Love is the toughest emotion to navigate in. It causes bliss, confusion, connection, loyalty, grief, hope, frustration, and guilt. It makes one act without words or understanding, and it can cause great passion or shame in doing so. But, as tough as the emotion is, it is also not very well understood by many. So, what is love? Are there different types of love? If so, what are they and how do you navigate within each one? When is it ok to act on love, and when is it best to hold yourself back regardless of how you feel? Can you prevent yourself from love, or is it unavoidable? And does it require reciprocation? This plagues me because I myself always find myself feeling love for people, and I don’t quite understand it. Does it require understanding in order to move into love for others? And lastly, when do you know what you are feeling is indeed love and not anything else?

Love, according to Google, is defined as “an intense feeling of deep affection”. That sounds self explanatory on paper, does it not? It’s also defined as “a great interest and pleasure in something”. I talked about my views on pleasure in my last blog post, and even though there are things that I take pleasure in, that doesn’t necessarily mean I love it. We say we love many things in life, from a favorite hobby, to a friend to a relative, to animals we care for or even people we’ve barely met. With both of these definitions of love, it give someone the ability to say they love just about anything if they enjoy it enough. But, in my opinion, the second definition of love is totally and completely false. It’s a gateway definition, allowing someone the freedom to label something or someone as a “love” without really having a connection to it. However, love is intense and it creates a connection so great that it almost impossible to move on or to enjoy much of anything else. It isn’t addiction; addiction creates a sense of habit that hacks our biology and causes us to repeat behaviors for relief. No one mourns the loss of a bad addiction; they do mourn over the lack of ability to do an activity they loved.

But, you can love so many things. You can love a pet, a grandparent, a friend, chess, Magic the Gathering, and literally everything else. But, is there different kinds of love? According to philosophers Plato and Aristotle, there are 8 different types of love. Psychologist Robert Sternberg created a triangle that encapsulates these types of love into 3 categories; intimacy, passion, and commitment, and within those categories there are 8 different types of love (which seemed to be similar, but different than what the Greeks described.) This, to me, is so god damn complicated. According to these theories, love for a family member is different than a love for a romantic partner, and those are different than a love for a friend you aren’t attracted to. That doesn’t seem to be the case, in my opinion. I believe love is a basic human emotion, much like anger or fear, and is just a single component in a compound of emotions that get projected on specific people.

That is kind of what the Sternberg represents, but considering each of these things different “types” is what truly throws me off. You can love someone and not be attracted to them, and if there is trauma that is compounded alongside the love you feel, then what you end up feeling for that person is just a combination of different feelings all at once, and it makes it so hard to navigate them because there is so many. For instance, lets say you love someone you are attracted to, but this person betrayed your trust by cheating on you while you were in a monogamous relationship and you are seeing this person in the flesh for the first time in 2 years and the meeting was unexpected. Of course, first things first, there is a feeling of love. It was there before and it doesn’t go away, in my opinion. Then the feeling of fear comes up, as you remember how you are hurt and are afraid of experiencing it deeper. Then you feel hurt, because this person betrayed you and that will always resonate with you. There is lust as well, because you are attracted to this person. There is an anger due to all these conflicting emotions and that weighs on you. And also, and this would be the last basic one, there is grief over the joyous moments you remembered with this person. More complicated emotions, such as resentment and yearning, are a combination of some of the emotions previously mentioned but stand there ground as well. With the exception of lust (get out of here, Alabama), one would feel all these emotions for a relative who abused them growing up.

Now, lets do another thought exercise regarding love, but lets not aim it at an individual living presence but at something else entirely. Lets say you are a baseball player whose been playing the game for 10 years and you are able to retire off of the game and you decide to stop playing altogether. The moment you are running around those bases for the last time would make you feel so many emotions. Love, for starters. There is also a pleasure, because the game is actually fun. There is also sadness, for you know this will be the last time you are doing this. There is probably some pain, because that what exercise and movement does to all of us after a while. There is an excitement, because you are actively trying to compete with the other team. There is also wonder, because you made a decision to quit doing this sport you truly enjoy. There is also a fear, which can be directed against the other team but also against yourself in the knowledge that this will be the the last time and that isn’t usual. Between these emotions are a combination of different ones, but the main question remains; is the love for baseball for you in this situation different than the love you feel for the individual mentioned previously? From my perspective, it is all the same.

