A Look At What Is love?

From a sexology perspective trying to define love is a difficult task. Besides loving a spouse or a boyfriend or girlfriend, people can love their children, parents, siblings, pets, country,or God, as well as many other things like colors, certain food and sports. Although the English language has only one word to apply to each of these situations, there are clearly different meanings involved.

When we talk about person to person love, the simplest definition may be: Love is that condition in which the happiness of another person is essential to your own. Certainly, this is the love Shakespeare described in his play Romeo and Juliet, that popular singers celebrate, and that led Edward VIII to abdicate the throne of England to marry the woman in his life.

In any type of love, the element of caring about the loved person is essential. Unless genuine caring is present, what looks like love may be just one form of desire. For example, a young man or woman may say to someone they are interested in "I love you" just to have a sexual encounter with them. In other cases, the desire to gain money and wealth, status, or power may lead a person to pretend to love someone to reach their personal goals.

Because sexual desire and love may both be passionate and all-consuming it may be difficult to distinguish between them in terms of intensity. The key feature is the substance behind the feeling. Generally, sexual desire is narrowly focused and easily discharged. Love is a more complex and constant emotion. In pure sexual desire, the elements of caring and respect are minimal, perhaps it may be present as an afterthought, but not a central part of the feeling. The desire to know the other person is defined in only a physical way, not in a spiritual one. The end is easily satisfied. While love may include a passionate yearning for sexual union, respect respect for the loved one is a primary concern. Without respect and caring, our attraction for another person can only be an imitation of love. Respect allows us to value a loved one's identity and integrity and thus prevents us from selfishly exploiting them.

Love and Attachment

There is one sexology theory that views adult love relationships as similar to attachment behaviour between an infant and its parent. Common dynamics found in both love-pairings include reliance on the loved one to fulfill basic emotional and security needs, fear of rejection and distressed separation from a previous relationship. There may also be a powerful empathy between the two people in a relationship and great deal of nonverbal communication.

Another theory suggests all love relationships in a person's life, including those with lovers and spouses, mimic the type of attachment found in early infant relationships. However, not all mother-infant relationships are perfect. If a mother is consistently slow in responding to her infant's actions, the baby often becomes anxious, and if a mother ignores her baby's attempts to have physical contact with her by cuddling or touching, the baby probably will learn to avoid her.

However, this kind of attachment theory don't adequately explain cross-cultural observations about love and love relationships that are very different in other countries such as in India, Japan, and other countries.