What is love?

Answer 1

A deep, tender, ineffable feeling of affection and solicitude toward a person, such as that arising from kinship, recognition of attractive qualities, or a sense of underlying oneness.

Throughout the history of mankind, we as a world culture have made love out to be mysterious, complex, difficult, and undefinable. It’s the subject of endless poems and literary works. There is an enormous amount of material available out there about love, a lot of it contradictory.

We’ve been given the impression that to define love is near to impossible. Maybe there’s a fear that if we define it, it would somehow be less powerful...less impactful...less exhilarating. Maybe we like the mystery of it. But is it really that complicated? Perhaps the complications surrounding love come from all “stuff” we add on to this powerful emotion. Lets drop all the baggage surrounding relationships and define what it is we are experiencing in the moment of love.

What do you feel when you love someone? If distilled down to it’s core components, what would those be? Yes, love is an emotion, a feeling, a wanting, and a “being”. We know it feels good, but what specific feelings, wantings, and beings are present when we feel love? Here are the common denominators of love...

Acceptance is labeling someone as "okay" and having no particular desire to change them. Who they are is perfectly fine with you. You pose no condition on whether you will love them or not. This is call unconditional love. When your love IS conditional, the moment they step outside your set of conditions, love evaporates.

Appreciation is one step beyond acceptance. Its when your focus is on what you like about another. We look at them and feel this sweeping appreciation for who they are, their joy, their insights, their humor, their companionship, etc. When someone says they are "in love" with another, they mean their appreciation is so enormous for this person that it consumes their every thought.

We want those we love to be happy, safe, healthy, and fulfilled. We want them to feel good in all ways, physically, mentally and emotionally.

We don’t always express our love. Love is a feeling and the expression of that feeling is separate. It’s an action. There’s a practical reason we don’t always express our love for another. It’s an issue of TIME. We only have 24 hours in a day (if you make it up that way). If the expression of love was a core ingredient to love, we would have to be stingy with who we loved, because there simply wouldn’t be enough time to demonstrate our love for everyone! If you see the distinction between the feeling and the expression, you can then love endless numbers of people.

Love expressed is when you give your attention, your time, your focus to someone. Webster defines attention as “the giving of one’s mind to something."

There are many ways in which we give our attention to another. We use our five senses. Our ears to listen. Being completely present with the one who is speaking. Our eyes, watching another, undivided attention. Tasting/smelling? (I’ll let you figure that one out). Touching, giving a hug, holding a hand, a caress, or sexual expression. How you express your love depends on the type of relationship.

Answer 2

Love is looking out for others, and not just yourself. Love is not selfish, controlling, deceitful. Love is when you are not using another for some type of pleasure or financial gain. You are not giving "tidbits' in hopes of getting much more back in return. Love doesn't involve lying, sneaking around, giving constant excuses.

You can really discern love, because when you're going through difficulty, then you'll know who really loves you. Love is when people are in it for the long haul, and not just temporarily, for the "moment'' seeking temporary pleasure.

Answer 3

When a human feeds themselves or thinks about their choices and how this will affect their family and friends, a newborn life and Earth gives plenty of love, by supplying all the necessities of our planet to humanity worldwide. Love is not bought or sold, it is freely dispensed towards a fellow human being, to demonstrate what this human in their life means to them.,.,.

Answer 4

There is love and there is also lust. Rudimentarily, love means reposing all of one's affection in an endearing object. What goes on in the name of love in our today's world is most often lust. By lust I'm reffering to attraction of the senses and sense objects based on the gratification of the sensory modalities. A girl becomes attracted to a boy for instance for sex, this sometimes passes on in the name of love as against lust.

Answer 5

What ever your heart tells you because only you can figure it out. I would say if you don't know you haven't experienced it yet. Maybe practice with a puppy. no joke.. Love is warm and friendly anything else will have pop ups Pay attention .to your red flags....

Answer 6

Love is the feeling you get when your brain is swimming in a soup of neurotransmitters which produce the sensation of well-being and mental attachments.

With women the Love Chemical is Oxytocin. Oxycotin affects men too, but men are also smitten with vassopressin.

http://www.oxytocin.org/oxytoc/index.html

Answer 7

I think love is that nice beautiful feeling that makes your mind and your entire body swimming between the warm clouds of happiness or......i can't find the exact word ....

Answer 8

love is a way of life, when you wake up thinking and living for the other person and go to bed in the same way.

Answer 9

Love is : to love the other person for who she /he is . when you feel yourself so unsettled because you can't be without the other person, those butterflies in your stomach, when you can't think straight anymore and always about the other person. When you feel like you can't breath without the other person,when your heart skipps a beat or two because of the other person

Answer 10

dictionary meaning-a strong,warm feeling for another;deep affection

to me love is something you feel,when you can't stop thinking about that person,when your in love baby you will know it