What is Love?

Let’s first start with a few different definitions. 

First from Oxford

Love

noun

• 1.
• an intense feeling of deep affection.

2.

• a great interest and pleasure in something.
  

verb

• 1.
• feel deep affection for (someone).
  
• 2.
• like or enjoy very much.

Alright so that was pretty normal and basic.

Let’s try some more philosophical definitions. One from the Platonic perspective.

Romantic love is deemed to be of a higher metaphysical and ethical status than sexual or physical attractiveness alone. The idea of romantic love initially stems from the Platonic tradition that love is a desire for beauty-a value that transcends the particularities of the physical body. For Plato, the love of beauty culminates in the love of philosophy, the subject that pursues the highest capacity of thinking.

Source: https://iep.utm.edu/love/#H3

Another definition, this one from the Aristotelian perspective

The first condition for the highest form of Aristotelian love is that a man loves himself. Without an egoistic basis, he cannot extend sympathy and affection to others (NE, IX.8). Such self-love is not hedonistic, or glorified, depending on the pursuit of immediate pleasures or the adulation of the crowd, it is instead a reflection of his pursuit of the noble and virtuous, which culminate in the pursuit of the reflective life.

Source: https://iep.utm.edu/love/#:~:text=The%20first%20condition%20for%20the,8).

And now we have one from my personal favorite, Ayn Rand.

To love is to value. Only a rationally selfish man, a man of self-esteem, is capable of love—because he is the only man capable of holding firm, consistent, uncompromising, unbetrayed values. The man who does not value himself, cannot value anything or anyone.

“The Objectivist Ethics,”
The Virtue of Selfishness, 32

And so here we have a few different things to think about. The starting definition of love is a simple idea. The idea of affection on a scale and that the top end of that scale is love. A good start, but we have more complex iterations that go after the meat of the concept of love. 

In the Platonic sense love is more than an attraction to physical beauty but to the mind or more so the person as an integrated whole. In the Aristotelian sense you see the first important stress that the individual loves themself first, as the feeling of real love would not be capable for others otherwise.

“In order to say I love you, you have to be able to say the ‘I’ first.”-Howard Roark, The Fountainhead

To expand on that aspect the Randian view includes the root of the concept “love”, and that to love is to value. Included in this is the concept of self-esteem, or one’s own ability to deal with life efficiently. Without the individual to value something, there is no value. To value independent of a valuer would be a contradiction, as things don’t possess value independently.

And so now to go back to the famous song from Night at the Roxbury, “What is Love?”

Or more primarily what is love to me?

I’ll start with my encounter(s) with love. Obviously I love my pet, and have a deeper sense of love for my family and my closest friends. By that aspect of love I mean that I value them highly, certainly them over many other things in the world. In those senses of love I believe it’s correct to say that an accurate way of seeing their value is comparable to other things,but only insofar as I value those that I love on a higher level than other things/people valued.

Now for the tricky part….romantic love. I’ve truly loved one or two women in my life. One was an instance where I believed the idea of her I loved so much even though we had limited time around one another,but we also communicated extensively and so even though there was a lack of physical connection,there was a more profound emotional support connection. I believe also the entire situation played into my age and my love for an ideal and ability to dream helped accelerate the entirety of the situation.

The second woman I did truly believe to have children with eventually. We lived together for a short while, and for the most part things were going well. It wasn’t until some major life events took place for me that changed my worldview and my overall aim in life. It then started to become apparent that we might not make it. Upon further inspection I was shown how much one sidedness there was in the relationship and how little I fought for myself and my values. 

I’m getting to my own definition here shortly,bare with me!

Definitions I believe to be contextual. So when you say I love pizza and someone says you don’t actually love it, I don’t believe that person is in a stance to make that statement. You love it in the context of comparison to other foods, as the pizza represents more value to you. Now obviously when you say you love someone that has more meaning(in that context) than when you said you loved pizza.

So an example of this is a conversation I was just having with a close friend of mine about when she realized she loved her now husband. So maybe ten months into their relationship they exchanged “i love you” to one another. As she and I were speaking she was talking about how yes they loved each other but that that phrase has grown to mean so much more as they’ve grown together as human beings. “I love you” after ten months means so much less-in hindsight-than “i love you”, after you’ve been married a couple years and have two houses and two kids together.

Now we have that reinforcement of necessary context available when we go to say or define something.So what is love to me?

Love is the most intense positive emotion I can feel for someone or something. The loss of a loved one reveals the hole that their presence filled. A deep, dark, delta of pain, frustration and despair lays bare upon their loss.

In a romantic partner, love means that I envision my life as incomplete without them. It means that our values align so well that I can see us easily becoming a fully integrated whole. 

Love is enduring the struggles of a shared existence with a fellow human being, and knowing that you refuse to quit. Love is recognizing that you may see some of your own favorite qualities in that person, and possibly even their best qualities you’ve always dreamed of possessing.

To say ‘I love you’, is without a doubt the highest compliment one can say to a romantic partner, or another human being for that matter, supposing you have the right standard and context.

I’ve asked plenty of people over the last few weeks when they knew they loved their significant other, and a lot of those responses were that they just did immediately, or shortly into the relationship. While that sounds awesome, it also sounds terrifying to me.

I’m not here to pick apart other people’s emotions-although I’m sure it sounds like it- I just don’t buy the usual idea of emotions being an enigma that is separated from logical analysis and calculated thought processes.

Analyzing my feelings instead of just feeling them, a wild concept I know.

The final piece of love for me is time.

Time means we have experiences together. Time means I have seen how you act in a variety of scenarios and occasions. The woman I love I want to be my other half, and my rock, as I am to them. Now obviously this doesn’t mean I can only love someone after we’ve accomplished ‘x’ amount of activities together! Although if I could generate a list like that it would certainly make dating a lot easier wouldn’t it?

I take the concept of love very seriously and therefore need time to be sure that this person whom I may love is worthy of my time,energy,affection,support and most importantly, life. Emotional pain is not something I’ve ever dealt with well, it hurts deeper than any tattoo needle has plunged into my skin, and more than any fall on the pavement I’ve suffered while skateboarding.

Am I afraid to love? You’re damn right I am.

Because my love is not shallow nor does it go away easily.

For me to love is to love deeply—and for that—I just need some time.