Love
- For the 1960s band, see Love (band). The term is also used in tennis.
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Love has many meanings in English. It can mean an intense feeling of affection, an emotion or emotional state. In ordinary use, it usually refers to interpersonal love.
Love is one of the most common themes in art. The majority of modern movies have a love story and most pop music is about love.
Defining love
There are as many forms of love as there are lovers. However, all forms of love have some common factors and issues.
Discussions of love are inevitably colored by the language used to describe it. Each language, developing alongside a corresponding culture, has a different set of words to describe love. As such, its difficult to discuss different cultures' views without referencing their language. See the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis.
Interpersonal love
Interpersonal love is love between two human beings, and is deeper than merely liking someone a lot. Although feelings are usually reciprocal, there can also be unrequited love. Interpersonal love is usually found in a interpersonal relationship, such as between family members, friends, and couples. However, people often express love for other people outside of these relationships through charity and volunteering.
Some elements that are often present in interpersonal love:
- Affection: appreciation of other
- Attachment: satisfying basic emotional needs
- Reciprocation: if love is mutual
- Commitment: a desire to maintain love
- Emotional intimacy: sharing emotions and feelings
- Kinship: family bonds
- Passion: sexual desire
- Physical intimacy: sharing of personal space
- Self-interest: desiring rewards
- Service: desire to help
Passion, or sexual energy, is probably the most important element in determining how a relationship is seen. This is because passion is often considered undesirable or unhealthy in love. In many religions and systems of ethics, it is wrong to have passionate love for immediate family, or outside of a committed relationship.
Impersonal love
A person can be said to love a country, principle, or goal if they value it greatly and are deeply committed to it. People can also 'love' material objects, animals, or activities if they like them a great deal. In these cases, if sexual passion is actually felt, it is typically considered abnormal or unhealthy, and called paraphilia.
Religious love
Most religions use love to express the devotion the follower has to their deity who may be a living guru or religious teacher. This love can be expressed by putting the love of God above personal needs, prayer, service, good deeds, and personal sacrifice, all done selflessly. Reciprocally, the followers may believe that the deity loves the followers and all of creation. Some traditions encourage the development of passionate love in the believer for the deity. Refer to 'Religious Views' below.
Scientific models
Biological models of love tend to see it as a mammalian drive, just like hunger or thirst. Psychology sees love as more of a social and cultural phenomenon. There are probably elements of truth in both views — certainly love is influenced by hormones and pheromones, and how people think and behave in love is influenced by their conceptions of love.
Attraction and Attachment
The conventional view in Biology is that there are two major drives in love — sexual attraction and attachment. Attachment between adults is presumed to work on the same principles that lead an infant to become attached to their mother.
Companionate vs. Passionate
The traditional psychological view sees love as being a combination of companionate love and passionate love. Passionate love is intense longing, and is often accompanied by physiological arousal (shortness of breath, rapid heart rate). Companionate love is affection and a feeling of intimacy not accompanied by physiological arousal.
Triangular Theory of Love
In the triangular theory of love, love is characterized by three elements: intimacy, passion and commitment. Each of these elements can be present in a relationship, producing the following combinations:
| Intimacy (Friendship) | intimacy | ||
| Passion (limerence) | passion | ||
| Commitment | commitment | ||
| Romantic love | intimacy | passion | |
| Companionate love | intimacy | commitment | |
| Fatuous love | passion | commitment | |
| Consummate love | intimacy | passion | commitment |
Love styles
Susan Hendrick and Clyde Henrick developed a theory called Love styles. They identified six basic theories that people use in their interpersonal relationships:
- Eros — a passionate physical love based on physical appearance
- Ludus — love is played as a game; love is playful
- Storge — an affectionate love that slowly develops, based on similarity
- Pragma — pragmatic love
- Mania — highly emotional love; unstable; the stereotype of romantic love
- Agape — selfless altruistic love; spiritual
Furthermore, they found men tend to be more ludic, whereas women tend to be storgic and pragmatic. Relationships based on similar love styles were found to last longer.
Phases
Helen Fisher suggests three main phases of love: lust, attraction and attachment. Generally love will start off in the lust phase, strong in passion but weak in the other elements. The primary motivator at this stage is the basic sexual instinct. Appearance, smells and other similar factors play a decisive role in screening potential mates. However, as time passes, the other elements may grow and passion may shrink — this depends upon the individual. So what starts as Infatuation or Empty love may well develop into one of the fuller types of love. At the attraction stage the person concentrates their affection on a single mate and fidelity becomes important.
