What is love?

[AG31]

How do you distinguish being in love from...

Friendly affection?

Sexual attraction?

Infatuation?

I'm thinking definitions, but how one depicts them in stories is also of interest, but trickier to answer in a thread.

I usually go first when I post questions, but not this time. I don't have answers to these questions.

 

[SimonDoom]

Love is the drug.

Love is all you need.

Love is like oxygen. You get too much you get too high. Not enough and you're going to die.

Love is a battlefield.

Love is higher than a mountain, love is thicker than water.

Love stinks.

Love, I get so lost sometimes.

Love comes to everyone.

Love is all around.

Love the one you're with.

I'm not trying to avoid the question. I think it's the best answer I can give.

 

[Surferdude1891]

Such a brief and fleeting thing that lifts you up and tears you down even harder. Keep it surface level it’s safer.

 

[Candy_Kane54]

 

[lustychimera]

Selflessness. I think that's when it's a good love.

 

[pink_silk_glove]

Love is allowing, empowerment. It's that simple.

They say that God is love. They also say that God is all knowing. They also say that knowledge is power. Put the three together.

When you teach a child how to ride a bike, it is an act of love, because you are empowering the child, giving him a new skill that he can employ to increase his independence and enhance his experiences.

Being in love is completely different. It is simply an addiction to someone's physical presence. It's lust. "I just need to hear the sound of your voice," is the same as "I just need another cigarette." Being in love puts demands of the relationship on the other person. Putting someone on a pedestal is not love. It may be genuinely sweet, but it is simply giving energy expecting energy back. "See how sweet I am to you to put you above others? It would be pretty cold of you to deny me your presence and energy now, wouldn't it?." Love never puts demands on anything, ever. Love never has strings attached.

You can love someone that you are in love with, but they are two totally different things. Why we use the same word for both (in English at least) is beyond me. It's the single most misleading and confusing concept in our entire human society.

 

[AlexBailey]

Like other types of energy, love is defined by the effects it has on us and the world around us. It can change forms and be contained with in objects and living things, but unless it’s felt inside you it is only observable in action.


Love determines or rearranges priorities.

Love gives the benefit of the doubt.

Love makes interesting people and things fascinating.

Love tingles at the touch.

Love pardons.

Love accentuates and appreciates.

Love critiques constructively with compassion.

Love makes eye contact.

Love gets stronger when given.


Personally, I’ve often had trouble separating love from friendly attraction or sexual attraction. I’ve had to check myself to make sure I wasn’t simply extending desire for connection into desire for intimacy or lust. Lust is easier for me to recognize in myself because it can motivate behaviors that won’t make the rest of my life better.

 

[mildlyaroused]

You can't articulate what love is. People have tried and failed to do so over the course of entire novels. Some people - the really skilled ones - have managed, for just a little while, to convey a piece of the feeling in their fiction. But most fail. Love is the best and worst thing in the world.

 

[pink_silk_glove]

You can't articulate what love is.

I just did.

Love is allowing, empowerment. It's that simple.

When you love someone, set them free. Empower them. That is exactly what it is.

 

[Rob_Royale]

It's the only thing that makes life worth living.

 

[mildlyaroused]

I just did.



When you love someone, set them free. Empower them. That is exactly what it is.

You did a fine job too. But it will never be complete. Empowerment, setting someone free, this is all true. But you can't capture those butterflies, that feeling of getting out of bed to see someone, those comfortable silences... You can capture it in fragments, but not in its entirety!

 

[pink_silk_glove]

But you can't capture those butterflies, that feeling of getting out of bed to see someone, those comfortable silences..

No, that's being in love. It's a different thing.

 

[mildlyaroused]

No, that's being in love. It's a different thing.

I've seen you say so. I'd argue they're more intimately linked than you think; "In love" ≠ "lust."

But to each their own!

 

[TarnishedPenny]

One problem with the question is the inherent limitations in the word itself. We try to use it for too many things, often all at once. People have tried since the time of Plato to break it down. One common list includes:

Eros. Erotic or sexual love. Obviously, central to Literotica.

Philia. Friendship. Yup, lots of that here. Lovers should be friends.

