What is Love?

Hello. I am writing a research paper on love, and I need some new points of view. The wells of written words are starting to dry up; I need some conversation to keep this topic alive. What exactly is love? (how would you define it) What are its implications? What would happen if everybody loved? I would appreciate any input, especially if it’s good.

Cordially,
Streyhorn

Love…hmmmm, I would define love as a feeling one has for someone they hold in high regard(parents, teachers, grilfriend etc) So there are different types of love(I dont love my father the same way I love my girlfriend).

I belive the Love that varies the most(with maturity, opinion etc) is the type of love one has for thier partner, I also belive that one comes to ‘understand’ love more through age and maturity even though I dont think that age comes into play at all,For eg, if a 16yr couple feel more in love(even though they have less of an understanding) then a 25yr old couple, whos better off?

I think I confused some thoughts up here a little.
wonders how many people are gonna tear him apart with critisim

Hope I helped

I think love is an entity- a word to describe a range of extreme emotions that are beyond words but need to be summed up to satisfy our need for explaination. Actual “Love” is too complex and too personal and different to talked about as a definite actual thing.

This is an interesting/scary read: economist.com/printedition/d … ID=2424049

You know how our body is just all chemicals, so I always thought that, love is primarily a strong attraction between my body chemicals and the one I love. And in the case of hate it’s a repulsion between the two people in terms of their body chemicals. Maybe this is all magnetic somehow. And these body chemicals determine who we will be attracted to. But this chemical combination can change because we may lose our attraction for someone we used to love. So, a permanent thing like receptors and stuff, where does that come in here? I’ll be right back I need to read that paper again above.

So, in my view, love CANNOT be a “chemical addiction” to the chemicals in you, it is mainly a chemical attraction between two lovers’ chemicals or affinity of each others’ chemicals. That is why one in love does not like being away from their love because this affinity is strongest when together. So what the above paper suggests is that, we are really addicted to this affinity that creates a chemical combination in us and so euphoria and we’re addicted to that? Oh! Well! Of course that has to be true. I’m a moron you know for writing that first line.

Love can defined as an unconditional caring towards a person, however this in itself turns love into a paradox. It is impossible to always care for a person. No matter what at one point or another one of the people “in love” will do something to anger the other. This will cause a lapse(momentary or for a long period of time) in the care for that person, e.g. buying an expensive item without talking to the other person first. Also after a relationship goes on for a certain amount of time the people usually stop noticing what they like about the other person, and instead notice what they dislike. They then begin “noticing” other people. If you cared unconditionally about someone this wouldn’t happen under any circumstance. Therefore love is an illusion brought forth because people wanted to fell that there is an opposite of hate.

There are many types of ‘Love’. There is obviously some kind of feeling that we as species seem to feel in different siutations, we obviously don’t know what the feeling actually is but we’ve attached it with the word ‘love’.

On many occassions, female friends of mine have said to me once they’ve broken up with their boyfriend’s that they don’t feel the same as they did before, they feel different now that their not with their boyfriend anymore. They even say that their friends have noticed a change in their attitude and level of happiness. So the question would be, Do you love that particular person? Or do u just love the way you feel about yourself when your around that person?

I love my brother, but i also love smoking cannabis, cannabis makes me feel good and that’s why i love it. You see what i’m trying to say?

I disagree, in my experience there’s many types of love, love doesn’t necessarily make you feel good about yourself. I have realised now there is the love where despite a person’s bad points, you still love them for who they are. Then there’s the love that hurts- the love that doesn’t make you feel good about yourself. It’s when someone treats you badly, it makes you blind, no matter how badly this person treats you, you stay with them because you love them. You know it’s wrong, you know that you are being hurt and are desperatley unhappy, but the love means you can’t leave them. The realisation that this person isn’t the great person you fell in love with starts to sink in, and it’s scary. It doesn’t make you feel good at all. No matter how many times people tell you that you need to leave this person, and you know you should because you are unhappy, the love means you can’t do it. Another example of this is when teenagers act rebelliously to their mothers and give them no respect, and make them unhappy, but their mothers still love them.

