What is love?

LegacyUser

Valentines day is nearly here and therefore an apropriate time to ask a very old question:

What is love?

Is it an obsession, sometimes mutual? Is it a instinctual bonding between two people? Is it even a chemical thing?

Beruthiel

If I could answer that one I’d be a very rich woman!
However, from a biological angle:
It’s a chemical thing which lasts long enough to procreate and ensure that there is a next generation

Kell

Are you struggling to find your own definition or do you just want the opinion of others?

The Reaper

well the crappy dictionary says its an intense feeling!

Typedef

What is love?

Can't say mate, but, I think it is when you make an extraneous effort to engage with and have irrational feelings of affection for someone, which is a clinical definiton, but, is the only way my mind of logic can articulate such a fundamentally illogical proposition.

Is it an obsession, sometimes mutual?
No, obsession is different to love, obsession does not necessarily entail affection, in my understanding of the word anyway.


Is it a instinctual bonding between two people?
Many people will argue that it is a chemical reaction that facilitates a Darwinian evolutionary paradigm. Is it instinct alone? I don't think so, because if 'love' were an instinctual thing, then in human interpersonal interaction, the chemical state of mind called 'love' (if one so chooses to define it as so), would be a consequential part of the human amours partnership process.
Sadly, that is not always the case.


Is it even a chemical thing?
In terms of the brain, everything is a chemical thing.
If you mean, do I think that evolution has dropped a brute animal reaction called 'love' into the lower levels of the human psyche to facilitate procreation of the species, I think that yes and no is in fact the right answer. For example, in evolutionary terms, would it not simply be simpler, to have some sort of physical interconnection 'requiring' both sexes to mate or feel physical pain in order to facilitate procreation?

You could get into a quagmire of debate on that one. For example is the big brained gamble that human evolution went for, a symptom of simple exponenciation of 'one' species (humans), or exponenciation of the entire eco-system and the eco-system's need to expand beyond the constraints of one planet or ultimately be destroyed?

Big questions, no real way to answer them, due to a fundamental lack of evidence and due in some ways to things like the uncertainty principal, or to put it another way, the lack of objectivity of the party attempting to make the evaluation.

Mercury_Tilt

This post has been deleted.

The Corinthian

Love - That period of time in-between meeting a girl and realizing she looks like a haddock.

Originally posted by Mercury_Tilt
How is this a PI thingie?

It's not really.

hedgetrimmer

sings *Baby don;t hurt me. Don't hurt me. No more*

"What is this thing that they call love, it is too rough, too rude, too boisterous and it pricks like a thorn"

I think it differs from person to person, time to time, place to place. It is the most subjective of emotions

Tazz T

Isn't it just a secondhand emotion?

Bard

There is no answer to that question save for the one in your own head.

http://www.lyrics.pl/teksty/zagraniczne/haddaway/whatislove.htm

Tusky

silly question tbh , and i dont think there is an anser but i guess the general definition is somthing like very strong feelings of closeness etc with som1.

xx

Love is......a compromise.

oeNeo

Love is is them two naked kids that give eachother presents!

Bard

Dublin's FM104's drive time show "The Jam" had a competition today where you had to complete the phrase "Love is...". Don't remember what the prize was, but the winning entry was something along the lines of: "Love is... a convenient misunderstanding between two fools"

Dont be at yourself

Love isn't something that you can wrap chains around and throw in a lake. No, that's Houdini. Love is just liking somebody a lot.

- Jack Handy.

flyz

"We come to love not by finding a perfect person, but by learning to see an imperfect person perfectly. "
-- Anonymous

Bard

http://loveisgreat.com/

The Reaper

Originally posted by Bard
http://loveisgreat.com/

good site bard! u will find wat ur lookin 4!

yellum

Damn damn damn.

Loads quoted those Haddaway lyrics before me.

Love is a chemical imbalance. Like most things.

Bard

more "definitions" here.

Don1

A four letter word!! Dunno it's true meaning though, somethin about total trust, respect and an unbelievable attractoin sometimes for no obvious reason.