Storge. That love between child and parent. Less sure how this might play out in I&T.

Agape. ‘General’ love, love for mankind and the planet and all people. Goodwill. Charity, old perception.

Ludus. ‘Playful’ love, investigating, exploring, defining. Games, dancing. Fun times.

Pragma. ‘Practical’ love, as to nation or God or making a long-term relationship work.

Needless to say, that’s covering it at breakneck speed, oversimplification writ large. Nor are they mutually exclusive. It does show however that that simple word can be well-stretched. FWIW.

 

[pink_silk_glove]

I've seen you say so. I'd argue they're more intimately linked than you think; "In love" ≠ "lust."

But to each their own!

True love really is that simple. It's the act of allowing or empowering. This does not include enabling. That's different.

It's all those other things that aren't true love yet we also call love that confuse us and make us think that they are all blended and just slightly different strains of the same thing. They really aren't linked any more than anything else is in our lives.

 

[THBGato]

Eros. Erotic or sexual love. Obviously, central to Literotica.

Philia. Friendship. Yup, lots of that here. Lovers should be friends.

Storge. That love between child and parent. Less sure how this might play out in I&T.

Agape. ‘General’ love, love for mankind and the planet and all people. Goodwill. Charity, old perception.

Ludus. ‘Playful’ love, investigating, exploring, defining. Games, dancing. Fun times.

Pragma. ‘Practical’ love, as to nation or God or making a long-term relationship work.

You missed Mania - obsessive, compulsive love.

For me, romantic love is eros + philia + ludus + pragma with a hint of mania. That's how I feel about my SO after 17 years.

 

[StillStunned]

Love is a mystery. If you try to define it, you might as well say "midichlorians" and be done.

 

[Cagivagurl]

How do you distinguish love from...

Friendly affection?

Sexual attraction?

Infatuation?

I'm thinking definitions, but how one depicts them in stories is also of interest, but trickier to answer in a thread.

I usually go first when I post questions, but not this time. I don't have answers to these questions?

I think you answered your own question.
If we're talking romantic love...
Love is an all encompassing emotion. Attraction, affection, infatuation, chemistry...
For me, it's when your S O is always on your mind. Whenever you plan something, that person is the first thing you think about. When they're ill, you worry. When they are stressed with work, you try to think of ways to ease that stress. When your S O has a win, a success, a promotion. You feel pride...
When you see two people kissing, the first image that appears in your mind is your S O....
So love equals, affection + infatuation + concern + empathy + pride + desire + chemistry.

Cagivagurl

 

[AlinaX]

Love is a key discovering there's a lock it fits.

 

[TheLobster]

Love is a key discovering there's a lock it fits.

Followed by repeated, vigorous testing of said fitness.

 

[TarnishedPenny]

THBGato - I did not include mania, nor philautia, either - love of oneself. I make no pretence of being an expert and I suspect one could fill a good-sized barn with PhD theses arguing one point or another over the millennia. My only point is that love-the-thing is complicated and love-the-word is inadequate.

 

[lovecraft68]

Love is a weaker emotion that hate. Love is complicated, hate is pure. Look around this country and this world and tell me which emotion is winning.

Love is personal, what it means to you and the one you love is all that matters, every other take on it is just noise.

 

[XerXesXu]

I think you answered your own question.
If we're talking romantic love...
Love is an all encompassing emotion. Attraction, affection, infatuation, chemistry...
For me, it's when your S O is always on your mind. Whenever you plan something, that person is the first thing you think about. When they're ill, you worry. When they are stressed with work, you try to think of ways to ease that stress. When your S O has a win, a success, a promotion. You feel pride...
When you see two people kissing, the first image that appears in your mind is your S O....
So love equals, affection + infatuation + concern + empathy + pride + desire + chemistry.

Cagivagurl

I broadly agree with this, except I'd add a slight refinement - my SO(wife) stands at the apex of a pyramid of persons for whom I have similar feelings to a lesser degree of intensity.

 

[Bamagan]

A state or condition wherein the happiness and wellbeing of certain others is integral to your own.

 

[nice90sguy]

a four-letter word