I dont disgaree with u M, but i’d like to add more.

I do think that their is a different type of feeling, the feeling where you know that your going to be scared when a loved one dies, the feeling where you know you can’t possibly accept the fact that a loved one has died. I have that feeling with my brother, it doesn’t exactly make me feel good but it remains until death. You’ve probably already noticed that people who are in love with boyfriends and girlfriends are always happy, hence the reason i believe them people love the way the boy makes them feel about themselfs, rather than actualling ‘loving’ the boy. Even if the boyfriend and girlfriend are no longer happy, at some stage they would have been, otherwise they would not be together in the first place?

You say that there is a type of love where though you know you don’t have to take their ‘crap’ you do anyway, over and over again. But what was it like at first? I just think that a person would stay with someone though they are being hurt is because they know that that person has the potential to make them feel happy about themselfs.

I do think that the way life is portrayed to us that most people want to fall in love, they feel like an outsider if they dont. Everybody seems to have boyfriends/girlfriends, you would almost think it was some part of meaning to life, obviously not but rather a trend in life.

If one was to do a survey and ask people what their perfect ambition would be, it’d probably be lots of money, beautiful wife and a couple of kids, sounds very materialistic to me.

A magazine I read recently had some interesting explanations to this phenomenon.

a) Love is a psychologically (subconsciously) created state of mind - euphoria - as a reaction to boredom.

b) Love is what happens when one experiences a certain solidarity e.g. when you find out that you and your lovee have common interests etc.

c) Love is a phenomenon inherited by our ancestors as far back as the early primates. When the male went out to hunt “nature invested the feeling of love of his family” so he would split his killed preys with his familiy and continue doing so along with many other things.

It’s not really that farfetched in my opinion…

Hello,
Love, in my observation, is nothing but a surplus of dopamine in the brain. A combination of chemicals in the brain that cause excitement and attachment for the purpose of mating and staying together long enough to raise offspring. All actions, words, promises, feelings associated with this state are merely caused by these chemicals and disappear as the chemical balance in the brain changes over time.

Love is derived from the notion of ownership.

:unamused: To my feelings :unamused: love is formed when attraction, wish and submission to action combine together in human. When we find something attractive in any look, the enchantment comes from within, that leads to our wish of any form that leads to submission.

Check the link below:
members.tripod.com/~sadashivan_n … /id28.html

Streyhorn,

This will teach you to use four lettered words in a public forum! :laughing:

Love is probably the most over-worked word in any language. There are almost as many definitions as there are people. Everyone has made a valiant effort, but it would help if you could narrow the scope of your inquiry a bit. Just what kind of “love” are you talking about?

JT

Aha!! Love. It is as beautiful as it sounds. Being in love is a feeling which can not be explained using chemistry or physics.
This is the subject of heart, not mind or brain. This is something which makes us alive and bring us near to GOD. This is source of all kind of memorable creation in this world.
We build beautiful church/mosque/temples because we love god.
People bring the beauty in whatever they do only when they starts loving their work. It is the most essential feeling in human life to have.
It’ll make you smile and even giggle.

:slight_smile:

for many reasons you can say that love is the key of the life
,
indeed on of the way to define life is that it is the cause which makes living materials try to keep individual and stable in other words to love themselves , the living material always defends its existence or its race , this kind of love is common in all kinds of life , while other kinds of love developed over thousands of years to serve the same purpose

so love is not a feeling , but feeling and thinking and physical body are all for the service of love , human kind has the most developed kinds of love so he rules the world

romantic love is one most important kind to save our race , we are programmed to feel good when we fall in love otherwise we will have no reason to to breed , and because human baby is weak and need a family to care , so love should be designed to last for a long time

on the other hand , ethics is the knowladge about the best way to organize the kinds of love we have so it is a developed and complex kind of love

in conclusion love is the life itself and the orginal cause of all things we make and feel and think of.

may be if we say that love is just a secret this will give him more value , but anyway what is this value will be

These two topics might be of interest:

Could This Be Love? (A Phenotypic Expression)

(very short story) Survival - Love