Love is an assortment of emotional behaviors and feelings characterized by intense intimacy, romance, devotion, confidence, respect, trust, and passion. It typically involves caring, intimacy, devotion, attentiveness, affection, and joy, all of which can change and vary over time. Love is most often associated with an assortment of positive emotions, such as happiness, anticipation, excitement, peace, and joy, but it can also evoke negative emotions, such as frustration, anger, resentment, boredom, jealousy, anxiety, and insecurity. The level of love in a relationship usually increases as the relationship grows and a romantic relationship advances. However, one of the most important aspects of developing love relationships is to make sure that your partner feels loved.
Love is most often described as an emotion that is intended to motivate us to take action or to accord with others’ needs. In humans, love is most often associated with emotional intimacy and attachment, although affection and intimacy can also be used to explain other human emotions. Love differs from friendship because it involves a higher level of emotion and care. It is often associated with such positive emotions as attraction, intimacy, commitment, honor, trust, safety, pleasure, health, creativity, generosity, concern, commitment, devotion, intimacy and affection.
The physical effects of love can be very strong, including the creation of physiological changes in the body, such as heart rate, blood flow, hormone levels, perspiration, sexual desire, growth, development of the uterus and vagina, as well as the production of certain chemicals in the brain, emotions, digestive system, muscles, bones, tissues, and skin. Physical intimacy and attachment are always present in romantic love relationships. However, loving feelings may also occur without intimacy in a relationship. They may occur when a person is feeling neglected by another person. Or they may occur when they are feeling alone and want to connect with someone to share their lives with.
Love can activate different brain areas. This means there is more than one type of “love” in a relationship. Romantic love can activate brain regions related to emotions, compassion, attachment, trust, safety, romance, imagination, trust, safety, intimacy, affection and sex. It has been found that people who experience romantic love tend to have stronger connections to personal and to others in their lives, which might say something about how our brains work when we are in love.
There is another type of love that is not very well understood. Companionate love is often described as a feeling of deep connection and companionship that does not involve sexual intimacy. People who are in this type of relationship might describe it as a feeling of being cared for without any expectation of reciprocation, sharing, intimacy, commitment or intimacy. A companion might feel emotionally attached to a friend, but have no desire to become romantically intimate with that friend. These feelings might be very similar to those felt during early development of other types of love relationships.
These three brain areas are activated during romantic encounters. What this all means is that you can train yourself to activate one or more of these feelings. In fact, one study found that you can train yourself to feel romantic even if you were not feeling it. That means you can have feelings for someone, without ever having had a romantic encounter with that person.