I have been thinking about this lately, and have not been able to come up with a workable theory. What is the purpose of love, assuming it has one. Know that I am not referring to maternal or paternal love, brotherly or sisterly love. I am talking about the love that two lovers who truly love one another have. It can’t be procreation. That is the realm of sex. What about when a man loves a woman who cannot bear his children (as just so happens to be my case). I thought for a while that maybe it was to keep the human race from killing one another, and to help understand each other better, but that can’t be it either. There is a fine line between love and hate, and crimes of passion are not too infrequent to discount the preventing violence and hatred towards one another theory. It can’t be to hold a family together, what about the case when two people love each other, and cannot feasibly start a family, either due to old age or some other social circumstances? If you are truly in love with someone, there are most certainly going to be times when you truly hate them.
After a recent break up, I realized just how powerful a force love is. It completely defies the rational mind. I am a very logical person, and base my life upon that. After recently breaking up with a woman I love, my logical mind told me I had every reason to do it, and that there was no alternative. But still, I yearned and ached most powerfully to the point that I could not stand it. The emotion was literally over-powering my logical mind, and there was little I could do about it. I felt like every bone in body was telling me to get back together with the woman, while my mind was screaming NO YOU IDIOT! I am sure that many of you have probably had similar experiences to this. It just came to my attention how truly powerful a force love is. It is not only powerful but seemingly irrational.
What about animals. Do they feel love? Most mammals even just get together for procreation, and that’s it. If they don’t feel love, yet people do, then why is it necessary for the human race to feel love, and not animals? Is there an evolutionary reason for this? It seems to me that there has to be. How could such a powerful force exist, yet have no real purpose for having existed? Is it just some quirky fluke of life?