In the late hours of a Winter Break evening, myself, Brian Smith, Seamus McCulloch, and Adam Liberty all sat around my kitchen table with a few friendly bottles of wine and set out to define what love is. What is this thing that governs our day-to-day lives so thoroughly? What is this emotion we feel towards our nearest and dearest, and is it in fact an emotion or is it something entirely different? We all think we have a sense of what love is, but do we really? Or is it this entity involved in our human lives that somehow evades definition. The importance of this discussion is inherent of the supreme importance that the role of love plays in the human life. As a side note I would like to add that my summary of the discussion may be skewed and/or incomplete due to my own beliefs and plain inability to reconstruct the arguments made in the proper form. Please let me know if any parties involved feel as if their points were misconstrued or misrepresented. Feel free to scroll down and preview the bold section titles if you do not want to read the entire discussion, and rather focus on aspects that might interest you particularly.
What is Love?
Aside from being an incredibly catchy (for the first minute) Haddaway song from the 90's, this is a fundamental question to human existence. We all want to get in touch with ourselves. Some of us are more willing than others to admit that the search for self identity is a long one, and the most fundamental aspect of self discovery is coming to a conclusion concerning what it means to be a member of the human race. The human condition is a matter of great debate and difference, but love plays an inarguably large role in the human condition. In fact, as concluded from our symposium, love is THE essence of humankind. If one is incapable of expressing love in any form, one is quite surely subhuman or an incredibly maladapted human. Think of it, being a human without the capacity to care about anything. Love applies not only to relationships between humans, but to love for a cause (think Martin Luther King Jr.), and love of inanimate objects (symbols, important heirlooms, etc.), as well as any amount of care applied from a human to another thing, be it an idea, another human, an object, whatever one may feel passionate about. Now certainly I do not mean to say that one's love for a Grandmother's necklace and one's love for his spouse are equal, their are gradients of love involved here, but the same basic concept is there. Love implies devotion, sacrifice, and ultimately (although some exceptions may apply, discussed later) reciprocation from anything that one may feel compassion towards. What would the world be, no...what would the human race be without the capacity to feel compassion for things involved in their lives? To quote some high school sentiments of mine, and I am sure many lyricists and poets, the earth would be a cold, dead place. Love is the main motivator behind all of our social interactions, and without it, we would not associate with each other. This leads me to a subtopic of what love is, whether it is an emotion or otherwise.
Is love an emotion?
This is a question I (and when I refer to "I" here, I think I speak for the four of us) believe gets passed over far too readily in any discussion of love. Sure, it is natural to say that you feel love, and that it effects us emotionally, so therefore it is an emotion. But, love is more than that. Love holds far too much weight in our lives to be considered an emotion. Anger, happiness, melancholy, these are emotions. Love implies something of much greater influence than any of the aforementioned emotions. Love is a separate entity that manifests itself within the human spirit (take that term as religiously as you wish, it still applies whether it be divine or secular). From love, we derive emotions such as happiness, disappointment, satisfaction, and any other myriad feelings. Love is something larger than emotion because we do not feel love really, love makes us feel. Our devotion to something or another is what our emotions are derived from. Love is far more of a controlling factor than unstable emotions that may arise in our lives.
What is required for love?
So then, what are the required components in order for this thing called love to occur? The mystical approach to love often taken is that nothing is required, that true love just happens and everyone lives happily ever after because of it. But, when love is discussed in its full extent across all occurrences, it is obvious that there are some basic conditions that need to be met for love to grow from any relationship. First off, and most obviously perhaps, positive emotions need to be derived from a healthy relationship involving love. Even the masochist derives joy from his love for pain. Certainly love for something may also bring with it negative emotions such as regret, melancholy, and disappointment (I will discuss this further in the following section). But certainly some amount of emotional reward must be received from a loving relationship. Be it that glimmer of hope one party sees in a situation of unrequited love, or the eternal happiness found in a long lasting relationship between humans or between a man and his cause he believes in, etc. Sacrifice is also essential to love. Both (or all) parties must have something to give and to sacrifice in a loving relationship (again, complicated by unrequited love, but I will discuss that later). Whether it be time, finances, emotions, possessions, etc., something must be sacrificed by both parties. One must give time to the other in which maybe they would prefer to do something else, but to keep the loving relationship healthy, time must be spent.
So in short, sacrifice, devotion, and reciprocation must be present for a healthy loving relationship to occur. Another way to look at the structure of components involved in love is that there is a physical side and an emotional side to love. Both sides must be met somehow or another. Physical doesn't necessarily imply sex or actual physical contact, but it also implies the baser of human needs like having a good relationship with friends that you get out and play basketball with etc. These relationships still hold some physical value, although it may be a bit more abstract than a sexually involved relationship. So what if one of these components is missing from one side? This brings us to our next question.
Is unrequited love possible?
