The indispensable issue to be investigated is the analyses and comparison of “love”. Writing on this topic Henry Finck stated that:
“Anything said about love that pleases is always correct, love also lives in an infinite mixture of forms and shades which however makes it a tissue of paradoxes. (p1)
Of all the words used in every day to day speech, love is usually overworked. Consequently, all activities of mankind revolve around love, not only does it involve articulation of emotional feelings between sexes, but also an articulation of feelings between members of a family.
However, it also shows sensations for a neighbor, friends, and also opponents, for entire humanity for the domicile, social or ethnic group, nation, for all that is beautiful and good, and for God himself. The most unbelievable fact is that love can at times be equal to its many duties.
Notwithstanding, love is a kind of mechanical fixation which is imposed on us from outside. It is not a matter of choice, but something that happens to us. Basically, love is something voluntary that we enter into because we want to.
In essence, Love is the issue…. “the only real issue”.
The topic of love is a vital issue to concentrate on in that people presently, when they fall in love have very high hopes compared to those in the past. Love is a true romance that stays alive within a particular context hence the individual feeling of lovers that love is timeless and boundless. Ever since romantic love has been controlled extremely among other forms of love, but it has been endorsed to the foundation for marriage in current years.
Enduring intimate affiliation is assumed to be kept going by the arousing connection of love, this is a universally shared desire.
A good number of people nowadays however try to formulate the intelligence and the understanding of their lives from various love relationships.
Thus, it is tremendously imperative that individual models of excellence or perfection of a kind, objectives, anticipation, and religious journeys be granted great recognition just as their precedent.
Though humans are products of both nature and nurture, and although we may all have an instinctive “want to be in the right place” involving several people in correlations diverse people in diverse circumstances articulated that want diversely by human orientation. To love is a product of temperament and personality as well as of interactions with romantic partners and expressions of where someone fits in the social structure. In line with this, love is important for human beings, and it has been talked about and written about since the beginning of civilization.
One of the earliest texts ever found by archaeologists, for example, is an Egyptian love poem. Plato also wrote about love, and because his work has in many respects shaped, if not defined western culture.
Sometimes this influence is obvious, as in the “courtly love” tradition of the French fabliaux-tales of the knights who worshipped women from afar in a “platonic”, or spiritual, relationship rather than a physical one. Other times, the influence is much less obvious.
This is the case in Machiavelli’s The Prince, which does not even talk about love in the usual sense but instead mentions it only in regard to the feelings subjects have for their ruler.
To love more than one’s life is the crux of spirituality. Although, if crux implies crossing place. This suggests a love that goes beyond life, as we know it. It is, therefore, a love that does not manifest with “you” as its center.
When “you” love, there is invariably an object to that love: what or whom. You may love “mankind”, or “god”, but it is a limited love, which owes its virtue to you a lover.
With who is the lilac in love when it scents the air; the pear tree when it produces abundance; the lark when it whistles curiously its song? Can love, as essence, be withheld from anything or anyone?
When love is not withheld, it knows no division, it is boundless. If such love is boundless, can its origination be in the bound? If the bounded is who you are not, who then are you….when you and love are without identification?
Love is an expression of who you truly are-not of who you are as a result of love.
Love, in that case, is without intention…without intender or intended. To be loved is to be without objective.
In being love, there is no receiver of love who is outside of yourself, and no giver of love who is outside of yourself.
There is no “you” where this love originates. That which presumes to be you cannot be the source of love.
Although, a huge number of books and articles describe the different styles, components, faces, and forms of love. Greek philosophers distinguished among six styles of love; these include the following among others, passionate love also known as Eros, humorous love, romantic love, possessive love, selfish love, and unselfish love and lastly love amongst friends. However, contemporary scientists, in large-scale studies, found confirming evidence for the existence of these very styles of love
While love styles point to the consistent differences in the way people experience and express romantic love, however, each experience of falling in love is unique because it is indomitable by both cognisant and incognisant elements in both colleagues. Consequently, people are always different in their romantic relationship either in adoring the game in performance, logical or selfless hence realization of unique elements of communication between them
Confidence, obsession and obligation being the three fundamental machinery of love are described by a well known “triangular model of love”. Though, the presence or absence of any of these components explains the different faces of love. Like in illustration, if its one of intimacy, it’s dominated by likes, whereas that of passion is dominated by infatuation and lastly that of commitment has empty love. Nevertheless, research found out that perfect love includes intimacy while romantic love has passion and intimacy but not commitment. Commitment and passion is consummate love.
