the many ways to define love

Many of us have experienced love. Or at least we think we have. However, what is love? How do people define love. For example, most of us would say we love our parents. This would naturally be a different type of love that you would have for your husband or wife. The love for a parent is somewhat indescribable. For me it is a warm, caring admiring feeling. This is not the only love we can define. What about the love for a boyfriend / girlfriend, pet, friend, family member, or even a materialistic thing? How do people define love? Love is something that we have all experienced in one way or another, yet everyone defines it differently.

I have seen friends, co-workers and family members go through many relationships. What has surprised me from my friends is that after their relationships end whether it was mutual or terrible breakup, they are on to the next person in less than a month! Why? How? Especially if they were together for several years. For example, I have a friend that once told me after her 3 year relationship ended that she was so surprised when her ex boyfriend started to see other girls within weeks. She could not imagine herself being with anyone else right away. She needed time to heal she said because she needed to let the love she still felt for him disappear. Her point was, how can you love someone else when you still love your ex boyfriend. However, let us not mix things up and say we can love many people at the same time. This is true, we can love our children and parents at the same time, but what she was trying to say was that her love for him was still there and therefore was not able to love another guy yet. She later realized that he did not love her after all. Within the years she learned that he had gone through many relationships. None ever did work out. What he wanted was to not be alone. In her opinion, many people do not want to be alone and therefore go looking for someone to cover their emptiness. She feels that when you are happy alone, you can be in a somewhat healthy relationship because you do not fear being alone. You do not look for love. It comes to you, and if it never does then what is so wrong with that? Nothing in her opinion.

Then there is the saying “I love you” to a significant other, family, or friends. I don’t think you have to say I love you every time you have to leave or hang up the phone. My friend Karen gave me a good example. She said that she has never told her boyfriend “I love you”, nor has he to her. She says that they have endearment names or sayings to one another. To her that is sufficient. She knows that he does love her by the way he treats her. Love is overrated, in her opinion, when it comes to relationships, and that the word “ I love you” is only used because we have been used to hearing it and think it is the only way to express ourselves. Though for some people it is.

Some people are not good at expressing their love. For example, my father never told me he loved me. However, I know he did. I felt his love for me inside. He did not have to tell me he loved me. He worked hard to provide for his family, something I have not seen in many of the fathers of my friends children. There was an incident once when I was going on vacation and I said “I love you” to my mother, but not my father. We looked at each other and his eyes said it all. He did love me and wished me a good time. I was happy with that.

Of course many say we love a certain band or designer brand. True when you love someone or something you are dedicated to them. For example people who love a particular brand will always to purchase that brand if it is more expensive than identical item with a different brand name. Or people who love a band. They might spend hundreds to go to a concert of theirs vs. a band they listen to but not love as much as their favorite band.

In general, everybody has a different idea of what love is. Some people feel when a partner is jealous (to the extreme) that it means that they love them more. Maybe some people just want to have someone because they like the feeling of having someone around and talk to all the time, whether it means that they have to go through several relationships and feel that this is the “one” again like the last relationship. I have been in two serious relationships and loved them in different ways. However, I never do think about love. Why should I? I am very much content on my own. People need to stop worrying so much about finding love. What they need to do is love themselves first and learn how to be alone. Don’t look for love. Love comes to us when we are not looking for it.