On Love.

DICTIONARY DEFINITION.

love
  /lʌv/ [luhv] noun, verb, loved, lov⋅ing.
–noun
1. a profoundly tender, passionate affection for another person.
2. a feeling of warm personal attachment or deep affection, as for a parent, child, or friend.
3. sexual passion or desire.
4. a person toward whom love is felt; beloved person; sweetheart.
5. (used in direct address as a term of endearment, affection, or the like): Would you like to see a movie, love?
6. a love affair; an intensely amorous incident; amour.
7. sexual intercourse; copulation.
8. (initial capital letter) a personification of sexual affection, as Eros or Cupid.
9. affectionate concern for the well-being of others: the love of one's neighbor.
10. strong predilection, enthusiasm, or liking for anything: her love of books.
11. the object or thing so liked: The theater was her great love.
12. the benevolent affection of God for His creatures, or the reverent affection due from them to God.
13. Chiefly Tennis. a score of zero; nothing.
14. a word formerly used in communications to represent the letter L.

The dictionary's partially correct, but sadly misses almost everything that matters about love.


ATTEMPT IN BRIEF.
A friend of mine asked me how she'd know when she was in love, and I told her she'd know. I foolishly tried to explain love, and fell flat on my face. How can I possibly expect to explain love when no one in the world can properly? There are literally millions of poems, movies, stories, and songs about it. Fuck, The Beatles built an entire career on it. All they needed was love.

Love isn't really an emotion, not a singular one anyway. Someone said that love was essentially controlled madness. Can't remember who (maybe I'm making them up and it's something of mine. Who knows.) This is partially true. When in love one will find themselves willing to do a number of things they never would when in sound mind. When in love, people are more willing to do things both astounding and frightening.

Love is a hybrid of every emotion humans can feel, I believe. Everyone sings and writes about the happiness, contentment, and trust associated with love. That's dandy. Some write about the pain and humiliation associated with it. Swell. Few ever remember that with love comes a degree of concession. One will find themselves willing to give up things they adore in daily life to make the prospect of love work. Maybe that's why it works so well with relationships.

Love comes with a degree of lust usually, though it is not required. It serves mostly as garnish for a main course with significantly less tangible substance. It's common to say that you want to "make love to" someone, but really you're probably just having sex with them. Making love is something very different, even though the mechanics of it are essentially the same. The difference is on a psychological level (and obviously emotional), in the fact that you feel a connection with someone beyond what you could just feel bumping uglies.

Love is anger and pain, love is happiness and contentment. Love is unconditional trust and conditional (but voluntary) freedom.

POLYAMOROSITY.

All that said, I feel that all people are capable of loving one another on a genuine level, especially people we don't normally even like on a day to day basis. Love is a little like scent in this way, it is unique to all people. This means that all people are not only capable but actually expected to love more than one person at any given time. Not all are romantic loves (I love my best friends as much as my girlfriend, but I'm not looking to move in and sleep next to most of them for the rest of my life), but at any time we all love many people.

In this way, we are all polyamorous, even if we are monogamous. I have a small theory that monoamorous people are actually usually insane and become either stalkers or shut-ins.

LOVE IS NOT OBSESSION.

This header is half a lie. Obsession is sometimes tied to love, but obsession alone is not love. Many people get caught up with the concept of one person as everything they love (possibly something about the way attraction works), even though this is not love either. Having the compulsion to follow people online, in person, or anywhere else without them wanting you to/knowing you do is not healthy, nor is it love, nor is it legal. If you have trouble with this, please get professional help.

On the same note, one can feel a "deeper connection" physically without being in love or making love. All they need is to have an obsession with the other person to the point where they develop dependency. Dependency (or codependency, more importantly) is not love. It is a personal issue.

CONCLUSIONS.

I'm failing at describing love. Shit.






Love is something beyond words, even though I just wasted a few hundred trying to do so. It just is.