What does "love" mean to you?

[Anonymous]

[iluvtoknow]

People are social creatures. From the very beginning of our lives, we crave emotional connections with other people. At first, it's with our parents. Then, it's with our friends. Or best friends. But eventually, the center of our emotional worlds shifts to our girlfriends and wives.

These connections are important. They inspire us. I mean, a lot of contemporary philosophers struggle to come up with a 'purpose of life' when they just use reason, but I'd argue that these connections that appeal to our emotions and humanity are precisely that 'purpose.' I mean really, every person has an intrinsic desire to care for someone else and be cared about in turn, right?

And that's where love comes about. Now, love is a very imprecise word. Some people use it very loosely (e. g. I love pizza!). Some people use it as a synonym of appreciation. (e. g. You did that for me? Oh, I love you so much right now!) Some people use it as deep affection for people like friends. (e. g. You're the best, amigo! Love ya!) And some people use it specifically for romantic love between a man or a woman (or LGBTQ equivalents, but I'm going to leave that as an implication so I can talk about men and women more generally).

While many things will be applicable to various broader definitions of the word, for our purposes, we're going to stick to that last definition regarding romantic love between a man and a woman.

So what is love? I would say love is incredibly intense care, affection, and devotion for a single person mixed with sexual attraction to them; and the meat of it really lies in that first part. People in love like spending time with each other for its own sake, put each others' interests before their own, find peace in each other from the outside world, etc. It is a state that is born out of friendship. Any two people can fall in love if their personalities are compatible and they can be attracted to each other. It's just that tight, loving bond born out of shared experience that tightens it into that one-of-a-kind-per-person love experience.

I don't think it requires sexual intercourse. In fact, I think love and lust can sometimes run really contrary to one another and couples might convince themselves that they're in love, when they're really just physically attracted to one another. But so long as that care, affection, and devotion is there love will exist.

My favorite book series is Percy Jackson and the Olympians, and Percy Jackson and Annabeth Chase's relationship is my prototypic example of love. They have deep bonds solidified by shared experience and friendship, they grew to care deeply for each other, trust each other, show vulnerability to one another, and unequivocally have affection for one another over the series events.

—because to love and to be loved is the meaning of life.

[bones_20]

Love to me means
Being able to tell him all my thoughts and feelings and secrets knowing he will not judge me for any of it.
Feeling sad when he's not around to entertain me with his craziness.
Being able to discipline him when he's naughty but know he won't take it too personally and that I still love him.
Not being able to bear the thought of losing him and knowing the day he dies will be the day I do to.


I just love my Pomeranian that much 😌😛