To Love and to be in Love

Love is composed of a single soul inhabiting two bodies

~Aristotle

I’ve always been curious about the concept of love, more importantly what does it truely mean to be in love? What does love really feel like? Is it to be completely infatuated by a person that the whole world stops? Does it mean that you’ll do things you dislike just to please your person? Is it the feeling of having butterflies when around someone and is it the feeling of content when you’re around them? Does love mean chaos or does love make you blind?

When did my parents decide that they love each other enough to be with one another for the rest of their lives? Or when does a person decide that they’re out of love with a person? What does that person do or feel or be out of love? Or did they truely love that person or was it just convenience? Can you truely love someone else before loving yourself?

The Importance of Self-Love

Self-love permits us to be vulnerable and to ask for support without fear. Self-love is not only important, but also necessary. We can set healthy limits and make good choices for ourselves when we love ourselves. Every contact we have and every decision we make is influenced by how we feel about ourselves.

People who love themselves are less likely to experience anxiety or depression; self-love also leads to a positive outlook, which is necessary for both personal success and mental health. Learning to love oneself reduces stress, minimises procrastination, and improves work focus. Research also reveals that to be truely in love with someone, one has to love themselves beforehand.

The Difference between Liking and Loving

At what point in a relationship do you realise you’re in love? Or even in friendships, what point of closeness do you need to be with friends to realise that you go from liking your friends to loving them?

Research reveals that when we’re in love with someone, it also tends to be a chemical roller coaster, and it can affect us physically more than "liking" someone can. When we fall in love with a person, our bodies feel like we’re on a high, when we like someone, it is skin-deep but love goes beyond just physical appearance. Love is genuine happiness to be surrounded by a person, while liking someone is a thrill. Liking someone means that you are afraid to fully let yourself known and feel self-conscious to completely open up to them, while love is the sense of complete comfort.

Liking someone can only take a night, you don't really have to rethink it over a series of days, weeks or even months in comparison to love which is a long process. When we like someone, we may pretend to be interested in what the person says at times but loving someone means to sincerely want to listen to the person. Liking someone is emotion-based, whilst loving someone is more decision-based.

Liking someone means that you have pride to be seen with them, in difference to loving someone which means that you are proud of the person with or without yourself there with them. Loving someone means that you accept every flaw but liking someone means that you may get turned off. Liking someone means that the person is perfect in your eyes but loving someone means that you aren't blind to their imperfections. Liking someone means you dream about them but loving someone means seeing them in your future. To love someone means that you are levelheaded with them and understand that you don't control nor own them but to like someone means that you may fall head over heels for them and are possessive of them. Love continues to grow as you become closer to them but when you like someone, it can take you further apart the closer you try to get. Liking someone means wanting to be cared for, paid attention to and always there but love has no distance and will lead you to in turn care for and pay attention to your person rather than needing it yourself.

Is it Love or Is it Lust?

The overall concept of love is so much broader and a much more deeper emotional connection in comparison to lust. Lust is a state of an overall sexual and physical attraction towards another being. Lust is what comes before love, it is a temporary form of sexual desire. So, when people say love blinds you or that love takes you away from friends and family, what they truely are in is a deep form of lust.

Lust, is associated with the sex-driven stimulations that initially attract people to each other and is driven predominantly by the desire to reproduce. Lust, which is characterised by sex hormones and idealistic infatuation, obscures our ability to see a person for who he or she truly is, and as a result, it may or may not lead to a long-term relationship.

Unlike lust, two people deeply in love would challenge you and bring you closer to the other people you truely care about. Lust can tend to pull you away from the real world and love pulls you into a deeper liking of the world and who you really are. Lust forces you to do or say what the other person wants rather than speaking and doing things for yourself. In comparison, love allows you to be yourself without fear and with complete security.

So, What is Love?

Love is not having control over another, it is not changing yourself to please them, it is not the feeling of insecurity around them. Love is not abusive, it is not pain. Love is the feeling of comfort and wanting to spend every moment with your person. Love brings you closer to life and the people you care about. Love is to deeply care about another, love doesn’t mean to fix another but rather helps you to be the better version of the person you are. Kinda like how my dad cares so much for our garden, that he would spend every waking moment of his free time to perfect it. That is love!

From the most lofty virtue or good habit, the deepest interpersonal affection, to the simplest pleasure, love spans a variety of strong and positive emotional and mental states. True love is an intense and long-lasting bond between spouses or lovers in a pleasant, passionate, and rewarding relationship. Love is a drive that comes from the motor of the mind, the wanting part of the mind, the craving part of the mind.

Love comes in many forms, you can love your family, friends, your pets, hobbies, religion, partner etc. Some types of love requires no words, it is something you just know and a feeling you don't really need anytime to gain, like loving your family, it requires nothing more than just love and it is a bond too tough to break. But to love someone that could potentially be or that is your parter is complex, it is an intense connection that you don't have with just anyone but someone. That type of love reveals an extreme feeling of attachment, affection and need. It requires you to put your partner's happiness and well-being above your own. It is a choice to commit to helping, respecting and caring for one another, such being marriage or having a child together.

The key elements in making a loving relationship work is to take things slow and be present, be affectionate, don't forget to look at your parter (maintain eye contact), continue doing the activities you both love doing together and try finding new ones too, break your daily routine from time to time just to be together, avoid passivity and control, don't lose yourself in the relationship and remember that you're still two seperate people. Remember to always be aware of your inner critical voice and try to do things independently, always communicate your feelings towards your partner, and support the things that make your partner happy, always remember to show that you love your partner the way that they'd want you to, and never become closed off in your relationship.

Love is patient. Love is kind. It does not envy or boast, it is not proud.

It is not rude, or self-seeking. It is not easily angry and keeps no record of past mistakes.

It does not delight in evil but rejoices in the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.

Love never fails.