What Love and Loving Entails

Love starts in ourselves. We look at something or someone, and upon feeling a pleasant internal resonance we develop an affectionate attachment described as “love.” Oftentimes, this experience is referred to as “falling in love.” If falling in love with another person, the expression has a rather precise and deep meaning; it is something to be taken seriously because of its ramifications. If falling in love with a house, a car, a country, or even a puppy, the expression is tantamount to a cliché or an expression of enthusiasm.

If we were friends, and you decided to discontinue the relationship, the friendship would immediately be terminated whether I liked it or not. I can pretend to be your friend, but cannot actually hold this position unless you reciprocate.

Unlike friendship, which by definition is a two-way street, love can exist unilaterally within an individual. If I decide to love you, but you do not love me, there is nothing that you can do to force me to stop loving you.

Undeclared love can persist for any length of time. As long as we keep our love feeling to ourselves, we can let it flourish without risk. In classic romantic thinking, an undeclared love was something quite respectable, and a secret love lasting years was considered nothing abnormal. In fact, it might be prudent to wait until the most appropriate moment to declare one's love, or until one was ready to burst and could stand the secrecy no longer; the reason being that for a classically romantic person, the consequences of rejection were incalculable.

Once declared, and if the love feeling is reciprocated, the love concept gains material form; it is now a mutual property of two people. They have themselves, A and B, and then they have their “child” - love. At this point, love is no longer internalized. The partners will cherish each other, and in addition celebrate with one another that they've both found love. Hence, the love relationship creates a set of common symbols, values and goals that can tie them closer together.

Two people who love one another can accomplish incredible things: Like raise a family, build a home, overcome disease, periods away from one another due to military service or for financial reasons, and almost anything else that they set their minds to. Being loved, reciprocally, generates a confidence inside a person unlike anything else – hence such a person is likely to be bolder, more resourceful, and less risk-adverse than someone who doesn't feel loved by a partner.

The downside is that dysfunctional love relationships can undermine a person's inner harmony, balance, and self-confidence. Hence, people who feel challenged in their love life tend to go to great lengths to seek advice, help, and support – sometimes behaving like someone who has gone adrift out on the open seas. A person who loves unilaterally – as discussed above concerning “Internalized love” – may be less exposed to such problems. But even the object of one's secret admiration can disappoint and hurt an admirer in countless ways.

Theories on love

Feelings of love for other people may be intrinsically bound to our bodies. Love, especially towards persons of the opposite sex, is closely tied with our need for physical and emotional closeness as well as purely sexual drives and instincts. Hence, people may be capable of loving multiple partners at once. Traditional single-partner relationships, which remain the cultural and sociological norm, are probably artifacts from a psychological and biological perspective. This is not to say that love relationships should be exempt from morality and reason.