What is Love?

by Heather Long | More from this Blogger

I asked you why did you love your spouse yesterday and today I am asking you if you know what is love? The simple answer is love is an emotion. We experience many different emotions whether we label them or not and among those emotions are hatred, anger, compassion, grief, happiness, joy, love and more. Emotions are powerful and love is one of the most powerful emotions.

For love, we will do the impossible, we will attempt the inconceivable and we will strive for the unthinkable. Love comes in many different flavors. There is the love that we call filial love or the love we have for our siblings and our parents. The love we have for family is one of the more enduring forms of love.

Consider for a moment, no matter how awful your sister behaves or how irritating your brother, your love for them is always there. You manage what many around you can't comprehend, you can forgive them and accept them for who they are because they are your brother or your sister and you love them.

Beyond our families, there is the love we share for our close friends. We love them, but that love comes in varying levels of bonding - there are friends that we are very close to and we love them unabashedly and then there are other friends whom we have great affection, a form of love - but we are not deeply invested in them.

The Love Between Partners & Spouses

The love we feel for our spouse or our partner is a different kind of love altogether. It is a love that both gives and requests - or demands. We enjoy their company. We love them. We need their company and their love in return. We think of them - differently than we do others because we have this mixture of the love we feel for our closest friends, the love we feel for our families and the mingling of sexual attraction as well.

We express this love through our faith in this partner, through our commitment to them and to the belief that we want to be with them for the rest of our lives. This is a love that both chooses us and that we, in turn, choose.

Love is as complicated as it is simple. It is a complex emotion that can inspire great beauty such as a sonnet, a song, a poem or a painting. It can inspire powerful memories and it can inspire people to reach beyond themselves to be better and more.

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Learn more about Heather Long

Heather Long is 35 years old and currently lives in Wylie, Texas. She has been a freelance writer for six years. Her husband and she met while working together at America Online over ten years ago.

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