Purpose of love...

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?

Romantic love functions to create pair bonding in mammals. A bonded pair has an increased likelihood of successfully raising a child together. Most mammals live in some kind of group. A lone mammal is a rare occurrence.

Geese also form a pair bond that lasts a lifetime. A grandfather, an avid hunter, refuses to hunt geese because he refuses to break such a bond.

Romantic love is about saying yes to life. Love is saying yes to being here. It’s recognition of the importance of the other. It invalidates the ego’s claim to finality.

From a neurological perspective you can think of love as an experience of the right hemisphere while logic takes place in the left hemisphere. So you can literally be of two minds about your beloved. With only the tiny little bridge of the corpus callosum as the method of communication between the hemispheres it is little wonder that the two disagree.

Compassion is an evolutionary development. Human beings are born unready to survive. It takes about 13 years at a minimum before a human being can survive on its own. We have extended the period of dependence to a minimum of 18 years. Sometimes extending up to 22 years or beyond. Humans are more like marsupials than other mammals.

Compassion allows caregivers to care for children that otherwise would not survive. Romantic love is an outgrowth of this inborn compassion. It is a rebellion against social rules, restraints and limitations. It expresses the importance of individuality. Something we take for granted but which was revolutionary hundreds of years ago.

Modern romantic behavior has been significantly impacted by the development and mass production of the automobile, another force that supports individuality.

For a few different perspectives on love you might want to read:

“A Return to Love” by Marianne Williamson (a highly metaphysical approach to the subject.)

“The Birth of Pleasure: A New Map of Love” by Carol Gilligan (the theory of a psychologist who has done years of research into adolescent and child development. One of the first researches in the field of adolescence that gave any attention to adolescent girls.)

You also might want to check out Ian Suttie’s “The Origins of Love and Hate” It is an older book that might be hard to find or expensive, but you should be able to get it through a library system. He was a contemporaty of Freud who proposed a theory very different from Freud’s Psychoanalytic Theory.

One of his ideas was the hate is the frustrated aspect of love.

That makes sense in most cases, but what about in the case of the elderly divorcees that fall in love with one another. What about people who fall in love, and decide never to raise a family? What about infertile people who cannot raise a family? To what purpose does love serve them? My ex-girlfried had to have a partial hysterectomy at a relatively young age. She could have never beared my children. Of course there is always adoption, but what if there wasnt? If there were no adoptions would infertile couples be completely incompatible and not have the capacity to love one another? And why is love so polar in nature? If you love someone it is very easy to start hating them. It seems paradoxical that one thing could become it’s opposite so easily. Maybe love and hate are different aspects of the same thing. But if that is true, then can hatred just as easily turn into love. How many people fall in love with their worst enemies?

Anyway, thanks for the info though. I did not know about the geese thing. I assumed male geese fertilized eggs and left as is the case with most bird species. Love does help raise families. Maybe the other circumstances are just flukes. I consider that to be a large number of flukes, however.

In my opinion, what you are describing is not just love. It seemed to me that you were also describing the need to be loved, or the need to love another, and that this can create an addiction to another person, where you both want and don’t want to have them.
One definition of health is wholeness, and where a person has unhealed emotional traumas it leaves them feeling less than whole, and creates a need to fill that space. That feeling that something is missing people then try to fill with something, or someone, else. When it is a person that fills that space if they leave it can lead you to again feel less than whole, and even put you in to the feelings of the unhealed emotional trauma.
As for the purpose of love, my love for myself is what motivates me to look after myself, and my love for others motivates me to do what I can with and for them.

Perhaps the ability to love is an instinctive mechanism developed exclusively, as truatman said, to encourage pair bonding. If we consider it a “hardwired” mechanism in the brain, then just because we are unable to bear children with our partners does not mean that the instinct to fall in love is “switched off”.