This is where the relatively simple distinction for what is required for love becomes troublesome. We have all experience some situation of unrequited love in our lives at sometime or another. So obviously, this is a possible type of relationship. But, its standing among other loving relationships and its explanation need to be further investigated. A situation of unrequited love removes the reciprocation and makes both sacrifice and devotion one-sided when compared to a normal, healthy loving relationship. This makes unrequited love a loving relationship, but it negatively effects at least one, if not both parties involved. In a situation of unrequited love between a person and his cause, if he does not reap any rewards from his time devoted and sacrificed to his cause, it can only wear on his emotional state, slowly eroding it in a negative way. Much is the same in a case between two humans. If you truly love someone, you will devote time and energy to them, but without reciprocation, this devotion can only lead to harmful wear and tear on your emotional state. In the case of false reciprocation, or when one side of the relationship is devoting time and energy to the other, and thinks he is receiving reciprocated emotions, this still harms the other party. No one likes to be relentlessly pursued by someone they do not love, nor does anyone like to spend too much time around people they do not love in the case of friendships. To illustrate this better, assume that you are being pursued romantically by someone you have no interest in, not even a friendly interest. Will this subtract from your day? Will this make you alter your routine to attempt to avoid this person? Of course it will. And this process of avoidance will end up wearing on your nerves and your spirit. The case of unhealthy friendships is much the same. You all know the situation where someone really thinks they are your friend, but you haven't the slightest interest in the other's company, yet this person endlessly pursues your affection. This also fosters an unhealthy relationship. Both parties must benefit in order for a healthy loving relationship to form, but unhealthy loving relationships certainly are possible. This provides a nice transition in to the discussion of whether or not we can love too many people or spread our love around too much.
Is love limited?
With both healthy and unhealthy relationships being possible, is there a limit to how many we can have? Do humans contain an inner urn of love from which they can only dole out a certain amount? In a sense, yes, but we have no limits on how many healthy loving relationships we can have. The ability for humans to have as many healthy loving relationships as they wish does not mean that all relationships are intrinsically equal. This simply means that there is no limit to how many loving relationships you can be in. As long as the relationship is healthy (reciprocation is involved, and needs discussed above are being met, then this does not detract from one's ability to love more people/things, instead it adds because of the happiness you receive from a healthy relationship. This cycle of developing loving relationships can then be categorized as self-sustaining. An unhealthy, non-reciprocating relationship however will wear down on one's ability to love because no positive emotions are being extracted from the relationship. This is the only way in which one is limited in how many unhealthy relationships one can have. If you don't believe me, take a look at the people you love. Your parents, your significant other (if there is one), your friends (and by this I mean real friends, not the 12,347 Facebook friends we all have), causes you may be devoted to, whatever it may be, you love a lot of people and things in your life. Could there really be a limit that hinders your ability to add to that list? It could be just me, but I get every realm of loving relationships from all of my friendships, emotional, physical (yes, sexual reciprocation from dudes), and any other type of reciprocation I may desire. All of my (and your, I hope) good friends provide a very high amount of emotional support and structure. And yes, I even get sexual reciprocation from male friends because, if you are a guy, you know the value of dude time. You know the important issues that come up during dude time that will not come up at any other time, simply because you need a male to discuss certain things with. And girls, I am sure there is invaluable meaning to girl time that you would not give up for anything in the world, so in this way, we all receive sexual reciprocation from our good friends. So our relationships with our significant others and our good friends and our parents, etc. are all fully reciprocating, therefore our ability to continue forming new, loving relationships stays intact.
Is sex required for love between two humans in a romantic relationship?
No. No, no and no. Sex is such a problematic thing to discuss in the context of love. There are many fully functional loving relationships that do not involve one second of sex. Couples that are not yet married that do not believe in sex before marriage, is their love any less complete than a couple that has sex? I would argue no, that their relationship is just as viable as any other. Sex has devolved into something of a perverted pass time in our generation I think. I mean, yes some sort sexual contact is usually involved in human relationships, even a simple hand hand holding is enough sexual contact for some people. But, as Adam Liberty so eloquently and aptly put it, some sex, even between loving couples, has been degraded to intervaginal masturbation. Yes that is an uncomfortable term, but it describes more than its fair share of sexual intercourse. This implies that some sex is basically just self service between two people, that there is no interest in one another during the act of sex, only self-interest in achieving sexual satisfaction. Now in a way, that is reciprocation, but this level of reciprocation is just as easy to attain by oneself as with a partner. In this way, it emphasizes selfish ends which I believe degrades the quality of the relationship. Certainly people integrate sex as part of their healthy romantic relationship with one another, but it is not necessary. A sexual aspect of a relationship must be there, like the sexual aspect between friends I discussed earlier, but the act of sex itself is still not necessary. Sexual attraction is much too strong of a driving force in human nature to disregard it when determining the quality of a relationship.
Final Words
So, in summary, love is far too complicated to be placed in the realm of emotion like happiness and sadness. It is also necessary for human life to exist. Someone without the capacity to love cannot possibly function in a society of any kind. The immense human capacity for love is our most important feature. Although other animals may contain the ability to share concern for each other and to love one another, the human capacity for love is a marvel of sorts; it goes above and beyond any species we know of. I know some cynics may disagree here and say that humans are selfish beings that are only out to get what they need, and you can just keep right on loving your cynicism, but if one steps outside their place as a human and looks at human society and how many millions and billions of social connections there are that have turned in to loving relationships, love for one another is a prominent, fundamental function of the human race. Without love we would be lost, and without love we would have no one to care for us. So the next time you are around a group of your good friends, take the time to remind them how much you care for all of them, you never know when someone may be in the need for a little reciprocation.
I LOVE YOU!
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