In human relationships, love is the most important emotion. People often describe it as intense affection, a deep feeling of like for someone or something, or a strong desire to be with the person or thing. Love is more than just a feeling; it is also an action, a decision to put the beloved’s needs ahead of one’s own and a promise to be there for the other. Love is a powerful force that is capable of moving mountains, but it is not without its challenges. It is important to understand the different types of love and how they differ from each other in order to keep your relationship healthy and happy.
Love is an incredibly complex concept, which makes it difficult to clearly and consistently define, even compared to other emotions. In some cases, the ideas grouped into one category of love can overlap with, and even contradict, those classified in another type. Thus, the categories below should be viewed as tentative and hesitant classifications rather than rigidly defined sets.
The basic definition of love is an affection for a person that motivates you to do things for them. You may feel this affection in many ways, but the most common is to care for and protect those you love, which includes protecting their rights and property, even when it is inconvenient or hurtful to you. You may also express your love for a person by sacrificing your own interests for them, or by showing that you would die for them.
Some theories of love see it as a natural, biological urge that is rooted in the survival needs of humans and other mammals. It is a response to the need for offspring to be nurtured for a long period of time after birth in order to develop the skills and abilities needed for success.
Other theories of love rely on the idea that we are social creatures who are designed to bond with others and form deep, intimate relationships. Love is a product of our evolutionary history, and we are hard-wired to need and to experience it.
Other theories of love view it as an emotional state that can be triggered by various stimuli, such as the sight of a loved one or hearing their name. Functional MRI studies of romantic love show that primitive neural systems related to drive and reward recognition are activated when we think about our loved ones. This puts romantic love in the same evolutionary category as the instincts that prompt us to seek food or water. Still others see love as a kind of bestowal, an attitude that involves both appraisal (insofar as we must be responsive to the valuable properties our loved ones really have) and gratitude (insofar as we appreciate the value they provide us). There is surely something right about this perspective on love. However, it is not clear that it can account for the intuitive “depth” of love.