There are many types of love, but all coming from one place: the heart. As you grow older, it is easier to isolate the feelings that are important to you. When you are young, your life is often so busy that often you forget how important it is to nourish the feelings you have for home, parents, spouses, and the other things that are valuable.
As you age, it becomes important to selectively spend your time with the things that you find most rewarding and of importance to you. These are the times that you feel that strong emotion that we call love. God is always with me helping me to choose the things that have long lasting substance: my only child when she does something special for me; my granddaugter when she realizes that my love for her is unconditional; my mastiff dog when she lays her huge head on my lap and licks my hand; my Bible when I read a verse that belies what I am feeling; my home and its warmth; my town and its familiarity...all of these aspects of my life represent that special place in my heart that I hold for love.
I would suggest that there are two different types of love. There is that first love that is the initial attraction between two people. Sometimes this is called infatuation or a crush. It can become a great feeling which many refer to as love. There is also a deeper kind of love. This is the kind that takes over after that first love has faded. It isn't all fire and excitement but it is something much deeper and much stronger.
I'm not much of a person of faith, but I've always thought the definition of love described in Corinthians, cited in post 4, summed it up fairly well. It is a state of being, an agreement without conditions. It is being willing to give up something of your own for someone else. I don't think that person has to be a close friend, family member, or partner, and I actually think it is more common than we sometimes imagine in society.
I believe love is a choice of a way to feel - a way to relate and a basis for how to think and act as a result. To truly love another means being ready to overlook faults and shortcomings, to want the best for the other above and beyond any consideration for oneself, to look forward to sharing time and experiences with the loved one, to recognize the...
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other's individuality and worth as well as treasuring the combined personality the two of you present to the world.
To me, love is not a feeling. Infatuation is a feeling. Attraction is a feeling. Anger is a feeling. But love is a choice. Love, to me, is a commitment to caring for, protecting, trusting, standing up for, submitting to, and being authentic and honest, always, with another person.
Feelings hit us. We experience them circumstantially. Love takes work, and it is most definitely a choice.
This one is very hard for me, personally, because I was brought up to believe that love was the stuff you see in the Spanish novelas on TV. Sadly enough, I can mention at least 4 of my friends who would still hold that to be true. It took me nearly 20 years to realize that love has little to do with passion and lolligagging, and more to do with altruism, patience, support, and acceptance.
It was right there when I also sadly discovered that not everybody has the capacity to feel those things. Very few people are altruistic AND patient, and all the other stuff altogether. As a result, love is also very lonely emotion: it takes a lot of searching to find someone that would reunite all the qualities that are required. However, where there is love for others, there should also be love for oneself. Hence, however hard it is to find someone who knows what love is, as long as you love yourself nothing will bother you. Your time will come.
I have always thought of these verses from the Bible:
Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. (1 Corinthians 13:4-7)
The idea of love defined by actions really speaks to me, and probably would speak to anybody who has ever been in a relationship, good or bad. People might say, 'sometimes love just isn't enough,' and maybe it isn't-- just as an emotion--but the sort of love that is defined and respected by the actions in this verse? That kind of love is genuine and lasting.
For me, love is the feeling that you want to be with the other person regardless of whether they have faults. It is the feeling that you just want them to be who they are and you do not want them to change. When you combine that with the idea in the previous post, you have a good definition of love.
“Nelly, I am Heathcliff - he's always, always in my mind - not as a pleasure, any more then I am always a pleasure to myself - but, as my own being.”
--WutheringHeights by Emily Bronte
How does one express love any better than this? The sense of incompleteness without the beloved; completeness with him/her in all aspects, spiritual, psychological, physical. The perfect complement to one's own nature; a friend in every sense, one's "secret sharer," who gives one's life its meaning through sharing.