What is love – not so easy to explain
What is love? This is pretty much the most difficult question there is. Because apart from the fact that this great feeling can hardly be described in words, everyone feels it differently. While one speaks of butterflies in the belly and soul mate, love for the other may be much more pragmatic. For example, sharing life with someone in a partnership who thinks and feels similarly.
Can there be an answer to the question at all?
Not really. Falling in love, jealousy, relationship, sex, lovesickness … Loving someone unconditionally can have so many facets. There is no right and no wrong here. It's a good thing that there are people who deal intensively with the phenomenon of love – from very different perspectives. We'll try to unravel.
Scientifically speaking: what is love?
The feeling of falling in love arises in the heart? Nonsense, say scientists. Regardless of whether in a steady relationship, in a marriage or in an affair: what we perceive as love takes place in the brain. Various studies (including one from University College in London) have shown that the reward center in the limbic system is closely linked to what we perceive as true love. If you give your heart to a person, a lot of dopamine is released in the brain, which can lead to a state of intoxication. Some researchers even claim that love has a similar effect to cocaine or opiates because it stimulates similar brain regions.
And why the whole thing? Well, why we fall in love, there are various explanations for this. Some theories tie in with evolution. As a result, men and women had to establish strong relationships over time to take care of the offspring longer. Interesting: Supposedly we choose our partner based on the smell. This is how our body should be able to perceive which immune systems complement each other well in order to give the offspring the best "defense equipment".
Either way: The romantics say: love is simply love – there is no why and for what.
Poetically considered: what is love?
Sure, poets, songwriters and writers are also investigating this question. Whether Goethe or Shakespeare, Bon Jovi or Ed Sheeran – love is THE favorite topic of the creative. Relationship problems, jealousy, separation, deep feelings, excessive expectations of the partner … There is more than enough material for songs, books, love films or poems. We think: These thinkers have found a pretty good definition of falling in love and love:
Wilhelm Busch: "The sum of our lives are the hours we love."
Rainer Maria Rilke: "This is the love: that two lonely people protect and touch each other and talk to each other."
Friedrich Rückert: "Love is the poetry star, love is the core of life, and whoever has sung love has attained eternity."
Plato: "Love is the longing for wholeness, and the striving for wholeness is called love."
Jean Paul: "Love is an innate but differently distributed strength and warmth of the heart."
Confucius: "Love is the spice of life. It can sweeten it, but it can also salt it."
"Experience teaches us that love is not about looking at each other, but looking together in the same direction."
Albert Camus: "To love a person means to consent to grow old with him."
Considered individually: what is love?
You have probably already noticed: there is not only one answer. Not only scientists and poets have a different view of love and partnership. We, the "normal" men and women who are in love, feel the elation differently. The answer to the question "What is love?" can therefore only be a collection of ideas and definitions. Just like those who you at the top of our click route. We also looked at the question: What does love mean?