Likewise when a person has known a loved one for a long time, they develop a deeper attachment to their partner. According to current scientific understanding of love, this transition from attraction to attachment phase usually happens in about 30 months. After that passion fades, changing love from Consummate to Companionate, or from Romantic love to Liking.
Cultural views
Chinese
Ai
The Chinese philosopher Mo Zi developed ai (愛) in reaction to Confucian jen (戀). Ai is universal love towards all beings, not just towards friends or family, without regard to reciprocation. Extravagance and offensive war are inimical to ai. Although Mo Zi was influential, the Confucian jen is how most modern Chinese conceive of love.
Gănqíng
Gănqíng (感情), the feeling of a relationship. A person will express love by building good gănqíng, accomplished through helping or working for another.
Jen
In Confucianism, jen is a virtuous benevolent love. Jen should be pursued by all human beings, and reflects a moral life.
Yuanfen
Yuanfen (缘份), a connection of bound destinies. A meaningful relationship is dependent on there being strong yuanfen.
Japanese
Ai
In Japanese Buddhism, ai is passionate caring love, and a fundamental desire. It can develop towards either selfishness or selflessness and enlightenment.
Amae
Amae (甘え), a Japanese word meaning "indulgent dependence" is part of the child rearing culture of Japan. Japanese mothers are expected to hug and indulge their children, and children are expected to reward their mothers by clinging and serving. Sociologists have suggested that Japanese social interactions in later life are modelled on the mother-child amae.
Ancient Greek
Greek distinguishes several different senses in which the word love is used. For example, ancient Greek has the words philia, eros, agape, and storge. However, with Greek as with many other languages, it has been historically difficult to separate the meanings of these words totally, and so we can find examples of agape being used with much the same meaning as eros. At the same time the ancient Greek text of the Bible has examples of the verb agapo being used with the same meaning as phileo.
Agape
Agape is love that God has for mankind. Only God can express this kind of love.
Eros
Eros is passionate love, with sensual desire and longing.
Plato refined his own definition. Although eros is initially felt for a person, with contemplation it becomes an appreciation of the beauty within that person, or even become appreciation of beauty itself. Eros helps the soul recall knowledge of beauty, and contributes to an understanding of spiritual truth. Lovers, artists, and philosophers are all inspired to seek truth by eros.
Philia
Philia, a dispassionate virtuous love, was developed by Aristotle. It includes loyalty to friends, family, and community, and requires virtue, equality and familiarity. Philia is motivated by practical reasons; one or both of the parties benefit from the relationship.
Storge
Storge is natural affection, like that felt by parents for offspring.
Xenia
In ancient Greece, the concept of xenia was extremely important. It was an almost ritualized friendship formed between a host and their guest, who could previously be strangers. The host fed and provided quarters for the guest, who was only expected to repay with gratitude. The importance of this can be seen throughout myth, in particular Homer's Odyssey.
Religious Views
Christian
Christians believe that love to God and to other people (God's creation, as they see it) are the two most important things in life (the greatest commandment of God, according to Jesus Christ. See The Gospel of Mark chapter 12, verses 28-34 in the Bible). Saint Augustine summarised this when he wrote "Love God, and do as thou wilt". Many Christian theologists see God as the source of love which is mirrored in humans and their relationships.
Agapē
In the New Testament, Agapē, is charitable, selfless, altruistic, and unconditional. Its fatherly love seen as creating goodness in the world, and is reciprocal between believers and God.
Nomos
Nomos is devotion to God, and the subjugation of the will before Him and His divine law.
Buddhist
Kāma
In Buddhism, Kāma is sensous, sexual love. It is an obstacle on the path to enlightenment, since it is selfish.
Karuṇā
Karuṇā is compassion and mercy which reduces the suffering of others. It is complimentary to wisdom, and is necessary for enlightenment.
Adveṣa, Maitrī
Adveṣa and maitrī are benevolent love. This love is unconditional and it requires a lot of self-acceptance. This is quite different from the ordinary 'love' which is usually about attachment and sex; all of which rarely occur without self-interest. Instead, in Buddhism it refers to deattachment and the unselfish interest in others' welfare.
Hindu
Kāma
In kāma is pleasurable, sexual love, personified by the goddess Kama. For many Hindu schools it is the third end in life (artha).
