What is love?

This note is the culmination of a few months of introspection and analysis, a road that I was sent wandering down when a dear friend of mine asked me a simple question: “How do you know when you’re in love?”

As a person who has easily been able to feel and express love, at first I was taken aback by this question. But as I explored the thought further, it occurred to me that I was not necessarily aware of exactly what I have meant when I have said the words “I love you” in the past. Love represents a range of human emotions and can refer to a variety of different feelings and states – how have I defined it to myself, and how have I known when I felt it?

So I decided to embark upon a ‘quest’, if you will, to uncover and understand the true meaning and nature of love, what it means to me, and how I might be able to answer my friend’s question. I probed my heart, looked for answers in poetry and music, in the words of philosophers and self-help experts, and in the experiences of friends and loved ones in various stages of relationships - from successful, to faltering, to failed.

After all that research, here is what I have come to believe:

As an emotion, love, by itself, is indefinable, because it is not just a singular feeling felt by an individual. Love is, in fact, the right combination of four other definable feelings – infatuation, lust, friendship and spiritual connection.

Why these four specific feelings? I’ll explain:

Infatuation is actually what people typically describe as love, or the act of falling in love. This is the stuff of poetry, song, and cheesy love quote widgets on iGoogle – you feel completely carried away by unreasoned passion; there’s a sense of urgency, intensity, desire, and extreme absorption in the other person; everything seems perfect, you feel addicted, unable to stay apart, made for each other – all that good stuff. We know that infatuation is often the first emotion to fade away, but tender words, thoughtful gifts and romance are still important components of love. However, there is more.

You also need lust. It often comes hand in hand with infatuation, but let’s not deny the fact that physical attraction is a large, and important, component of long-lasting love. It is simply the way we were made, and pretending like real love is pure and untainted, without a shred of lust in sight, is simply naiveté. Physical touch is an important expression of love, but, of course, there is more.

There’s friendship, which is often the part of love that gets the least attention, because we tend to think that a lover is bigger and better than a friend. Wrong. Love without friendship is hollow, because we all need someone who can make us smile when we’re down, respects us despite our flaws, shares our interests, spends quality time with us, gives us confidence, takes care of us, and helps us in times of need. Friendship can be an important cornerstone to love, but there is yet more.

Every relationship also needs a spiritual connection. By this I’m not necessarily referring to religion. For people who put stock in religion, finding someone who helps strengthen faith is a key component of love. But all of us are born with goodness, an innate sense of right and wrong, the part of us that tells us it is good to be honest, loyal, kind, compassionate and respectful. Nobody is perfect by any means, but true love connects our goodness with someone else’s, soothes and renews our spirit, and inspires us to just try to be better people.

So, what is love? It is the madness of infatuation, the rawness of lust, the solid dependability of friendship, and the comforting connection of our spirit to someone else's.

Each of these feelings do not need to exist in equal part to create love. I spent a few minutes trying to develop some kind of paradigm or scale to measure love, based on the importance and longevity of these feelings, but the truth is there is no formula.

You know that what you feel is love when you find someone for whom you feel a satisfying level of infatuation, lust, friendship and spiritual connection – and that person also thinks that you satisfy these feelings within them.

The key here, of course, is knowing and understanding your own satisfaction level, and since each person is unique, their expectations in the four areas will be different, and their definition of love will also be unique.

In most cases, love grows in stages and with time, and goes from infatuation/lust to friendship/spiritual connection, although there is no such thing as the linear progression of love.

But if you can find love that completely satisfies you in the present, and you feel that even though your needs will adjust with time, this one person will continue to grow with you and make your feelings even stronger, you may be one of the lucky ones in this world to have discovered real, strong and long-lasting love. ☺