What Is Love?

Today’s word is love. A lot of conflicts happen because people have different definitions to this simple word. Most of the time, I think those definitions are wrong. So what is love? After all the poetry, music, books and movies on the subject, you’d think we’d have this one down by now. Here are some ideas of what I think love is.

Love is like my garden. When I look at it and spend time out there, I have a number of feelings and behaviors. I admire it, I praise it, and I share peaceful moments with it. Those satisfying feelings are not love. Love is not a feeling. So if it’s not a feeling, what is it?

To know what love is, let’s first turn to what it’s not. In my consulting room, one of the most common definitions of love is admiration. When people fall in love, they form a mutual admiration club. That’s not love. Neither is the lust they feel. Falling in love should be called falling in lust. You only lust for people you want to have sex with, so it’s about sex, not love. Falling in love happens to us. True love is a choice.

Love isn’t that warm, mushy feeling you have with loved ones. It’s not any feeling at all. The feelings we have with those we love are the results of love. Some results of love aren’t good feelings at all. It’s not unusual for love to produce unwanted feelings. Now I’m not talking about jealousy or hatred. Those don’t come from love. I’m talking about unwanted feelings like grief because we loved so well.

Love isn’t what “love songs” tell us it is. “I can’t live without you” is not love. If you can’t live without something, you’re a parasite. So when you “fall in love,” and have all those sexual feelings and are afraid you’ll die if the other leaves, you become a sexual parasite. It’s fun, but it’s not love.

Love is action. Finally getting back to my garden, love is the planning, buying, planting, watering and weeding. It’s work. Sometimes I enjoy it, sometimes I don’t, but it’s still love. Love is a choice. I choose to work in the garden. Out of my choice, comes all the feelings that are the results of my love. Love is really a verb.

I’m sure you know what a verb is so let’s get back to love. The work of loving someone is listening and being there for them. It’s choosing to do what is necessary for the other. It involves sacrifice, but not the kind that creates an obligation or turns you into someone you’re not. With true love, you’d never hear, “After all I’ve done for you, you treat me like this.” Love is a gift. When you give a gift, there are no expectations for a return on your investment.

Here’s a twist on the conventional wisdom that love is unconditional. I don’t think it’s unconditional at all. Since love is a choice, there must be qualifications. I can’t love everybody. I don’t even know everybody and if love is action, I don’t have the time to love 6 billion people. I think we choose whom we love and it’s best if it’s an ongoing decision making process. People change, conditions change, and our choices about love change.

Since love is a choice, there are varying degrees of love. Add that to the idea of love being an ongoing process of choosing, then love can be fleeting. It only exists in the moment. Given that love is a verb, there has to be action. To believe you love someone doesn’t mean anything unless there is action directed at the betterment of the other and love only exists in the moment of action. The rest is the result of love, the feelings one has afterward.

Our involvement with others can consist of admiration, playfulness, sharing of experiences, but it’s not love unless there is a choice and the conditions of a choice to love are met. In other words, people have to behave in our approved manner in order to be loved by us.

Let’s follow a Typical Romantic Relationship. Two people fall in love. Lots of lust, parasitic feelings, and an overwhelming desire to declare ownership over the beloved. Under the influence of lust, which is a form of accepted insanity, a life changing decision is made to commit to love the other forever. So in other words, each declare they will always choose to love the other, regardless of any changes that happen.

To begin with, you’d need supernatural powers to love someone after you’re dead, so forever is stretching it a bit. But, insanity will do that to a thought process. You can’t own someone unless they’re a slave, but our culture teaches us we have ownership over others. It’s in the very nature of our language. “My significant other.” The word my is used as a prefix to define most of our relationships. My friend, my brother, and my attorney. We don’t own these people, but we speak as if we do. I don’t think this is a good idea to speak as if we own folks, but our cultural infrastructure, “the water we swim in,” doesn’t leave us much choice.

So our two love birds commit to love each other no matter what. Then all sorts of obstacles appear. There’s work, play, friends, family, other loves, and other choices that compete with our beloved. Obligation appears. The choice to love “no matter what,” a choice that was made in the past, isn’t reexamined against new criteria and new choices. A choice to love isn’t as easy to make now, and an obligation to love forms. In many instances, I believe that obligation overtakes a desire to love, and the acts of love diminish. The action of love only happens in the moment of choosing and the choice is conditional and has to be made freely, not under the feeling of an obligation.

So our couple does their best to live up to the commitment without taking the time to decide if they really want to. Now I know what you’re thinking. To buy my idea here, you think that people will then just love for the moment and then end the relationship when the ability to choose to love the other is too difficult. You’d rather there be a commitment that lasts forever. I don’t think that’s necessary. I actually think that kind of forever commitment often works against having a lasting, loving relationship. I think love only happens as the choice is made in an ongoing fashion. To attempt to live up to a commitment made weeks, months, or years ago when people and circumstances were different is to create obligation and I rarely see anyone happy to be obligated or feel chosen out of obligation. The feeling of obligation diminishes desire. So what to do?

My intention is not to be pessimistic about love. I’m quite the romantic. My desire is to change the infrastructure to incorporate a love built on realistic terms. The love I’m describing is much more satisfying than being in a relationship because of a feeling of obligation. I want to know my partner and actively choose her in the moment. Only then will I feel truly loved and that I’m truly loving. I’ll also need to let go of my expectations that I’ll be loved in the next moment which adds to the sense of obligation. A conditional love based on choice is a love that can grow and change as people and conditions change. An unconditional love based on duty and the desire to be rid of fear, is destined to wither and die.

A few more words about ownership. To own is to have dominion over. Dominion is territorial. It connotes power and authority over. When you own, you have a sense of control over, a say so about the other’s actions and beliefs. Not too many people want to be owned, but most want to own. Countless “normal” beliefs and actions in romantic relationships stem from the sense of ownership.

I hear it on the golf course all the time. “I can’t play next week, my wife wants me to…” That’s always said with a tone of hopelessness and resentment, as in “I’ll never be able to be the person I want to be.”  Those resentments, no matter how small, the feelings that we can’t be who we are or do what we want, build up over time and cause friction in romantic relationships.

I know what some of you are thinking. “We’ll if I let the other do whatever they want, (pick one or more) I’ll never see them – We’ll never have any time together – Nothing will get done around the house, he’ll never come home from work, she’ll spend all the money on clothes.” This is a list that could go on forever and one of the threads that would run through each choice is an all or nothing belief punctuated by the words like never, always, and none. When you find an all or nothing belief connected to fear, there is usually an unhealed, emotional wound.

From that wound, or maybe from all those wounds, comes the destructive desire to own and all that ownership means. The underlying belief is that the other should never hurt me. And in order to keep them from hurting me, I have to control what they do and how they do it. This is also known as codependency.

So what happens to our couple? They’ll enter a power struggle, that may last their entire lives. They may tire of that struggle and live “lives of quiet desperation” as roommates. Or they can face the issues that stem from ownership, lust, and unrealized dreams – in my way of thinking, go to therapy.

So next time you tell someone you’ll love them forever, know it’s wishful thinking and enjoy the moment. Wishing you the best in your relationships!