what is love

[Megan]

True love, is when both partners can spend everyday together and explore their minds and their souls can explode. It's mutual attraction, trust, peace, and inner connections.

[Fenrir]

What does it mean to be in love? Neurologically, it is similar to OCD (happy hormones released when you spend time with them, distress when this is denied). Physically, the response is similar to fear (pupils dilate, heart rate rises, sweat). In evolutionary terms, it is just the mechanism for ensuring the continuing propogation of genetic diversity of the species. But as for what it feels like? I do not know, I have never been in love.
Love (in the platonic sense, the only one I am really familiar with) is a deep connection with another person. You like spending time with them, they make you feel alive, their habits and idiosyncrasies make you feel warm inside because you know them inside out. You would fight for them above and beyond yourself.
But most of all, it's something you have to define for yourself, as I think several people have said already. I should end this with a last sentence that looks proper and flourishing, but I need sleep!  😀

[lisagurl]

It's mutual attraction, trust, peace, and inner connections.

It is sacrificing your life for another.

[spacial]

Not quite what was asked, but I recall, many years ago, someone asking a child why love is important.

The response was: Love in Important because if people didn't love each other, there wouldn't be any people.

[Dryad]

For me, love is unconditionally being part of something larger, where the other participants also willingly and unconditionally join in, on equal grounds.
Of course there have to be compromises in any loving relationship. To be part of that something greater also means to support that same something.

To love is to strive for unity, while respecting individual differences. Sometimes, this is just simply impossible. There are people I simply cannot love, because I cannot respect their views on things.

Romantic love... To me, it is the same as the above, only far more intense, for only two people. It is a place where compromise is hardly ever needed, as both participants willingly strive to make one another happy instead of working for one's own needs. It is the trust that you don't have to pay attention to your own needs, because your partner's  got you covered. And vice versa. To trust your life so completely to someone else in the knowledge that they in return trust you with theirs, and to find mirth and beauty in every waking hour of that union... To me, that is romance.
So far, it's working out great for me.  😀

[Miniar]

I don't believe there's any such thing as "unconditional" love.
Love always depends on both parties, on who they are and what they bring to the relationship. Those are the conditions for that specific love.

[Dryad]

I see 'unconditional' as: None of us feel we need to compromise, or make any sacrifice.

[lisagurl]

I don't believe there's any such thing as "unconditional" love

Do not have children.

[Hermione01]

Do not have children.

I don' think this thread is about love for children etc. as that would be weird considering some of the responses.

For me romantic love for someone else doesn't necessarily mean it is reciprocated. Sometimes one can love another and it is not returned, or one loves more than the other.

I agree with Miniar, in that is there such a thing as 'unconditional' love? 

I don't think being a doormat means one has an abundance of love for the other, more like low self worth.

[Dryad]

Doormat? The point to me is: all participants have one another's needs in mind instead of their own. This means that you're cared for just as much as you care for others. It's a full circle.

[BunnyBee]

I believe "Love" is what you make it, and there are so many facets.
Love of mother, father, family
Love of a partner, wife or girlfriend.
Love of life, as a passion to ones heart
Love of self, the ability to know ones self and be happy.
Love of a job even, (if you're so lucky)

The term is used so liberally, but at the same time has meaning, when applied from the heart.

In at least one of his speeches MLK talked about there being 3 kinds of love, which he described by using the greek words eros, philia, and agape; or in English, romantic love, friendship, and charity/goodwill for humanity.  This notion he borrowed (or lifted) from C.S. Lewis' book, The Four Loves http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Four_Loves 🔗.  The one MLK left out was called storge, which to me seems to blend the line between philia and agape.  I think it's interesting to kind of break love into categories like that, but in the end I feel there is a reason they all come under the heading of "love" and that is they are all parts of the same thing: emotional connections between people.

Love is where we find contentment and happiness in life, so it's an important thing to have in our lives.  We are social creatures and we will start breaking down emotionally without it.

[FairyGirl]

Transition has taught me that the highest expression of love is unconditional. When someone loves you unconditionally then they love you for who you are on the inside, not on the outside, not for how you make them feel, or what you can provide or do for them. Unconditional love is rare, but it's the greatest love there is.

Though I'm not Christian, I always thought this passage from the Christian Bible in I Corinthians 13 was a beautiful description of unconditional love:

Love is patient, love is kind and is not jealous; love does not brag and is not arrogant,
does not act unbecomingly; it does not seek its own, is not provoked, does not take into account a wrong suffered,
does not rejoice in unrighteousness, but rejoices with the truth;
bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never fails.

[Alyx.]

Baby don't hurt me, don't hurt me, no more.

Oh, for real? Love is subjective I think. There's no real way to measure love. In the loosest way, it's a deep caring about something.

[elena]

I believe alot of things, but the most important to me is the marrying of both the physical scientific and the metaphysical/romantic views.  who says you can't have everything!!! 

There is a documented scientific reaction between two people that have "chemisty" and there is a long explanation for this, but it's not worth going into.

There is also the romantic/metaphysical reaction.  Is the other person someone you have learned to be interested in, despite all the imperfect things you know about them?  Will you be there to support that person when they are going through hard times, or would you rather just not deal with it.  Self sacrifice has some part to deal with it yes, but it's a self sacrifice based on what we feel we have been given in the relationship.

I guess my point is that being informed on the scientific things helps to process the more heart felt and emtional sides of things.  Sorta like knowing what to expect I spose.

Anyways, enough silliness from me, but great post and noone is really right or wrong, but free to share their thoughts!!!

[V M]

🔗

[aisha]

a long time ago, someone asked me this and i said love is a box of water
and yeah, im sticking with that 

love is the reason that aint a reason and the season that aint a season

[Pica Pica]

Greeks had lots of different names for different kinds of love.

Storge being the close love of parents and children, also between close friends, there were others as well, agape is the love that is sort of spiritual, philos is a sort of intellectual love (where the name Philadelphia comes from)...

What love actually is, I've not a scooby. But I'm glad it is.

[aisha]

I've never heard of Storge? I thought that was Platonic love, like between friends..

Eros is romantic like arrows like cupid

i've read many books on love, so i know all about it

[Pica Pica]

i've read many books on love, so i know all about it

Hehehe, like it.

Me too