What is Love?

A fragrance. From Calvin Klein.

Love is that thing that seizes your heart and kicks the air out of your lungs. The thing that causes your palms to sweat and your ears to ring.

It is the stuff that dreams are made of.

It is, in a single word, capybara.

Love in one sense is what the Greeks called the Divine Madness. It makes us coo coo.

I think Haddaway asked that question a while back.

From Shakespeare, "Oh, Mistress Mine":


What is love? ´Tis not hereafter;
Present mirth hath present laughter;
What´s to come is still unsure:
In delay there lies not plenty;
Then, come kiss me, sweet and twenty,
Youth´s a stuff will not endure.

Wishing for the wellfare of yourself or another. Apathy is worse than hate, because in hate at least your fate has some significance to the person.

Love is when you have an unqualified concern for the welfare of another. It is best experienced when the concern is mutual, but that is not a requirement.

It is something that is priceless but can also be bought.

Really? Where can you buy it?

Ask gus.

I think giving a damn about the welfare of another person is only something that comes with loving them - it's not love itself.

Actually, I think you are right, in a way. We hate to think of love as something that can be bought, but consider:

A very kind, thoughtful, good looking, yet penniless homeless man.
vs.
The same very kind, thoughtful, good looking, wealthy man with several mansions. He never has to work again.

I submit that the rich man will have way more opportunity to find romantic love. Blasphemy, how dare someone say that! Yes, I know there will be many goldiggers the rich man would need to filter out. But out of the many goldigger types, there just might be a few, maybe one, that would one day grow to love him, even though in the beginning she was in it just for the security, etc. Whereas, this one or two that might one day grow to love, wouldn't even consider hanging around and giving the homeless guy a chance in the first place.

In this respect, can money buy love, sort of? Or at least increase someone's odds for love? vs. If they are dead broke homeless?

Or perhaps money can help create and maintain the prerequisite minimum conditions necessary for long lasting love. You don't see too many homeless broke people who stay a couple for 50+ years in love.

Love is anything you like with a little bit extra.

Love is a misinterpreted version of infatuation. ( If that even makes sense, i've been trying to come up with something among these lines for about a week now)

love is an ephemeral ideal, representing the ultimate in affection; lying just beyond our grasp!

[or a four letter word, similar to 'lust'.]

It seems as if almost everyone is interpretting "love" to mean only Romantic love. You can love your family and friends in an entirely non-romantic way. So those definitions alluding to lust (which isn't doesn't/shouldn't even constitutue all of what Romantic love is) only describe a small portion of what the word "love" means. If we are looking for a definition of "love", we cannot define it as something involving lust, because lust has no place in love. Even if lust is often the main factor in what we mistakenly name love in reality, it is not therefore part of the true definition of the word we are trying to define, but rather, a mistake on our own part in naming that which is lust "love".

Lust having no part in love, love is, as I and others have already stated, is an unconditional concern for something's wellfare.

Love is a chemical reaction in your brain. It's purpose is to motivate you to behaviors that you may not do otherwise.

We evolved with love to ensure four things.

1) Human beings will have babies.
2) Men will protect their mate during the vulnerable time of pregnancy.
3) Parents will care for their children.
4) People work together in communal groups for protection and the benefits of working together so, as a community, there will be more offspring.

We have the trait of love for the same reason we have any other trait. It makes us more successful, as a species, at reproducing.

Love is NOT the same thing as infatuation and has nothing to do with reproducing. Although sex can be an expression of love, it is not the driving force of love. Sex and love have come to mean the same thing although they are not the same idea. You can reproduce with someone that you have no love for, so therefore, sex CANNOT be identical to love.

I disagree. Love has everything to do with reproducing.

You are right that sex is not "identical to" love. Sex is an important part of reproduction. Love is a motivation for sex (at least in my experience it is). But, of course love isn't the only motivation. Sex is so important to the survival of our species that nature provides additional motivations.

Biologically speaking, there is much more to reproduction than sex. Babies need you to care for them. Women need you to protect them when they are pregnant. Kids need guidance and resources. People need communities to help and share resources.

Love addresses all of the things that humans need to be sucessful at producing viable offspring and continuing the species.

Coitus, commitment, caring, community, providing, protection - These aspects of love are precisely the things that humans need to effectively produce viable offspring.

That's why we evolved to love.