Prema
In contrast to kāma, prema or prem refers to elevated love.
Karuṇā
Karuṇā is compassion and mercy which reduces the suffering of others.
Bhakti
Bhakti is a Sanskrit term from Hinduism meaning loving devotion to the supreme God. A person who practices bhakti is called bhakta.
Hindu writers, theologians and philosophers have distinguished nine forms of devotion that they call bhakti e.g. in the Bhagavatha-Purana and according to Tulsidas. The booklet Narada bhakti sutra written by an unknown author distinguishes eleven forms. Not all Hindu sects consider bhakti important.
Islamic
Ishq
Ishq, or divine love, is the emphasis of Sufism, an Islamic movement. Sufis believe that love is a projection of the essence of God to the universe. God desires to recognize beauty, and as if one looks at a mirror to see oneself, God "looks" at itself within the dynamics of nature. Since everything is a reflection of God, the school of Sufism practices to see the beauty inside the apparently ugly, and to open arms even to the most evil.
Jewish
Judaism employs a wide definition of love, both between people and between man and the Deity. As for the former, the Torah states: "Love your neighbor like yourself" (Leviticus 19:18). As for the latter, one is commanded to love God "with all your heart, with all your soul and with all your possessions" (Deuteronomy 6:5), taken by the Mishnah (a central text of the Jewish oral law) to refer to good deeds, willingness to sacrifice one's life rather than commit certain serious transgressions, willingness to sacrifice all one's possessions and being grateful to the Lord despite adversity (tractate Berachoth 9:5). Rabbinic literature differs how this love can be developed, e.g. by contemplating Divine deeds or witnessing the marvels of nature. As for love between marital partners, this is deemed an essential ingredient to life: "See life with the wife you love" (Ecclesiastes 9:9). The Biblical book Song of Songs is a considered a romantically-phrased metaphor of love between God and his people, but in its plain reading reads like a love song. The 20th century Rabbi Eliyahu Eliezer Dessler is frequenly quoted as defining love from the Jewish point-of-view as "giving without expecting to take" (from his Michtav me-Eliyahu, vol. 1). Romantic love per se has few echoes in Jewish literature, although the Medieval Rabbi Judah Halevi wrote romantic poetry in Arabic in his younger years (also he appears to have regretted this later).
Hesed
Hesed, which basically combines the meaning of 'affection' and 'compassion' and is sometimes rendered in English as 'loving-kindness'. Hesed describes God's mercy.
Ahava
Ahava for 'affection' or 'favour'. It is not as widely used as 'hesed'.
Mythological
Different cultures have deified love, typically in both male and female form. Here is a list of the gods and goddesses of love in different mythologies.
- Amor or Cupid — god of passionate love in Roman mythology
- Aphrodite — goddess of passionate love in Greek mythology
- Eros — god of passionate love in Greek mythology
- Freya — goddess in Norse mythology
- Kama — god of sensual love in Hindu mythology
- Rati — goddess of passionate love in Hindu mythology
- Venus — goddess of passionate love in Roman mythology
- Xochipilli — god in Aztec mythology
See also
- Quotes from Wikiquote
Human love
- Affectional orientation
- Emotion
- Greek words for love
- Limerence — the "in love" state
- crush
- Love-Hate relationships
- Love-shyness
- Personal relationship
Other types of love (philias)
- Bibliophilia — the love of books
- Biophilia — the love of nature
- List of philias — list of words with philia or phile postfix
Wiktionary
External links
- Love Quotes (http://www.onlylovequotes.com)
- Life and Love Stories (http://www.heavenonastick.com/whatididforlove/)
- A Buddhist View on Love and Compassion (http://buddhism.kalachakranet.org/immeasurables.html)
- Love Poems (http://www.bestlovepoems.net/)
References
- R. J. Sternberg. A triangular theory of love. 1986. Psychological Review, 93, 119–135
- Dorothy Tennov. Love and Limerence: the Experience of Being in Love. New York: Stein and Day, 1979. ISBN 0812861345
- Helen Fisher. Why We Love: the Nature and Chemistry of Romantic Love
da:Kærlighed
de:Liebe
es:Amor
fr:Amour
gl:Amor
he:אהבה
ia:Amor
id:Cinta
it:Amore
ja:愛
nl:Liefde
pl:Miłość
ru:Любовь
sv:Kärlek
fi:Rakkaus