What Is Love?

28 April 2003 · Essay — an attempt at a definition, which fails and says so.

What is love? I think there are various degrees of love, and that its definition is determined by its measure. All too often a person dismisses another’s love as being false because either they believe that the person doesn’t love them at all, or because it is mistaken for infatuation. I believe that what most people classify as infatuation is a very intense, commitment related degree of love, and that those who identify it as infatuation are repulsed by intense commitment because they cannot accept its terms.

I am being as objective and unbiased as possible, but I have to admit that I have been accused of mistaking infatuation for love. So, although I am someone who carefully considers every idea in as impartial a fashion as capable, my viewpoint is of a person who may fundamentally misunderstand what love is. The actual definition of infatuation is: “the condition or state of being inspired with a foolish or extravagant love or admiration.” Okay, if the person who accused me of infatuation really considered my feelings to be foolish or extravagant, then… Allow me to start again, because while coming to this conclusion I have (and this is why I try to be objective) seen beyond the paradigm of my feelings. Maybe I have been infatuated at times—many times! Maybe my feelings are foolish, intense, exaggerated, and totally unwarranted; there is a fine line between genuinely intense love and infatuation.

Now it all comes down to this: how does what starts out as love become infatuation? Just as it might change from love to infatuation, might it not just as easily change from infatuation to love? What if I’ve never felt love for anyone at all? What if all these times I have been inspired by nothing but foolish, extravagant love or admiration for the women I have “loved?” This essay is circular, because I ask again what I asked at the very beginning: what is love? I don’t know!

Here is another closely related question: in a relationship, what exactly is cheating? If you are committed to someone, then you are committed to them both in body and in mind. I find it interesting that I share intellectual intimacy all the time, thus betraying my lover. It is what a writer does; what a writer values most in his spouse is that she withholds it from others. I desire a woman who craves me intellectually (physically too, of course) but who is private enough to be intellectually faithful to me. It seems rather hypocritical, but it is true.

I think that I have truly loved many times. I think that was pushes my love beyond sensibility and into extravagance is when I become jealous of my lover’s intellectual intimacy with others, at which point I exaggerate my feelings for her to become so adequate that she has no need or desire to share intellectual intimacy with anyone else. I have discovered that it isn’t worth it. If only I could change and be satisfied! But while I might hide my feelings from my lover in order to maintain the relationship, I would only be sustaining my suffering. Such is life—and love! One thing is true: the only thing about love that remains the same is that it always changes. By the time people are adults, they have set from the mould they were cast from. It is rare for a person to significantly change their ethos once it has been established. While a person might love someone, the measure of that love will either escalate to a degree beyond “genuine” love—as in my case—and proceed to infatuation, or it will degrade into apathy.

Love is the mutual satisfaction of requirements between two people. It is meeting each other’s intimate needs. The only time love can remain sincere and endure is if the lovers are able to continue to meet each other’s intimate needs, or when at least one of them is able to change to satisfy the deficit. The degree of their love is related to their capacity to fulfill one another; when the measure of one person’s fulfillment of intimacy is too different from his lover’s, the relationship ends.

Composed 2003 · part of the Essays collection · authorship documented on the Provenance page.