Love is a special set of behaviors and emotions characterized by emotional intimacy, shared passion, commitment, and care. It normally involves close proximity, caring, affection, protection, commitment, and joy. Love is also related to a wide range of emotional states, such as happiness, anticipation, vitality, life fulfillment, and ecstasy. In essence, love is the emotional state that permits us to feel compassion for others and open heartedness for our own self. It is a powerful force that can move mountains.
Although love occurs within the confines of a relationship, lovers also experience feelings of love for family members, friends, pets, and strangers. Love allows us to build strong attachments with people we love. It is the basis of human connection, as demonstrated by the power of romantic love and attachment towards another person. Romantic love often takes the form of intense, lasting emotional intimacy. However, there can also be other types of intimacy, such as caring, bonding, security, dependence, companionship, connection, devotion, and sharing.
Love between two adults forms the basis of sexual intimacy, which is one of the most fundamental emotions. However, passionate love, or sexual attraction, is a more intense form of attraction towards another person. People experience this kind of sexual attraction for a variety of reasons. Many people consider their passionate love to be separate from romantic love, but it typically originates from an intense emotional bond, such as a parent-child relationship.
The experience of intimacy can be separated from the experience of love because they are often linked, although not necessarily directly. Intimacy and love are often related because one can create a strong bond through sharing one’s deepest thoughts, emotions, dreams, fantasies, fears, aspirations and goals. This sharing of innermost emotions, dreams, fears, aspirations and goals creates positive emotions in others, which can eventually develop into passionate emotions.
Individuals who develop passionate feelings towards another individual usually are able to develop positive emotions in order to promote a sense of deep and fulfilling well-being. Intimacy and love are linked because individuals feel a deep need for connectedness and emotional belongingness. In order to foster healthy, meaningful and mutually satisfying relationships, both individuals in love relationship need to give and receive genuine and open loving relationships that are based on genuine and authentic self-disclosure, self-awareness and self-acceptance. As well-being and intimacy are closely related, there is also a significant connection between physical well-being and emotional well-being.
Individuals who experience romantic love may not experience feelings of intimacy and connectedness. Intimacy and love are linked because both individuals desire to have emotional and physical connections that are stable, deep and meaningful. Physical intimacy and feelings of connectedness are also linked because individuals who are in love tend to create secure bonds with those they love.