That would be interesting if it’s true. If it’s hardwired in, maybe scientists can figure out what mechanism causes it. Even so, if it’s hardwired, that would leave the question of hermits and celebates open. Why would they not want to experience it if it is so inherent in the human race? Maybe it has to do with the social implications. I always thought it strange the way that society views sex as a dirty, immoral act. If we were to all stop having sex, the human race would die out in one generation. Of course that would never happpen though.

very true…

Possibly a combination of both society and instinct would be the best explanation. An instinct may exist that drives us to love, and seek love, but our experiences in society may cause us to reject that instinct. Because of our more developed brain, I don’t believe we are slaves to our instinct, as a lot of animals tend to be to some extent, but they are an underlying motivating force no doubt.

What could be the cause of the rejection of such an instinct? In the case of a hermit, perhaps he/she has been so burned by say a previous love, or society in general, that they chose to push back the strong impulse of instinct for fear of greater hurt. I would say most hermits deep down would truly desire to be in love, and be loved, but past experiences may have taught them to fear love and/or society.

Its difficult to say really, but very interesting to think about. Nice post.

First of all, I’d like to point out that it is wrong to think animals only are together for procreation. Not only do geese and penguins mate for life, I also remember seeing a photo of two male hceetas enjoying each others’ company. So, if animals can homosexuals, it shows that they can love, or at least that they can mate without procreation as the main reason.

Another reason that could explain the human spread need for love is conditionning. Since birth, we are taught that people come in pair. The parents who raised most of us were together (although this is less and less true), and our own existence is only explainable through the union of two human beings by love (also, I know exceptions still exist, but they are a minority. ) Furthermore, every kind of medias encompass and exacerbates the need for love. As soon as fairy tales, a young, gallant prince rides into the night to save a fine damsel, etc. etc., thus rceating the famous “prince charming” syndrom must teenager girls suffer through. Afterwards come Hollywood movies, in which you can be sure there will always be dating, hints of sex, or some kind of love, even when it is not needed in the plot. For example, why do James Bond need a feminine sidekick in every one of his adventures? Why does every action movie has a girl who’s only purpose is to be the girlfriend nearby?

Anyway, I guess you got my point that society expects us to be in a couple one day, and tells us every day that couples are standard.

I think the root of love is what Freud called sublimation. A sexual pulsion that can’t be discharged is transfigured, and uses other channels to manifest itself : love, kindness, etc.

Also, I think the need for love is because of the feeling of helplessness most of us must share. Not only in love, but also in matters of friendship, humans don’t like to be alone. Love without a feeling of need for the other person is simply called attraction by most. The reason why most of us don’t like to be alone is probably coming from a trauma we all had : being alone, powerless, when we were babies, crying to tear our lungs, when we couldn’t move, couldn’t speak, couldn’t feed ourselves, etc. This trauma, plus the conditionning that we all need love and friends to be well, actually make these sayings true.

Have a good day

I never said that I thought all animals only got together for procreation. It is obvious that some do though. MOST mammals do. What about spiders? In many different species of spiders the females eat their mates shortly after intercourse. Obviously love does not exist for them. I always thought seahorses had a quite unusual relationship. After mating the male takes the eggs from the female and carries them until birth. The female is actually the one that runs off and doesn’t have to deal with it.

I forgot about homosexuality in nature though. That’s a good point. The funny thing is, I use that in arguments a lot to defend homosexuality, but for some reason that didn’t come to mind when I was thinking about animal love.

In another sense. hate does not function as the opposite of love. Fear qualifies as the opposite of love. Fear is the intense desire to move away. Love is the intense desire to move towards. Romantic love is about getting as close to somebody as possible. This means shared emotions, tender touches and sexual intimacy. The most important thing being sharing time together. Not as in just being together in the same room at the same time. But being in direct intimate communication with the other so that you share the exact same moment in time. The perfect moment.

Mothers share this kind of time with their babies. This intimate communication of touches and smiles. The baby who smiles as his mother to win her smile is involved in the foundation of communication, body language. Body language, and touch, one of the most powerful forms of body language, serve as far more comforting that any words.

We are a society with a taboo on tenderness. Only lovers can have intimate casual touch. We even domesticate animals to live with us, in part, so that we can have the comfort of their touch.

