If you will allow me to continue to suck all the romance out of the room, love is…
Chemicals. Chemicals coursing through your brain.
Now, I won’t go so far as by-tor to say it’s a trick, per se, played by your brain to get you to mate. For one, it seems most other creatures on this blue marble don’t have a capacity for love, yet mate just fine. And many humans love just fine, but don’t mate, so clearly it’s not that. But is is just neurochemistry.
Love is a dipsy doodle.
Thinking out loud here, could that be a defense against rape charges? For that matter, there is no such thing as rape? “Your honor, I was merely responding to the neurochemical imperative to pass on my genes.” :rolleyes:
A second-hand emotion.
[Spoilsport] If rape was about sex, you might be able to get away with that one. [/Spoilsport]
I certainly hope love isn’t just sex misspelled. Good Lord, that means I want to have sex with my parents, MIL, cats, and several friends of my non-sexually-preferred gender. And my six-month-old nephew.
Sweet fancy Moses!
I have 2 answers which fit me in various moods.
One is for when I’m anal. Love is when you feel respect, trust, affection, and lust for one person at the same time, and make a commitment to stay with that person so long as the first two emotions hold.
The other is stolen from Robert Heinlein: Love is the state of mind in which the well-being of another person is essential for your own peace of mind. (Please note that I did NOT write happiness; love doesn’t always make you happy.)
Regardless of your religious beliefs (or lack thereof), I think the New Testament describes love quite well.
1 Corinthians 13:4-7
“Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.”
Either that, or it’s a battlefield.
There are multiple possible motivations to commit rape, just as there are multiple possible motivations for nearly any other human activity you care to name. Contrary to popular belief, sex can be one of them.
He didn’t say it was about sex, but passing on genetics.
Love is a Battlefield
Love is a rock group.
Greek philosophers have pondered this very same question some hundred years BC, and they came up with the following following different definitions of love:
Eros is passionate love, with sensual desire and longing.
Philia means friendship in modern Greek, a dispassionate virtuous love, includes loyalty to friends, family, and community, and requires virtue, equality and familiarity.
Agapē is used for a good meal, one’s children, a spouse, and oddly, love of God.
Storge means natural affection, like that felt by parents for offspring.
I love pizza.
I’m not being difficult, I’m just illustrating how “love” is one of those completely connotative words that means something different to everybody, even different things to the same person in different contexts. It’s tough, but you just have to get into the mindset that everytime you hear that word, all you know is that somebody feels strongly about something. You don’t ever really know what they actually mean by it. You can know what it means through people’s actions though. My wife has a rough idea what I mean when I say I love her, as I’ve demonstrated my understanding of it for the last eight years. She also knows what I mean when I say I love pizza, because I sure eat a lot of it, cook a lot of it, etc…
Simply put, love is a decision. Lust, attraction and affection are at least partially neurochemical. Love is what keeps one around after the chemicals wear thin. That takes a concious decision.
And add one more to the list!