I don’t distinguish emotion from will. Note that I said “effort”. Most refer to Love as an emotion (as though it were merely a chemical imbalance without purpose - Secular Luv).
For me, it’s that innate power within us, consisting of spirit, heart and reason which rises up and gives momentum to our struggles for the ultimate autonomous freedom to create and choose our own actions.
Ah, I understand you now. But when you simply showed effort as (emotion), something became lost to me in translation.
Effort can in part also be defined as will.
Well, love can be referred to as a chemical reaction in the brain - when those endorphins start jumping, anything can happen. That is commonly mistaken for love. But it is the will [at least] in combination with that that shows more light on what Love is. If there is no will or effort to become or to grow and change between two people, then there is no real love. Love is evolutionary.
interesting, so everyone is born with a different spirit and thus people choose to do different things?
That’s actually very possible - that we are all born with different spirits (I am not speaking souls here) as we all come from different places, biologically, historically and spiritually speaking. Part of who we already are as spirit lies deeply within our cells though we have the power to re-direct that flow and transcend that. I think that part of what creates or re-creates our different spirits is also the context of the lives which we individually live.
Your operative here, Arc, is “freely given.” That phrase would remain true no matter what sort of love is being described, and there are many. Love cannot be forced nor does it demand anything in return. It’s the heartbeat of time and life.
I think someone would need to qualify the what sort of love. It is true that there are many forms of relationships which we call love but which are NOT real love when looked at closer. Freely given though is one sign of what real love is to me.
So entwined as to not be able to separate?
What about the two individuals?
Do they merge into one, too or do they remain separate?
So entwined as to never think or want to separate.
To see them in bed, you would have to wonder.
Not love and lust - but the act of falling in love goes hand and hand with the sex drive. Falling in love is not real love but a chemical reaction that has happened in the brain but may become transformed into real love as some point.
True but real love can also take plase without the sex.
You left out the male. BOTH must surrender and be in a vulnerable place. Vulnerable sounds more human for the act, don’t you think.
When you say fall into the act of love you’re speaking of will and action here, right - not simply falling in love? Sometimes in falling in love that goes no further, all that the people involved really want is their own needs satisifed. Falling in love is like a baby merging with its mother. A baby is extremely narcissistic in wanting its needs provided for but we are not babies, we are adults.
I don’t think that Love = state of wanting to experience something. (strong desire) That is simply a strong desire. Love does not have to enter into that.
One cannot love drugs. One can be addicted to drugs (as one may be addicted to what they feel is love). One can only really love a human being, I feel or perhaps a pet. I think with a pet, it may be somewhere between love and attachment but perhaps not really love.
I think we can only really love a human being because real love is about tending to one’s own growth and to another’s growth…love is about wanting to become. That’s why if it isn’t sometimes a struggle against entrophy and laziness, and a struggle towards will and action, it isn’t love. At the same time, it may be and is a lot of fun.
I really think we need to be more conscious of how we use the term *love".
So have these two people lost their individuality, do you think?
Do you feel that two people who have no problem separating and do not so much miss each other (too much anyway) when they are away from one another - do you feel that they cannot possibly love one another deeply?
But what do you think?
Well let’s hope so.
If truly in Love, they don’t miss each other except by the comparative caustic nature of their separated environment. They KNOW the other is a part of themselves. The only thing to miss is the relief from other pressures by the presence of their other part.
Cut off your arm. You won’t miss it until the air strikes the exposed flesh and you find that you cannot grasp when in need as you could before.
In child, they become even one flesh.
Why would you say this? Is love about losing one’s self, one’s individuality or about letting down barriers and letting the other in? Can you love another person, james, yet see yourself separate from that person?
Okay, when you say in Love, you do not mean in love, right? When you capitalize the word Love, we’ll take that to mean real love. Aside from that, if I understand you correctly, you mean geographical distance here?
Well, that is a beautifully romantic way to put it. Our brain chemistry is truly wonderful at times. But at the same time, do you say two hearts become one heartbeat in a box )…or can you say that two individual hearts beat in the same box. Lol
If I understand you correctly, you’re speaking about the moral support that two people loving can bring to each other…about the inter-dependence that love creates in a relationship…not dependency. Otherwise, it becomes more like a drug addiction.
Well, I definitely would mine. If you are really paying attention, you would be quite aware of your body and all of its limbs and organs. If you were observing and truly appreciated it, you definitely would miss that it was gone. You might even have/imagine phantom feelings where it was before.
I don’t understand this. Are you talking about a mother carrying a child or a man and a woman having conceived a child together? 
What else is love but understanding and rejoicing in the fact that another person lives, acts, and experiences otherwise than we do…?
Friedrich Nietzsche
Love is the difficult realization that something other than oneself is real.
Iris Murdoch
Just because you love someone doesn’t mean you have to be involved with them. Love is not a bandage to cover wounds.
Hugh Elliott
Three really good thoughts that help to shed more light on this strange mystery called love…I think…
If you don’t care whether they love you also, sure. But do realize that not realizing that it is really only another part of yourself that you are loving, can lead to trouble. That is the source for compassion and all ascension. Materialists can never ascend and find Love to be a difficult concept.
Emm… Uhh… yeah… I guess so… sure 
As long as you see yourselves as separate in intent (heart and mind), you will truly be separate. Harmony cannot exist in conflict of intent. Love is a bond that forbids separate intent (thus no fear, no need of scrutinizing to ensure trust).
Are you not dependent on your parts? How long would your liver live without the rest of the body? The brain? The heart? What part of you is not dependent on the combined whole of you? Seek to be independent and you only find dependency in more distant things and death. Do not depend on your chosen partner, and you WILL depend on an unchosen government (a distance and callus authority over you).
Are you kidding??
It is doing something about it, not merely reveling in it.
Until you make it a part of you. Then are you not loving that which is you?
You love what you perceive as signs of hope, not necessarily a hope that you expect to directly gain.
Again this is simply the way it is commonly used. This is not detailing or trying to impose a definition. I defined what i saw, nothing else. The question is: are words not simple acronymns with associated phonemas used to describe an observation? Why should anyone define love as you do?
Do you believe this kind of love is possible?
Do you believe in real love?
…So that someone will know what the hell you really meant when you said it?? 
Is this in response to me?
Love starts at friendship. I think people like to confuse “love” and reverence all too often.