WHAT IS LOVE?

Types of love:

1. Romantic love - love between lovers
2. Platonic love - love between friends
3. Interpersonal love - love between family members
4. Impersonal love - love for abstracts, eg country, art, knowledge or objects, eg car, favorite shirt

What true love is not:

1. The fulfillment of a need to be loved in return.
2. A perception of being with a person who is perfect.
3. Wanting to be with the perceived lover all the time.
4. Developing a dependence on the perceived lover.
5. A neglect and deterioration of all other friendships and relationships.
6. A relationship with a tendency to induce jealousy.
7. A possessiveness of the perceived lover.
8. A relationship that is liable to deteriorate with time and distance.

Psychological definition of true romantic love:

1. To love is to accept the lover for the way he or she is.
2. Loving is an appreciation of the qualities of the lover.
3. To love is to have the desire to give happiness to the lover.
4. To love is a deliberate choice and decision.
5. Loving is a promise of a long-term commitment.

The scientific basis of romantic love:

1.  Love is a universal human emotion positively selected by evolution as an adaptive strategy for survival and reproduction of the human species.             

2.  Love is the result of hormonal changes in our brains.  When a person perceives love, there is an initial rise in the level of the stress hormone cortisol.  The feeling of attraction to the partner is associated with higher activities of dopamine and norepinephrine.  Some areas of the brain like the anterior cingulate cortex, cerebellum, insula, posterior hippocampus, putamen, caudate nucleus, and ventral tegmental area become activated. This is similar to activations seen with cocaine and opioid induced euphoria.  Yet, some other areas like the posterior cingulate gyrus, amygdala, and right prefrontal, parietal, and middle temporal cortices become de-activated.  As with people who suffer from obsessive compulsive disorders, the calming hormone serotonin is lowered.  Love has opposite effects on testosterone on the sexes, lowering it in men but raising it in women.  In effect, this hormonal convergence in testosterone levels make both partners more alike in terms of aggression and the sex drive.  These changes persist for only the first one to two years of being in love.  Thereafter, the neuropeptides oxytocin and vasopressin become elevated, signalling a change in the nature of the perception from one of euphoria to that of attachment.  During the experience of love, neural circuits that are normally associated with critical social assessment of other people are suppressed, appearing to justify the common accusation that love is blind.

A final analysis

The best psychological definition of love is one of an unconditional selfless commitment.

Yet, the scientific assessment of love appears to suggest that it is a highly stressful obsession or compulsion driven by a euphoric addiction and made possible by a temporary suspension of social judgement. The initial compatibility in sex drive between the two lovers evolves into a more mature relationship when it is sustained more by a sense of stable attachment than that of sexual attraction.

The contradiction between these two definitions is probably the reason why love can give us great joy and great anguish, often at the same time.

Though we may hate to think so, it is highly likely that love is merely a deception employed by Mother Nature to  motivate us to reproduce and to ensure the survival of the human species.  Rather than some special or mysterious force, it seems to be just another biologically necessary human drive like hunger or the fight-or-flight response.