrificed for me was motherly love, I felt it most acutely when I was transporting her ashes to the cemetery, I suddenly felt an enveloping warmth of unearthily [custom word ] serenely intense nature that lasted for about 20 minutes, until we arrived at the cemetery and handed over the urn to the attendant. that and my wrong planet sweetheart are my most personal feelings/definitions of love. I hope this ramble made sense.

Last edited by auntblabby on 11 Jan 2014, 3:00 am, edited 1 time in total.

aww, you beat me to it....and IIRC the lyric is baby not lady.


Based on my limited experience what with never having a single date in my pathetic life, I'd say love is a lot like what I feel for my best friend. You only want to be with that one special person, just looking at somebody else makes you feel bad. You want to be there for them no matter what, even if it's just to lend an ear and/or shoulder. You want to better yourself not just for you but for him/her as well.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tJ6oT7MICPY[/youtube]

I can only give you my personal definition, based on observations of others (since I didn't really get any grounding in love from family.)

Love is a state of being in relation to another in which actions to the benefit of that person are consistently selected despite their potential cost for one's self.

Examples:

A mother who consistently chooses to put the welfare of their children above their own in the decision-making process.

A partner who consistently chooses to do the right/healthy thing for their partner, even when it is inconvenient/costly to do so.

A co-worker who consistently chooses to make the environment around them more positive, offering encouragement, praise, help and constructive criticism.

A teacher who consistently chooses to do the best possible job, including working overtime and donating their own money for supplies so that the students in their class are well taken care of.

A caretaker who consistently chooses to benefit the personal and physical well-being of their charges at personal expense or cost because of a sense of empathy, duty and respect for their charges.

An emergency worker who gives their life to save another.

I would note here that, like the Greek definitions for love (agape, eros and philios), that I would define love broadly enough to cover a variety of circumstances, because it is possible to love an ideal enough to behave lovingly toward others without familial or romantic ties.

When I teach, I try to behave in that fashion toward students (NOT eros), because I believe so strongly in the need for the fostering of interpersonal dignity, respect, and the love of learning. I have chosen to spend money, to take the time to listen to them talk about their lives and problems, to advocate for them, to help them become connected to the university and to locate resources for them. I behave in this fashion precisely because of a love of the ideal classroom, as well as a generalized love of humanity.

I am a crank, a grouch and all kinds of a sh***y person sometimes, and I fail as often as I succeed. But my students seem to love me anyway, as evidenced by their reports on me every semester and the letters I've framed for my office walls at home.

Notice the feeling of love, whatever that is, is not a part of my definition. Presumably this refers to the warm fuzzy feeling (for me, pressure in my chest, a lump in my throat, and the beginnings of a headache), which is not necessary for me to feel the need to try and behave toward bettering the group. I do not always have this feeling about people, situations and things--what I have is the knowledge that this kind of behavior is important (read important as if written in twenty foot letters of fire) for me.

I want to leave the situations I'm in better than I found them and to leave people better than when I found them. That, as far as I'm concerned, is love.

Love is a type of seat or a zero in tennis(look this up if you don't get it)

But to me love means caring about someone very strongly & wanting what's best for them even if it's not what's best for me.

^^^
right on!

In my opinion, all forms of love are more selfless than selfish. If its the other way around, its not love.

Love isn't about needing something the same way you need food or water, it's about human connection. Trying to explain human connection to people who don't want or experience it is like trying to explain to someone who doesn't see in color why you "waste" money on specific items for aesthetic purposes when they can't see the yellow, or the pink stripes, etc, themselves.

I can't understand why someone would want to exist at all if they only remain inside their own tiny bubble doing nothing but things that die with them.

The word love is used in different ways which often leads to confusion. It is used to refer to a bundle of emotional sensations that often includes attraction, speculation, anticipation, and desire that can be experienced without any actual knowledge of a person other than seeing them. This unilateral group of emotional sensations is often called "falling in love".

The problem is that initial sensations often fade leaving a person feeling that they have "fallen out of love" or have "fallen in love" with someone else.

Real love, biblical love, or what could be called mature love seems unrelated to the "falling in love" experience and seem to refer more to choices that are made as opposed to feelings that are experienced;

Love meekly and patiently bears ill treatment from others. Love is kind, gentle, benign, pervading and penetrating the whole nature, mellowing all which would have been harsh and austere; is not envious. Love does not brag, nor does it show itself off, is not ostentatious, does not have an inflated ego, does not act unbecomingly, does not seek after the things which are its own, is not irritated, provoked, exasperated, aroused to anger, does not take into account the evil , does not rejoice at the iniquity but rejoices with the truth, endures all things, believes all things, hopes all things, bears up under all things, not losing heart nor courage. Love never fails. - 1 Corinthians 13:4-8

Love is the time integral of effort expended in relation to the time integral to effort received.

very good analogy. a person's eyes have to be opened anew to see/entertain/comprehend love.

To me love is firstly, trust. If you can trust the intentions of someone and feel peaceful and safe around them, you've accomplished the first step of love. Next comes devotion. What you once had as trust turns to an unerring want to be close to, and to feel connected with the person or persons in question. Then finally comes sacrifice. Once you're in deep, the only way to maintain the close connection is want to sacrifice your happiness or needs for the needs of the one you love. True love is when the person in question is willing to do the same for you, thus the sacrifice is mutual.

I can understand what you are saying but I don't see the logic behind it. Is there any way for me to experience love or am I just a sociopath?