I don’t know about fear being opposite of love. Love is about intense desire to be with someone on a romantic level. Fear does not necessarily mean repulsion. I know people who have feared their abusive lovers, but still loved them at the same time. Hate can be repulsive to. I for one do not want to be near someone if I have strong enough disliking for them to call it hate. Even when love turns to hate, the first instinct is to get away. It seems to me you are talking more about attraction and repulsion which are different issues.

Love mixes freely with all the other emotions. It is possible to both love and hate someone or something. It is possible for both love and fear someone or something.

Perhaps love has no actual emotional opposite, except maybe apathy, as the absence of all emotions whatsoever.

I had this hypothesis that love is to all of the other emotions as white light is to the other wavelengths of visible light. Love is the intense mix all of the emotions activated at the same time. All the other emotions act together in creating a new emotion from their profound synergy.

Similar to how our skin has both warm and cool sensors, but when both get activated at the same time they create the different sensation of intense heat.

The word ‘purpose’ is like ‘function’, just as a toaster toasts bread, is your question what function does love have?

I don’t think love has a purpose, or function. Love is a gift. There is nothing better. It is the most inspiring thing people can experience. The works of art in the world and the pieces of music are some examples that spring to mind.

Love is a wonderful thing. People call it an emotion, but it goes beyond definition. If you disect it and examin all the parts you loose the magic.

Mr Alien (something) bath: breaking up isn’t easy, as millions of songs will tell you. Just enjoy today. The magic of love is inside YOU!

Interesting hypothesis. That may be true, seeing as I think I have had every emotion towards my lover right on down the list.

From whom? And for what? I never saw anything special about love until I actually experienced it. It has changed my opinion of it irreversibly. I think I might have been happier without that knowledge though. I don’t like things that over-ride my rationality. It annoys me to no extent. Never before love has anything had that power over me. It is a vulnerability that I don’t wish to have.

Love’s purpose?

Love is the strength to let go and still keep hold
To be a first-hand witness of modesty in bold
When the tips of trembling fingers grow so cold
A fall from aloft awakes and breaks the mold

Will you ever be the same?

Does love have a purpose? Purpose is not a matter of cause but a matter of intention. Purpose involves consciously planning to bring about a desired end. I should point out right away that evolutionary processes are strictly non-intentional and purposeless. So, if love can be said to have a purpose that purpose must be associated with intentional beings, or more specifically, with human beings. And given that persons normally can’t be forced to love someone against their will, any purpose for love will have to come from the lover.

What would it mean to say that I have a purpose to love someone? Is it saying that my love is a means to an end or is it saying that my love is an end unto itself? Let’s examine the first possibility. In this case I will myself to fall in love in order to secure something of greater immediate value. Suppose, for example, that I want to get my hands on a fortune inherited by a woman with whom I’m acquainted. Accordingly, I devise a plan to make myself fall in love with her. Right, so everything goes according to my plan and I really do fall in love with the woman. I think about her all the time (about her, not her money). She has become more important to me than even my own well-being. To my great delight I discover that my love is requited and so we eventually marry. Now that I have access to her money my plan continues to unfold. Despite the fact that she now means more to me than my own life I force myself not to love her. Just as planned, she soon comes to mean nearly nothing to me. I hire a sharkish divorce lawyer and walk away with half of her fortune.

Some of you might have spotted the flaws in this scheme. First, why did I force myself to actually fall in love with her? Wouldn’t it have been simpler to maintain an emotional barrier between us and only act as though I loved her? Second, could I will myself to really love her for some ulterior motive? And most improbable of all - if I really do love this woman, could I force myself not to love her in order to steal from her? It’s a fact of life that gold-diggers sometimes chase sugar-daddies. But the definition of a gold-digger is someone who feigns love for the sake of money. Feigned love is false love.

Love - real love - is for many of us the most important and meaningful aspect of our lives. It isn’t something that we can turn on and off at will. In fact, we sometimes find ourselves in love despite our desire not to fall in love. Love is an emotion, it doesn’t obey our intentions. We can’t intentionally will ourselves to love someone - neither as a means nor as an end. If there is a purpose for love then only the lover could provide it. And yet to imagine that my love is obedient to my intentions is to to think that the tail wags the dog. I deny that love has a purpose. There is no overarching goal or underlying purpose - love is love’s only reward.

Michael