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What is “love”, anyway?
For someone who has struggled with the whole concept of marriage all her life (for me, the true essence of “partnership” resonates with so much more meaning and promise), that when asked, by my clients, the rhetorical question: “what is love, anyway?” the desire to then pour out their innermost feelings has given me much food for thought.
Is love actually (no reference to the movie, intended!) more like an infatuation? Or even total obsession? How do we know? Can we ever be sure of this all-consuming feeling we call “love”?
What type of love is it that we have for our partner, or our mother or father, our siblings, our friends, our colleagues, or our role models and mentors? ….because it is all love, isn’t it? ….but love in a very different package…..depending on the relationship. In some countries, we even see the language being used with completely different words in the vocabulary to describe the love we have for the various people in our lives.
We have the usual definition of Cupid’s Love, which many describe as an idealised notion of the love between two people…but what about all the other love we experience in our lives?…That which exists between friends, family members, companions, and even in those marriages, where despite the deficit of any overt or obvious love and affection, there is still some emotion that exists, strong enough to keep them together?
Notwithstanding any reference to the eternal triangle, there are indeed three components for us to consider when discussing the subject of love and how these enable this most complex of emotions to show up in its various forms. These three components are, firstly, intimacy (an honest, heart-to-heart or emotional connection), secondly, passion (a physical or lustful attraction) and finally, commitment (a mental rationale for one’s loyalty).
This table highlights the various permutations of these three components – what do you recognise in your relationships from the categories below? Does anything resonate?!?
| Type of Love | Intimacy | Passion | Commitment | Who might this be? |
| None Love | No | No | No | Stranger? |
| Friendship Love | Yes | No | No | Workmate? |
| Infatuated Love | No | Yes | No | One-night stand? |
| Empty Love | No | No | Yes | Family member? |
| Romantic Love | Yes | Yes | No | Soulmate? |
| Companion Love | Yes | No | Yes | Best friend? |
| Fatuous Love | No | Yes | Yes | Bigamous spouse? |
| Consummate Love | Yes | Yes | Yes | Dream partner? |
Whether in a relationship or not, to know you can look after and nurture yourself without needing another person to do it is healthy: only feeling safe when in a close, romantic relationship, is not.
Missing your partner when you’re away, even to a great extent, and being able to handle this by knowing you’ll be seeing them again soon enough is healthy: craving for your partner with a fierce and visceral need, is not.
Not relying on another person’s comments or approval to make you feel good about yourself is healthy: needing to hear, with constant regularity, that you are loved, admired and desired in order to gain a sense of self-worth, is not.
Being able to disentangle yourself from whatever is holding you back because you believe you deserve better is healthy: finding it difficult to walk away from a relationship even if it feels toxic or you know is damaging you, is not.
Whatever your view, whether cynical or pure, it is obviously the healthy pursuit of love that is key.