On Love

Love is a feeling that many people desperately seek it while others run away from it and then there are some who do not know what it is and some are in love with it but still do not know what it is. Love is a feeling that no one can no describe and no one can be an expert on it yet almost everyone has an opinion about it. Love is something that I used to not believe in but now I do. I realize that as I grow my definition of it evolves and this definition will keep on evolving. I talked about finding love before but I feel that I should try to define it in this article.

To define love is a very difficult if not impossible task because love is an abstract concept. There is friendly love, family love and the more intimate, most popular, romantic love. But to be more specific, I would like to focus on the romantic love. Now by all means, I am no expert on the topic but I also believe that no one can really be one. I hope that I can also answer the following questions: What is love? Can we love more than one person at a time? Can we hate someone we love? Can we hurt someone we love? Is love crazy? Can love be equalized with hate?
Biologically speaking, love is an instinct just like thirst or hunger. Dr. Helen Fisher, from Rutgers University and an expert on romantic interpersonal attraction, claims that the experience of love is divided into three stages that can overlap. The three stages are: lust, attraction and attachment.

Lust is a very familiar feeling to all of us and we all know about it. Lust as a stage is temporary and usually fades away after few weeks. Attraction is another stage that can develop from lust but it can also go hand in hand. Attraction is when we start liking the person for who they are not for just what they look like. Attraction as a stage is also temporary but has a longer phase than lust. It can last up to few years. Attachment is the stage that makes a relationship grow to a higher, deeper level and extends it to go to years and decades. During these stages, certain chemicals such as dopamine, serotonin and amphetamines are also released in the brain that stimulates its pleasure center. These chemicals can influence us in physical and also psychological ways.

So science tells us basically that love is a biological instinct and once we have it, it releases chemicals in the brain that makes us feel happy, focused and energized. But of course there is more to love than that. There is the nights of tears, the loss of appetite, the anguish and the pain. However, love is not just biology and chemistry. Love is also very psychological.

From our birth, we grow and see how our parents interact with us and how they interact with one another. That is the first notion of love we see and that is how it starts formulating in our head. Some people are born to see a loving family and some are not and in turn their interpretation of love is how they saw their parents or how their parents treated them. This is very clear when you see an abusive parent today and you find that his father or mother were the same. So does that mean that love is learned and if it is learned then it is not truly an emotion but an activity or a behavior.

But certainly love cannot just be an activity because there is always the sexual attraction and that feeling of attachment. But going back to the love we grow up to see. Once we find the one we are attracted to, we will be attached to them the way we were attached to our father and mother. But, there are many variations of love or as some say, there are many variations of lust. Because all of us go through many relationships and we can identify differences between the love we had for each person. There are mainly two kinds of love. There is the « passionate love » and there is the « affectionate love ». The passionate love is the one where hormones are flying and there is constant need to be with the other person in a sexual way. Basically, you want that person. The affectionate love which is the more mature and more mellow where you develop affection for the other person and lack in the sexual arousal. Some argues that this is usually what happens in a marriage. It starts with passion and develops into affection. That is highly probable but those two types of love can develop separately and are not necessarily stages. In other words, one can love someone in an affectionate way and one can love another in a passionate way and both are equally missing something. This also basically means that we can love someone passionately and in the same time we can love another in a more affectionate way. That's usually how most affairs occur. A husband or a wife can love their spouse but they can go and have an affair with someone else because they are more attracted to that person in a passionate way or in an affectionate way.

Dr. Robert Sternberg developed a more intricate characterization of love. He states that there are six types of love. These six types are based on three elements: intimacy, passion and commitment. There is the Infatuated love where one loves another only in a passionate way and cannot develop understanding or long term commitment. There is the Empty love, which does not have any passion but has the commitment factor. This usually happens in an arranged marriage or a relationship that is based on benefits that is not related to love. There is the Romantic love, which has passion, intimacy but no commitment. There is the Companionate love, which has intimacy and commitment but no passion. There is the Fatuous love, which has passion and commitment but no intimacy. This usually happens when two people meet and are motivated by passion to get married but did not develop understanding. Finally, there is the Consummate love, which is love at its best where intimacy, passion and commitment are all fulfilled.

Dr. Sternberg characterization of love however, is missing the one-sided love, which is one of the most painful types because it really has no solution. Either that person gives up and move on or the person he loves returns that love but that is not usually the case. Some would argue that one-sided love is not really love because love requires two people. However, I disagree because what one person feels is his own and no one can tell him or her that it does not qualify as love.

