The Definition of Love.

What is Love?

Love refers to a variety of different feelings, states, and attitudes that ranges from interpersonal affection to pleasure. It can refer to an emotion of a strong attraction and personal attachment. It can also be a virtue representing human kindness, compassion, and affection—"the unselfish loyal and benevolent concern for the good of another". It may also describe compassionate and affectionate actions towards other humans, one's self or animals.  Love in its various forms acts as a major facilitator of interpersonal relationships and, owing to its central psychological importance, is one of the most common themes in the creative arts.  Love may be understood as a function to keep human beings together against menaces and to facilitate the continuation of the species.

Love is attachment results from another's goodness appreciation.

The word "goodness" may surprise you. After all, most love stories don't feature a couple enraptured with each other's ethics.  But, the value these couples placed on the partner's moral qualities was an unexpected finding.  What we value most in ourselves, we value most in others. God created us to see ourselves as good (hence our need to either rationalize or regret our wrongdoings). So, too, we seek goodness in others. Nice looks, an engaging personality, intelligence, and talent (all of which count for something) may attract you, but goodness is what moves you to love. 

Love is the action that affect feelings.

The way God created us, actions affect our feelings most.  Likewise, the best way to feel loving is to be loving ― and that means giving.  Most people believe love leads to giving, the truth is, exactly the opposite: Giving leads to love.  What is giving? When an enthusiastic handyman happily announces to his nonmechanically inclined wife, "Honey, wait till you see what I got you for your birthday ― a triple-decker toolbox!" that's not giving.  True giving requires four elements.

• The first is care, demonstrating active concern for the recipient's life and growth.
• The second is responsibility, responding to his or her expressed and unexpressed needs: emotional needs.
• The third is respect, "the ability to see a partner is, to be aware of his [or her] unique individuality," and, consequently, wanting that person to "grow and unfold as he [or she] is."
• The fourth is knowledge. You can care for, respond to, and respect another only as deeply as you know him or her.  The effect of genuine, other-oriented giving is profound. It allows you into another person's world and opens you up to perceiving his or her goodness. At the same time, it means investing part of yourself in the other, enabling you to love this person as you love yourself. 

In the "giving leads to love" theory, the more you give, the more you love. Because deep, intimate love emanates from knowledge and giving, it comes not overnight but over.

Love is Chemistry.

by Jim Al-Khalili/The Physicist

Biologically, love is a powerful neurological condition like hunger or thirst, only more permanent. We talk about love being blind or unconditional, in the sense that we have no control over it. But then, that is not so surprising since love is basically chemistry. While lust is a temporary passionate sexual desire involving the increased release of chemicals such as testosterone and oestrogen, in true love, or attachment and bonding, the brain can release a whole set of chemicals: pheromones, dopamine, norepinephrine, serotonin, oxytocin and vasopressin. However, from an evolutionary perspective, love can be viewed as a survival tool – a mechanism we have evolved to promote long-term relationships, mutual defence and parental support of children and to promote feelings of safety and security.

Love has many guises

by Philippa Perry/The psychotherapist

Unlike us, the ancients did not lump all the various emotions that we label "love" under the one word. They had several variations, including:

• Philia which they saw as a deep but usually non-sexual intimacy  between close friends and family members or as a deep bond forged by soldiers as they fought alongside each other in battle.
• Ludus describes a more playful affection found in fooling around or flirting. 
• Pragma is the mature love that develops over a long period of time between long-term couples and involves actively practising goodwill, commitment, compromise and understanding. 
• Agape is a more generalised love, it's not about exclusivity but about love for all of humanity. 
• Philautia is self love, which isn't as selfish as it sounds. As Aristotle discovered and as any psychotherapist will tell you, in order to care for others you need to be able to care about yourself.
• Eros is about sexual passion and desire. Unless it morphs into philia and/or pragma, eros will burn itself out.  Love is all of the above. But is it possibly unrealistic to expect to experience all six types with only one person. This is why family and community are important.

Love is a passionate

Julian Baggini, Philosohper/Writer

The answer remains elusive in part because love is not one thing. Love for parents,

partners, children, country, neighbour, God and so on all have different qualities. Each has its variants – blind, one-sided, tragic, steadfast, fickle, reciprocated, misguided, unconditional. At its best, however, all love is a kind a passionate commitment that we nurture and develop, even though it usually arrives in our lives unbidden. That's why it is more than just a powerful feeling. Without the commitment, it is mere infatuation. Without the passion, it is mere dedication.  Without nurturing, even the best can wither and die.

Love drives all great stories

by Jojo Moyes/The romantic novelist

What love is depends on where you are in relation to it. Secure in it, it can feel as mundane and necessary as air – you exist within it, almost unnoticing. Deprived of it, it can feel like an obsession; all consuming, a physical pain. Love is the driver for all great stories: not just romantic love, but the love of parent for child, for family, for country. It is the point before consummation of it that fascinates: what separates you from love, the obstacles that stand in its way. It is usually at those points that love is everything.

Love is free yet binds us

by Catherine Wybourne/The Nun

Love is more easily experienced than defined. As a theological virtue, by which we love God above all things and our neighbours as ourselves for his sake, it seems remote until we encounter it enfleshed, so to say, in the life of another – in acts of kindness, generosity and self-sacrifice. Love's the one thing that can never hurt anyone, although it may cost dearly. The paradox of love is that it is supremely free yet attaches us with bonds stronger than death. It cannot be bought or sold; there is nothing it cannot face; love is life's greatest blessing.