Love, like all the other great gifts of life, can be as elusive as a mirage in our busy, stressful lives. It can be as immediate as falling in love with a new shade of green in summer or as delayed as the slow dance of two hearts in love. The great art on making time to fall in love is found in the slow dancing of two hearts in love. It is so much more fulfilling and meaningful that the very first move in falling in love; it takes place in the quiet of a room, under a white blanket, or under the covers of a bed.
Falling in love with love involves feelings of intensity, desire, passion, and companionship. Love encompasses an array of positive and strong emotional and physical states, from the sublime spiritual virtue or highest personal happiness, to the easiest personal pleasure, to the most intense sexual experience. Falling in love with love is a wonderful experience that provides the opportunity to discover who you really are. It is the feeling of being fully understood and recognized by another human being that creates the foundation for building and maintaining enduring relationships. While feelings of intense passion may fuel a passionate love relationship, it is not necessarily true that all passionate relationships are loving relationships. In fact, passionate love relationships often lack the patience and commitment that are necessary ingredients for long-term companionship and commitment.
What does it mean to love? It is easy to understand the emotional component of this question, but people often have trouble defining love. After all, we all feel love when we are touched lovingly, when someone makes us laugh, when someone is kind to us, and when we are given the opportunity to take advantage of someone else’s generosity. But these are just surface feelings, not deep emotions. Love is much deeper than these surface feelings, which is why some people feel compelled to label it as something else: passion, desire, attachment. In fact, there is nothing more common among the variety of definitions for love that there is between people who do not experience love regularly or frequently.
People commonly refer to different types of love in different ways. Some refer to it as romantic love, while others may consider it to be platonic or even sexual attraction. Some may say that true love is the intense desire to be loved and the need to be desired by another person. However, others will describe it as feelings of joy, intimacy, and an intense desire to belong.
Emotions are often associated with feelings of love. When two people are in love, they are filled with similar emotions such as happiness, satisfaction, and contentment. However, there is a great deal of variation within this emotion. On one extreme, one person may be completely unaware of any negative emotions because he or she is never in love. On the other hand, people may experience varying levels of intimacy based upon the depth of their love relationship.
Love has a significant influence on brain function. This is especially true when it comes to forming emotional bonds. The extent to which the brain regions activated during love make the experience more or less pleasant depends upon the person’s personality and the nature of their relationship. It also depends upon the person’s ability to use those brain regions to form those feelings of love in their relationships. It has been found that people who are naturally excellent at forming these feelings of love show greater proficiency in forming meaningful relationships and getting along with others.