As dictionaries have been adding new words and revising definitions yearly, we have seen a transition in the definition of love. Today, a commonly accepted definition of love is “an amorous episode” (Webster). This concept of love began with its portrayal in Hollywood media, causing the history and true meaning of the word to become lost. While love used to be defined as the “strong affection for another arising out of kinship or personal ties,” or “affection based on admiration, benevolence, or common interests” (Webster), the most recent definition is most similar to what it seems Hollywood is portraying as infatuation. This can be defined as “an extravagantly foolish or unreasoning passion” (Oxford). What movies often portray as “love” is, in fact, this infatuation that causes us to believe that when you are in love, you tend to love the act of being in love, not the other person. Mainstream media does not differentiate between love and infatuation; it simply sells a conflation of concepts into the term “love.” Nevertheless, it is necessary to mention that love is notion that has caused many arguments concerning its meaning throughout the ages. Many people have tried their best to define this phenomenon but each person puts individual interpretation in it and therefore a priori there cannot be any objective definition of the term “love”. Love in psychological terms does not contain only positive aspects as it is usually stated.
Love is a unique feeling of respect, adoration, desire for a given individual or “object” which eventually makes the person to become one whole entity and at the same time reveals the dependence on the object of love as a carrier of a unique combination of the proportion of certain qualities or peculiarities. In terms of psychological aspects, love has a dual character as it shapes the personality of the person from two positions: the first one brings happiness, harmony and adoration not only for a given “object” but to the world around; the second brings a misbalance and dependence on the presence of a given person in the life and in the world around. In other words, love is strength and love is weakness, of the consciousness of any individual.
The first half of the definition states that love is the person’s psychological strength. By this statement it is assumed that it makes the person stronger through the harmonization of the personality or in other words through obtaining a constant source of positive emotions. Such side of love deals with the person’s self-acquisition. This is especially important due to the fact that a person on his own is a closed system and love as an attachment to another person or object opens this system and makes it complete. For instance, a person who starts experiencing the unique feeling of affection, attachment, respect, adoration and desire for a given person or objects become generally psychologically stable. This stability occurs as the result of the person being concentrated on this given “object” and receiving a vast amount of positive emotions communicating with this object. This is always a good stimulus for any kind of activity. As the person tends to prolong the emotional harmony he becomes psychologically mature enough to take certain responsible steps required to be with the loved “object”. In other words, love implies the mobilization of the psychological resources of the person. This is the reason when people do love, sometimes they do things they wouldn’t ordinary do. The loved object provides the person with the psychological protection from all obstacles.
On the other side, the second half of the definition states that love is a weakness. In terms of the psychological health of the person love brings unbalance and dependence on the loved object. The person cannot imagine the life without the loved object and the mood depends on the ability to interact with “it”. The person starts experiencing fear of losing the meaningful other, sometimes the desire to makes everything perfect results in unnecessary actions, thoughts, quarrels. The weakness of love is the impossibility to live a “happy” life, the impossibility to be a harmonic personality without the loved person.
Love, in the terms of husband and wife, can be traced back to the beginning of the Bible: “Then the Lord God made a woman from the rib he had taken out of the man, and he brought her to the man. The man said, “This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called ‘woman,’ for she was taken out of man.” That is why a man leaves his father and mother and is united to his wife, and they become one flesh.” (Gen. 2.22-24.). Furthermore, they serve one another in a loyal commitment to each other. Love began as a mutual feeling with genuine intentions as the two people work together to please and assist one another with care. Love continued from Adam and Eve into Medieval Times, and this notion of love as an entailing “service” continues since it is closely tied to the concept of chivalry. Jennifer Wollock defines chivalry in her book Rethinking Chivalry and Courtly Love, by quoting Lancelot who, in the book Le Morte d'Arthur, said that “love that time was not as love is nowadays, for men could love together seven years and no lecherous lusts was between them, and then was love truth and faithfulness.” Lancelot urges the readers to be faithful, as their ancestors had been, and to not fall prey to the pressures of lust, and then continues by urging them to turn away from the desires to be momentarily faithless to their lover (Wollock). Many Americans grew up with this chivalrous definition of love, but they are now being taught something different by American media. Instead of loving the person, they love the service given by the relationship.
Love is something that means very different things to different people. For some, love can be purely romantic, or even purely sexual. For others, real love is utterly unconditional and only truly exists between family members, or between people and a deity. And for some people, love is fluid, ever changing, and everywhere, and is felt for family, friends, partners, pets, and even inanimate objects, dead artists, and fictional characters. None of these people would be right or wrong. Between partners of any description, be they married or cohabiting, boyfriend and girlfriend, straight or gay, young or old, love is a relationship of mutual understanding and respect. Love is hard to explain because it is so versatile. Love is a deep, tender, ineffable feeling of affection and solicitude toward a person, such as that arising from kinship, recognition of attractive qualities, or a sense of underlying oneness. To many people it has a different meaning. Each of its meanings has some sort of special effect on a person's own emotions. Both physically and mentally it can impact a person.
People can do some dreadful things out of hate and fear, but love can push us to do much, much worse. And it is often love that can cause us to hate, whether it’s out of jealousy, or anger because our loved one has been hurt. Love, ultimately, is a sacrifice, whatever the relationship, and it must be the most powerful force in the universe because as human beings, we make true sacrifices for nothing less.
We all have our way of thinking what love is and how love feels. Love comes in all forms. The love we all seem to want is the one that makes us feel some type of way for a specific person that we are attracted to. Love can make us do some unthinkable things. Love can make us jealous when that person gives his time and attention to someone else other than you. Love can be described in many ways. Love is the feeling of a strong or constant affection for a person. It can be unselfish, loyalty and benevolent concern for the good of another. It’s about giving your all to that person and trusting that person with everything you have and being able to trust them.
Love truly is strength but it is also a weakness with all its compromises the person does. Love is not just a fairy tale with no negative manifestations. It has two sides: the white and the black, where the end of one is the beginning of the other. The truth is that love is tremendously difficult to define and is one of those terms that will be always argued and analyzed. Loves gives a lot to the person and also takes a lot from him as the price for the good. Maybe it is how the balance of the universe is achieved. Or maybe love is the strength of the weak and the weakness of the strong?