Some people think the feeling of love comes unexpectedly, as if it’s a gust of wind that blows through them uncontrollably. I truly believe that love comes to everyone differently, but everyone has requirements that need to be met in order to truly feel love. Because love is a strong, vulnerable, positive emotion, there are factors that each individual needs in place in order for them to arrive at a feeling of love. And if those factors aren’t met, then love will be avoided altogether. However, if those factors are met, you can’t stop it. The following are the factors that I believe are a requirement for the feeling of love: Commitment, trust, congruency, comfortability, and realization. In order to truly feel love, these 5 things are required in order for the vulnerability associated with love to be release. You need commitment, which is just a consistent effort towards something or someone. You need trust, which is self explanatory. Congruency is needed, which is a sense of similarity, and this can be built with commitment to an activity, a commitment to oneself, and also when you and someone else have similar behaviors. Comfortability is needed, which is also self explanatory. The toughest one for me was realization, which requires you to truly look at everything and assess it, almost like puzzle pieces fitting together to create the feeling of love. Some may argue that this may be incorrect. What about the previous scenario regarding the cheater? Wouldn’t one feel uncomfortable in this situation? And if so, how can you also feel love? To this specific argument that I just created based on speculation, I say this; you can feel both a comfort and a lack of comfort at the same time, with them being directed at different things. In the scenario above, one would feel love, and the comfort of that love would be present. But the uncomfortable feeling might be directed at memories of this person, or even being this vulnerable in an environment where being this way wasn’t expected. But, as I previously mentioned, the feeling of love doesn’t go away.

My question regarding reciprocation can be answered already with the baseball scenario; love doesn’t require reciprocation. With this knowledge in mind, if you feel love that is unreciprocated, try and realize if what you feel is truly love and if it is, how you got to this point and mitigate how you feel with how you should act. Love is a beautiful emotion, but unfortunately it causes such vulnerability that if you love too quickly, one will take full advantage of it and will cause so much pain and distress. This requires boundaries to be set, confrontational skills in order to make decisive decisions, and the understanding of if and when to let yourself hit the requirements mentioned previously. There is no doubt in my mind about it; if you let yourself hit the requirements, once you start to realize, you will find yourself feeling love. How to maintain healthy boundaries in order to keep yourself from feeling love for just anyone is something parents should teach, but will probably require a therapist since most parents themselves don’t understand it. If you find yourself falling in love and not being able to control it, than you might be shocked to find out that with A, you aren’t in love and what you are feeling is something else you’ve confused for love because that is all you’ve ever associated love to and you haven’t ever truly felt love or B, you don’t have healthy boundaries and let yourself hit the requirements that you do have control over without realizing it and once you realized it, it was too late.

But, regardless, if you hit those requirements and feel a feeling so powerful it makes you cry, but its not a sad cry but a realization cry, THATS love. If you just met someone and you get turned on and they reciprocate your feelings, that isn’t love but lust. If you feel an obsession that makes you want to control this person for your benefit, that isn’t love but just excitement in their perceived weakness. There are many different things I can cover that relate to this topic, and if you put your realization glasses on and start to access the entire situation, you will come to find out what you are feeling on your own and if doesn’t met the requirement above, you won’t be feeling love and you know that. Unfortunately, no one else can determine it for you. Hopefully, in one day in the future, everyone can love one another truly without faking it or being abused because of it. But until then, it is important to love yourself. So, commit to yourself, trust yourself, be congruent within yourself, be comfortable in your own presence and when you do all those things, you will realize that you do indeed love yourself.