Consequently, love can take different forms not only because of the different components that define it but also because of the different objects to which it is directed. Among the different forms of love are the love between parents and child, brotherly love, motherly love, erotic love, self-love, and the love of God.
Love is a social luxury like lace and diamonds. But if we analyse it as a sentiment, we find two distinct elements in it, namely, pleasure and passion. Now analyse pleasure. Human affections rest upon two foundations, attraction and repulsion. Attraction is a universal feeling for those things which flatter the instinct of self-preservation; repulsion is the exercise of the same instinct when it tells us that something is near which threatens it with injury.
Everything which profoundly moves our organisation gives us a deeper sense of our existence; it is also known as enjoyment. It is contracted of desire, of effort, and the joy of possessing something or others. Pleasure is a unique element in life, and our passions are nothing but modifications, more or less keen, of pleasure, moreover, familiarity with one pleasure almost always precludes the enjoyment of all others. Now, love is the least keen and the least durable of our pleasure.
There are various discoveries that love is an optimistic knowledge that is linked with a feeling of great (usually exaggerated) elation, sexual state of being carried away by overwhelming emotion, the feeling of lively and cheerful joy, and an emotion of great happiness.
However, love to some is an experience with is exceptionally bad or displeasing in an inexorable manner and is concurrent to sexual dispossession, desire for understanding of the nature, meaning, quality or magnitude of it, and the painful emotion resulting from an awareness of inadequacy or guilt of negative response and lack of attention and due care.
According to John Lee, love can be analysed or divided into six different categories or styles which are namely eros, ludus, storge, pragma, mania and agape. These categories of love are discussed in details below:
Love styles are the hypothetical description of a complex entity or process of how love is practiced by people, and it was initially worked out by John Lee. John Lee branded six fundamental hypotheses of love which are also known as the love “colours”. This love colours is used by people in their relationships which occurs among or involves several people.
Eros-this is a strong physical attraction, emotional intensity, a preferred physical appearance, and a sense of inevitability of the relationship which defines the central core of eros.
Ludus-love is a game to be played with the diverse set of partners over time. Deception of the partner and lack of disclosure about self and other partners are prime attributes of ludus. Because of ludus’s lack of honesty, college students disagree with items for this love style. However, Lee (1973) in his book Colours of love: an exploration of the ways of loving noted that this approach reflects a desirable reality for many people. In fact, substantial numbers of college students behave ludically during some phases of their mate selection process.
Storge-this style is love as friendship. It is quiet and companionate. The fire of eros is alien to storge. Storge has sometimes been dubbed “love by evolution” rather than “love by revolution.”
Pragma-in this style, love is a patronizing list of yearning characteristics (e.g., fitting into the family, good parents, etc.). However computing dating is a good metaphor to describe pragma.
Mania-This style might be called “symptom” love. Mania is intense, alternating between ecstasy and agony. Mania love, when strongly felt, usually does not end well.
Agape-This is sacrificial, placing the loved person’s welfare above one’s own. In romantic love, pure agape is manifested only sporadically. In settled relationships, agape is ordinarily reduced by the demands of equity in long-term relationships and increased by life events such as one partner’s illness.However, just as love styles are related to individual phenomena, so they are also related to interpersonal factors.
In conclusion, human orientation to love is a product of temperament and personality as well as of interactions with romantic partners and expressions of where someone fits in the social structure. Although romantic love and sexuality are not the same, but it has been posited that they “are inextricably linked, with love as the basis for much of sexual interaction, and sex as the medium of expression for much of loving”.
Works cited
Finck, Henry, Theophilus. Romantic Love and Personal Beauty: Their Development, Casual Relations, Historic and National Peculiarities. London: Macmillan. 2009. Print.
Lee, John. Colours of love: an exploration of the ways of loving. New York: New Press. 1973. Print.