What is this feeling people talk about called love? I mean, I have people I care about, my family and friends, but the word “love” escapes me. I don’t identify anything to it. I find I can only echo it when someone else says it in order to be polite. Strange? Yes. Am I missing something here? What is love to you?
Baby don’t hurt me!
Couldn’t resist. Well, it’s really just pleasure-inducing chemicals released in your brain to re-enforce certain behaviors that enhance your survival value and ability to reproduce. Sorry, but that’s just it. We can still get all gushy and everything, but unless you’re going to invoke the supernatural, that’s it.
Yes but what is that feeling? Why don’t I identify any emotion as love? Is that chemical also? An irregularity in my gene composition or whatever it is?
If you think you have a somatic or psychological problem, your best course of action is to see your doctor and/or a psychiatrist. Seriously, if you don’t experience any intense feelings towards other people, then you may very well have a medical condition that can be treated.
…a second hand emotion…?
It’s a many-splendored thing
Serious question: Is it possible that you’re a high-functioning autistic, or Asperger, or any of the other brain configurations that do not process “love” the way others do?
Love, by my definition means, “A self-aggrandizing nature which allows someone to believe in their own momentary delusion.” Love also means NOTHING to a tennis player. 
Heinlein defined it as “that condition where the happiness of another person is essential to your own”.
Not sure if I agree, but I submit it for what it is worth.
I could also add Benny Hill’s “What is this thing called, love?”
“I want to know what love is…I want you to show me.”
It has been said that love is undefinable. Even if this is not true, there is no question that it is a complicated matter. So anyone who laughs at you and says it’s easy to describe or discuss is either extremely intelligent or very very dim.
I’ve been thinking about this question a lot lately. My criteria for love is very simple. If a person dies, will I cry? If the answer is yes, then I love them. If the answer is no, then I don’t.
But then I worry. What if I don’t cry when my mother dies, because I realize that she died peacefully and if heaven exists, that’s where she is? Does that mean I don’t love her? Also, I cried when my cat died. If I don’t cry when my mother dies, does that mean I love my cat more than I do my mother? I know this is not the case, but how? What’s my proof? I don’t have any.
For some people, probably most people, love is a feeling that develops into action. For people like you and me, it is action that may or may not develop into deep feelings. I don’t like that I am a dispassionate person, but I do like the idea that one can be loving regardless of how they feel inside.
So in conclusion, I think love is making others feel good and happy just to see them that way. Love is feeling good and happy because someone else is loving you. That’s as deep with it as I can go.
Don’t forget schizoid. Everyone always forgets the schizoids.
Ambrose Bierce defined love thusly:
LOVE, *n. *A temporary insanity curable by marriage or by removal of the patient from the influences under which he incurred the disorder. This disease, like caries and many other ailments, is prevalent only among civilized races living under artificial conditions; barbarous nations breathing pure air and eating simple food enjoy immunity from its ravages. It is sometimes fatal, but more frequently to the physician than to the patient.
Love means never having to say you’re…
… Shit, I’m sorry.
I think Erich Fromm had the best definition of mature love.
He claims mature love has 4 components: care, knowledge, respect and responsibility. Basically (from what I remember) care means you care about their situation and problems. Knowledge means you know who/what they are and what they want, that you understand them. Respect means you respect their boundaries and know they may not have the same goals you do and don’t force your own on them. Responsibility means you can’t sit by passively if they need help.
I think love is a form of empathy where 2 people psychologically become one (weakly), and the interests (positive and negative) overlap. Your pain becomes my pain and I want to solve it, your happiness is my happiness and I want to enjoy it. Mature love is when two people’s interests overlap (so you have care and responsibility), but you still respect the other person’s individuality (respect) and you understand what they want/fear and can help them obtain it (knowledge).
Are you willing to sacrifice for someone? Then one could say you love them. The only question after that is to what degree. Love is a continuum.
Crudely put, but let’s say it runs from empathy for a fellow person (I give a quarter to a mother begging for change to feed her baby), to growing accustomed to a face (I’m disappointed when my favorite barista leaves my coffee house to live in another state), to fond of (I genuinely enjoy the Thursday night gassing around with my coworkers), to liking (going to a ball game with the wolf pack) to what we call the most intense of this emotional continuum – loving (the feeling I get in my pants whenever Madeline Zima is onscreen. OK, OK, spending years with my wife and knowing her and sharing triumphs and tragedies and just fat old amounts of lazy quantity time).
I like the Heinlein definition posted earlier as well. If someone’s happiness is essential to your own–that’s a great definition of love.
I’ve heard that one before, and I really like it.
You left out Dogs.
The definition I can accept : It is to will for the good of another person.
Whether you personally like that person is a different matter. You can personally dislike someone and still love them.
The inability to feel the emotion, such as love, which is a completely different thing to me, can be related to Schizoid personality disorder or Asperger’s as mention above.
Love is a battlefield.