What is love?
 

In 1st grade, love for me was that girl i made fun of.
In junior high, i'm thinking, "does she have to be pretty?"
Now, i don't really know...

baby don't hurt me
don't hurt me
no more

shit halx, i almost posted that, but thought it might be too snarky. craziness.

The interesting thing is that love continues to change over time. The reasons I love my wife today are not exactly the same as when we started dating 20 years ago.

Interestingly is still the person I make fun of and vice versa.

Very true. Love changes both with the age of the person and the age of the relationship. I am confident in saying that my love for onodrim is different now than it was 5 years ago, both because I am a different person now than I was five years ago and also because our relationship has grown and become different now than it was 5 years ago. Ultimately, beyond breaking love down to the specific brain responses that are associated with it, it is a feeling that is difficult to pin down.

Love is the absence of a desire for something better.

I seem to love people I need.....:confused:

I disagree with that.

I too.

ovid knows:

then go here:

http://www.sacred-texts.com/cla/ovid/lboo/lboo58.htm

Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments, love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove.

O no, it is an ever-fixed mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wand'ring bark,
Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.

Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come,
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom:

If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.

Shakespeare, Sonnet #116.

Love is waking up in the middle of the night, admire the dozing frame of the man beside you -- and not noticing the snoring because you've learned to wear earplugs.

It's about wanting to stay with that person so badly that you move 300 miles to be with them - then working to win a special place in the hearts of 37 people so they let you stick around.

It's helping remove debris in the garden when you'd rather be watching basketball.

Asking the question what is love really is a question of semantics, because everyone has a slightly different view on the subject, and I think that is why it is such an interesting question to ask. I think it is fascinating how the Ancient Greeks had more than one word for love: eros, philia, and agape. Three distinct words for love, each was a different aspect of the emotion we call love.

love is a fancy (more powerful) way to say "i want."

i want you
i want to hold you
i want to be with you
i want to make you happy
i want to kiss you
i want to touch you
i want you to touch me
i want you to kiss me

i want you to want me

(although, there are different levels of love, the above focuses on what i believe to be one of the highest levels of love. the one everyone seems to be looking for)

love is drug
love is a false reality
love is a dance to a song that is doomed to end

For the sake of argument i'm just going to go ahead and say that love doesn't exist.

What is love? That's easy.

Essentially, the relation of myself to an object which compels and moves my will. Existentially, the authentic relation of one person to another.

Now, attaining those things... Ah, that is the hard part.

I don't know about you, but this makes a lot of sense to me. Science always makes things less debatable and more factual.

http://www.morgenwelt.de/futureframe/9908-oxytocin.htm

Well, I understand that this is meant to be a philosophical discussion of love, but speaking through the window of biology and evolution, it's easy to see why love might have evolved, and why we feel so strongly towards certain people in our lives. By looking at it in this way, the question might be easier to answer.

When we become emotionally attached to somebody, we tend to describe it as love, but according to the context of the original post, I assume the question is where does love for an individual not related to us originate, as opposed to where does the love we feel for family members come from.

If that's the case, then love is the ultimate solution for avoiding a situation where unregulated polygamy would have a negative affect on the population. To paraphrase a section of The Selfish Gene by Dawkins: If you've got a population entirely composed of polygamists, such that each individual will mate and move on leaving one parent to raise the offspring by itself, the offspring has less of a chance of surviving to breed than it would if both parents had remained to raise it. In such a scenario, any individual which somehow becomes inclined to stay with its mate and raise its children cooperatively will increase the likelihood that its offspring will survive. Of these surviving offspring, half will contain the genes of the monogamist, and so, given a few generations, that gene will spread thought the gene pool.

With this in mind, it's easier to rationalize love and understand what positive affects it has on individuals. That's why you feel happy and fulfilled when you find your soul mate, and that's why every individual needs love to function properly. It's a testament to how beautiful and powerful life is.

If you follow this line of thought, there are other conclusions that could be reached. Another is that the some men are monogamous, some aren't, and most women aren't. A monogamous relationship still reaps the reward of a two parent advantage, even if the child doesn't belong to one of the parents. So women will want to form relationships with 'Jim Bob monogomy' over there even though he's fat slow and cross eyed, but continue to have sex during their most fertile times with 'Joe studly genes' on this side when nobody is looking. So actually what you get is a population where some members are monogamous and some are not. This way everyone has their genes maintained and the population benefits the most from having the 'most fit' being exempt from the monogamy rule. As a supportive aside; there has been at least one study that found women are most likely to cheat around the time they're ovulating.

On a philosphical note: Love is simply the decision to not give up. It's about finding a person you think is worth it and making the choice to give them and your relationship with them your all. Love is active, it is something you do. Love is not passive; not something you fall into; not something you can't help. I never understood this view of Love just happens to people, If you aren't in control of it, it can't have any meaning or at least as much meaning as if you are in control of it. I want to be with the person who knows what they are doing and loves me because they want to, not because they are unable to not love me.