Now, I find myself looking at a map of love. There are the stages of love, the different kinds of love, the scientific love and all of these are under the big umbrella of what we all call love. I think I can now look and find all my experiences regarding love and all the experiences of people I know about love can somewhat be found in that little map. But, despite the intricacy of this map, I find myself overwhelmed by all of the information. As beautiful as love can be, it is one of the craziest experiences ever. What we do for love sometimes can be defined, I think as insanity. Love makes people suffer tremendously; it makes people leave their homes, their families, leave everything they know. Some people stay up all night counting stars, thinking of the one they love. Others spend all day and nights by their phone hoping for a phone call or even a text message. Some become obsessed. Some dedicate their whole life to the person they love and do everything in their capacity to make their lovers happy. Yes, love makes us do the craziest things and that is because love is crazy. In fact, studies have shown that brain scans of those in love show a resemblance to those who are mentally ill. But is love crazy because it cannot be explained? Or it cannot be explained because it is just simply unreasonable and it has nothing to do with reason? Most people agree that love has nothing to do with reason. But, for love to be truly successful, reason must be involved because we are not living in a fairy tail world or in a romantic movie.

But if love can be so wonderful and make people do crazy things, why do we hurt the one we love? Why can love be so tormenting at times? This may go back to the issue of psychology that I mentioned earlier. A person may be in love but he or she may also be the jealous and controlling type thereby sometimes doing things that hurts the person they love. A person may be in love but he or she may also have a temper or a violent streak thereby in an argument he may hurt or even hurt that person they love. There are many examples of course where the relationship starts with love and end with a pile of rubble in the kitchen. Sometimes, other issues come into the picture and hinder love and finally end it. These issues can be: education, social status, money, family, different cultural backgrounds, etc. Thus, love sometimes cannot conquer all.

So, if love fails does it turn into hate? Can hatred be equalized with love? Are they two sides of the same coin? Sri Chinmoy, an Indian philosopher, once said, "You hate someone whom you really wish to love, but whom you cannot love. Perhaps he himself prevents you. That is a disguised form of love. This is an interesting concept because sometimes it does occur. Thus, Mr. Chinmoy believes that hate is actually a form of love. British psychologist and author Havelock Ellis agrees and states, "When love is suppressed hate takes its place." Thus, it seems that love can turn into hate when it is stopped or suppressed for whatever reason. But similarly, the opposite does happen. Hate can also turn into love. Many relationships have started with a couple that hated each other but then somehow that hate turned into love. There is a very famous Arabic proverb that says " there is no greater love than one that started with hate." Scientifically speaking, the area of the brain that is activated during the emotion of love is the same during hate. Therefore, we can assume that love can turn into hate and hate can turn into love.

The question that remains is can we really equalize love with hate? Personally, I do not think so. Yes, there are moments where love can include hate. Yes, there are moments where you really despise the person you love and can't bear the sight of their face and yes there are moments where you can say hateful things or do hateful things to the person you love but that does not mean that love equal hate. The reason is simple and that is the huge polarity between the two. Hatred can paralyze your life while love can empower it. Hatred destroys while love creates. Love is given to you while hatred is something that you acquire. Hatred can darken your whole life and love illuminates it. I am not disagreeing that occasionally the two can seem very similar but they are completely different. I partly think that pure love is something that we, as humans, cannot achieve very easily because sometimes we mix these two feelings easily.

"Dogs love their friends and bite their enemies, quite unlike people, who are incapable of pure love and always have to mix love and hate"
- Sigmund Freud

Sigmund Freud used a very powerful combination here, which is "pure love". This combination begs me to stop and contemplate it. What is pure love? And if there is such a thing, does that mean there is an un-pure love? The answer can be seen daily in our homes. Yes, pure love does exist and that is the love that gives and does not take. It is the love that empowers and liberates. It is the love of a mother to her child because there is no love that can be equalized to that love. Every child knows that no matter what wrong they do or say, their mother will love them. Children know that no matter what they look like or how unintelligent they are or how clumsy they could be, their mothers will always love them. It is the unconditional love and it is nearly impossible to be translated to a romantic love. It is nearly impossible to let go of the one you love because you think he or she will be happy elsewhere or with someone else. It is nearly impossible to not ask for anything back from the one you love. It is nearly impossible to not have a sense of ownership of the one you love as if you brought them to this life. It is nearly impossible to do everything for the one you love just because you want to. It is nearly impossible because true pure love is selfless but we all have a high sense of our selves. We all know what hurts us and what makes us happy and no matter how much we can be blind or selfless in our love sooner or later we will realize that something is wrong and we will end the relationship and choose our own benefits. However, as impossible as it is, pure romantic love does exist but it is very rare.

This brings me to the conclusion that there are many different versions of love or a hierarchy of love and pure love sits at the top. Throughout our life we experience many types of love. It is very rare to find pure love and it should not be our goal to look for it. In fact, we should not even look for love because it happens when you are busy planning everything else. Love can change also from one version to another in a relationship and it is perfectly normal. Love may bring extreme joy or extreme pain and sometimes it may bring both but that should never ever stop us from accepting the experience because life would be very empty without love. That does not mean that you cannot live without it because you can but you should not run away from it either. And if one love ends, another will start no matter how bad or good your last relationship was because love always finds us.

May Love Find You.