This, perhaps, is the most intimate feeling that a person can experience in relation to another person. Love is an irresistible attraction to another person, a desire to be with him, to care for and protect, to sacrifice oneself for the sake of a loved one - and at the same time not to feel dependent, to be internally free, to remain oneself. Love is impossible without mutual respect, care, loyalty, responsibility.
True love is given to know not every one of us - after all only units are ready for a deep knowledge of love and constant work to keep its power for many years. As a rule, a person treats love in one way or another selfishly, enjoying only positive emotions from this feeling, and when love encounters inevitable obstacles - refuses it.
What is the meaning of love? It is believed that only a loving person is able to understand another person and accept him as he is, with all the advantages and disadvantages. Love is considered one of the components of human socialization and is characteristic only of homo sapiens - it is quite likely that it was the ability to love, rather than work, from the "human monkey".Without love, a person can not understand others and himself, find a place in this world, get pleasure from life. This is an unhappy man, devoid of the main joy of life. And only a person who loves can know life in all its glory, feel all the fullness of feelings that can be experienced in relation to another person.
It is difficult to answer unequivocally the question, what is the essence of love. Despite the existing definitions, love for each person is individual and capable of spurring on completely different actions, actions, emotions. For some, this is a source of inspiration, an incentive for creativity. For others - a destructive force, exhausting and not bringing joy( in most cases this applies to unrequited love).For the third - it's just bliss and total dissolution in another person.
Love stands apart from other human feelings, differing from them by its spirituality, sublimity, motivation for creation and self-improvement. One of the main "symptoms" of love - when a person gets more pleasure from what he gives, than from what he receives, while not demanding anything in return. We are not talking about material things, but about spiritual things-roughly speaking, loving, we give our lives to man, because from now on all thoughts, all joys and sorrows are connected with the beloved person. For this reason, one can not be called a loving person, referring to love only from the consumer point of view, striving only to receive from the other person his attention and care.
Typology of Love
People have been in search of an answer to the question "What is love?" From ancient times. Even the ancient Greeks derived a whole classification of types of love, which is quite reasonable and has not lost its relevance in our time. According to this typology, love is of the following types:
- "eros" - love-passion, whose unchanging companions are the predominance of the sensory side, the physiological need for each other, pathos, jealousy, total dedication and sacrifice, in which a person loses his own "I", completely dissolving in the object of love;
- "affiliate" - love-friendship, based on the spiritual component of the relationship. It is love-sympathy, which arose as a result of communication between two people, who were associated with common interests, views on life, mutual understanding and mutual respect;
- "Storge" - a love based on generic ties. It is love between husband and wife, parents and children, brother and sister. Storge - love is tender and calm, based on mutual trust;
"agape" - a reasonable love, based on an objective assessment of the merits and demerits of a loved one. In this love is not a place for feelings and emotions - for the mind undertakes. Perhaps intelligent love is not so poetic as a passionate eros, but it is more durable and creative.
What is the essence of love - the opinion of scientists
Scientists have their own view on what love means. According to recent studies of anthropologists, love is only chemical and biological processes that take place in the human body.
So, during passionate love, the brain produces dopamine - a substance that increases the excitability, giving a feeling of emotional recovery. The production of this substance is unstable, it lasts from 6 months to 3 years, and this time is usually enough for lovers to bind their lives for the reproduction of offspring.
Subsequently, the development of dopamine ceases, the passion is dulled, and the couple sigh, saying that "life is eaten and love is gone."In fact, everything is not so sad - dopamine can be produced in the brain as a result of new sensations. To do this, do not forget to bring romance into the relationship throughout the whole life together.
The meaning of love for each of us lies in something of its own, intimate and inexpressible words. Love is multifaceted, like no other human feeling. A man who has known true love is happy, but even more happy is he who could keep it after many years.
What is love? This question each of us was asked more than once - and each time could not express it in words. Why does this feeling visit a person, what is the secret of his power over us, how to determine that what we are experiencing for another person is that same love?
What does love mean?