What is this thing called love?

What is this thing called love?

It seems as though everyone is searching for love, to be loved, to feel love. I can't say that I am any different. The older I get and the more I learn about myself, the more I start question what is this thing called love? For the life of me, I could not differentiate between caring for someone versus loving someone. If I care about you then I must love you, right? What I have come to believe is that everyone has a different way of describing what love means to them at different stages in their lives. There is no concrete answer, but I think as you grow up and mature, you become more aware about how you want to give and receive love.

I felt inspired to dig into this topic because I am currently reading Mira Kirshenbaum's Too Good to Leave, Too Bad to Stay. Kirshenbaum writes about the ambivalence people in relationships can feel and the many considerations they must ask themselves about their relationship in order to determine whether they are better off leaving the relationship or staying and trying to fix it.

Chapter 8, What is this thing called loved?, has been the most memorable chapter of the book thus far because it made me realize just how desperate I was to understand this exact question. I marked a specific page in this chapter and have come back to it at least twice already because sometimes you just need a refresher when you're feeling down and defeated and confused. And what better way to fish out my thoughts than to do what I've always done and write about it here.

My perception of love is confused and I will say this right now, I still don't know what love is and how to describe the feeling. I still have a lot of discovering to do when it comes to love. But Kirshenbaum helped lay the foundation for my thoughts. And according to her, love is still a hard idea for psychologists and therapists to define. So we have to give ourselves some slack.

Kirshenbaum's description of love resonated with me because she broke it down in a very sequential manner that spoke to the logical side of my brain. While I don't think it completely encompasses the idea of love, it gave me a decent foundation to build upon as I continue my search in understating what is this thing called love.

For starters, just like with most feelings, love is a feeling based on your perception of reality. But humans are not perfect and it's not as concrete as that because it all depends on how the person perceives reality. If your perception of reality is bias or clouded, just because you feel something from your perceived reality, does not make it actually real.

You see this when someone feels at a cross roads in their relationship. This particular chapter highlights the scenario in which you fell in love with someone based on how well they treated you, cared for you, respected you, aligned with your values, etc... All these actions/gestures were real. But sometimes what happens in a relationship is one partner gets too comfortable, they stop putting in effort, they show their true colours, and now the other person is stuck and confused as to how they could possibly leave someone they love. But that feeling of love is now based on past events that never stayed consistent and are not based on the current reality. Therefore their perception is biased towards who their partner was in the past. And their feelings of love do not make sense for the current realty. Do you really love this person? Or are you holding on to the person that you once loved.

"Feeling love doesn't mean that you perceptions are accurate or that the realities warrant your feelings. In other words, feelings are not necessarily appropriate just because you have them...No one can tell you what to feel, but for feelings to make sense they've got to be based on correctly perceiving something that's real." - Kirshenbaum

Going forward, I am doing my best to base my feelings off of a person's actions, not words and failed promises. Actions truly do speak louder than words because they are rooted in the present, whereas words can offer no rhyme or reason.

<3