In a naive sense, politicophile is right. It leaves you with the absence of the desire for something better, but it's deeper than that. Your desire leaves because you believe you have found the fit, the person you can make it work with, so you don't need to look for anything better anymore.

Actually, Dawkins dives more into the subject than I had written, but I didn't include it since that would be really diving into the evolutionary discussion. In fact, in the book, Dawkins states that a stable population is reached when something like 11/12 females and 3/5 males are monogamous (those may not be the exact numbers since I don't remember them perfectly). What you bring up is actually very interesting. I've seen the study you're referring to, and if you really think about it, a lot of it makes sense (maybe that's why the "good looking" guys are always cheating on their partners). It'd be very interesting if such behavior were also to be witnessed in other animals.

This theory might break down, however, if the animal we're talking about has the visual accuracy and conceptual understanding of identity to distinguish between itself and others in the populations (take early man, for example). An interesting side affect of sharing our genes with our offspring is that they will always look at least 1/2 like us. If 'Jim Bob' notices that his offspring look nothing like him, then in beast-like fashion, he would likely rid himself of that offspring. In such a case, in attractive males, polygamy would not be a favorable trait. This could also be an explanation why we are so good at catching very subtle differences in others' faces. Dawkins goes into it a lot more, but I can't remember more of the points he made for polygamy/monogamy/cheating/etc...

I seem to love almost everybody. I mean neither "need" nor want, although there's a lot of that in our species, but empathize with and appreciate. Since I've always done so, it seems pretty natural.
From all the talk, it's confusing, but it's not really: Feel with your heart and think with your brain. Off the tracks, now: Make up your own mind about what you feel about what you're feeling and hang onto it. You and your others will be happier that way. Good luck ZEETANK, with :love:

Love is the undeniable knowledge that you will be less than you are, if another is gone....and the need to keep them.

I could give you a thousand symptoms of "love" but I couldn't define it for you.

A friend of mine says that God is Love and means it on a literal basis. She suggests that the feeling of love is the feeling of the god within something else. It's a nice idea, I think.

A chemical reaction that occurs due to their scent, sound, likeness and acts that produces a feeling of warmth. Thank nature for this wonderful feeling.

I think that saying that males (in any time period) were that capable to be able to really pick out differences might be overestimating their intelligence a little bit. Also, facial features are very plastic; it's easy to have children that look nothing like you when you have actually fathered them. While Dawkins has a good point, I don't think that it really can fully explain our abilities of facial recognition so I don't agree with him on that point.

Love is when another persons happiness means more then your own.
Hate is when another persons suffering means more then you own happiness.

Love is something that noone understands but everyone hopes for.....weird

-Will

To summarize all the previous posts in three simple words:
Love is complicated

I agree completely with your "philosophical" definition, here. I do not believe in love at first sight, soulmates, destiny, "meant to be together," or any other such bullshit. It is all about choice, and that is the beauty of it.

Falling IN love may feel like losing control, but learning TO love... is regaining that power and making a conscious decision to be with that person (or persons, for you polys), over and over and over again. :)

Love is cognitive dissonance.

When I was younger love didn't need definition - it was simply that feeling that my heart was about to burst through my chest for that special someone. A few relationships, several buckets of tears, and a few years later. I came to the realization that true love is:

Only capable between people with proper self-esteem.

Without pretense or delusion.

Complete knowledge of the statistical fact that there are millions of people out there that are better suited for being your lover than the one you're with.

Being completely conscious of the fact that there's a price to be paid for everything and a good relationship must be earned.

Being able to justify all the work it takes to maintain the relationship simply because it is that gratifying.

So while he wasn't very specific, I agree with politicophile.

I agree with all who said love is a choice. True love never dies. Love to me isn't science, sure chemicals may take place in the brain which lead to a certain feeling, but that feeling doesn't always remain there 24-7. In the time which this pleasant feeling abates is where true love is as its greatest because it is a conscious decision.

the sum of relationships that don't work out is merely infatuation in my book.

I am a narcissist. For me love was finding someone more important to me than myself.

Whatever love is, two aspirin and a good sleep will cure it.
If that doesn't work, try fighting over possession of your house and children. That will definitely fix it. :rolleyes:

So if it works it is love and if it doesn't work it was infatuation, because true love never dies. Does anyone else see a slight flaw in this argument.

I guess it’s a matter of interpretation, but when I hear the word love I think of the emotional state of being in love. As such, it’s no more a choice than e.g. fear or happiness. Of course pursuing love and making a loving relationship work is a choice, but in my opinion the emotion is not.

If love is a choice, why can’t I stop loving my ex and move on, like I want to?
If love is a choice, why do people kill themselves because of unrequited love?

A) You can stop loving your ex, you just don't know how.
B) they have severe mental/emotional problems.

Well put, Seer666. Miss your wisdom.

"Love is....what you want it to be" ~ _{quote Alannah Myles circa. way before my time but that's another story.}

Love is when you are completely comfortable being yourself around someone else, and being happy when the other person is comfortable being themselves around you.