I recently was asked by someone to casually analyze the emotion of love and the course of a relationship briefly while eating dinner. The question primarily: when did you know? How did you know?
I gave a marginally acceptable (perhaps fumbling) answer regarding this person’s circumstances as I admit I was more stunned by the personal invitation into a life I had not been apart of for 10 years. The problem started when I came home and couldn’t shake the true process of love. I sat on the couch, laid in my bed, stared at the walls and like a dead fish at late night TV while the question of love ran through and through. What is it? How do we really know?
Rather than collect a series of baby Rhesus monkeys for experimentation in order to prove love like the famed psychologist Harry Harlow, I decided to do a series of mini brainstorms. So here they are, the answers I’ve come up with.
Poetic Answer
Love is a bonfire; not only in a heart, but it sets the knowable world ablaze. This is a burning, smoldering intensity that is unmistakable. UNDENIABLE. As air to the lungs, love is to a heart and a beating heart will not let go if one is authentically in love.
Rant on Love
Is love imitated? Yes, disguised as anger and jealousy, possession and control – these are the dangerous cousins of love? Can you miss the signs of love? It’s possible…you must deny yourself the ability, or the desire to need another person. Love is not optional, it’s not a test. You feel it or you don’t. It is necessity of the heart and if one chooses a course of life not conducive to the introduction of another, it is more choice than act of feeling, because when love is at the wheel…the yearning to be with the person we love is night and day. Love is sometimes a less rational and more progressive movement towards unity. This is love.
Scientific Answer
Chemically, love is a rush in your central nervous system. Your pupils dilate as you attempt to visually intake more of the one you love. Your Sympathetic Nervous System will stimulate the release of adrenaline, and the portion of your brain that responds to pleasure and reward will light up (if under watch in an MRI) where receptors will be waiting for neurotransmitters that provide Dopamine. A chemical which can provide great amounts of heightened energy and motivation to achieve the visual pleasure your eyes have given you. Due to how we physically respond to love, researchers say love under scientific scope looks the same as mental illness. This is love.
Realistic/Long term Answer
Love is also the desire to hold someone even as they become older. The capacity to be intensely furious with a person you love and yet come to them and work it out. The courage to birth children. The courage to coach a woman birthing children. Holding a dying hand and telling them to be strong. Saying the wrong things…doing the wrong things, and asking for forgiveness. Telling people what you need. Helping someone through it, past it, over it, and under it. Struggling, mending, hurting, crying, dreaming, enjoying, laughing, asking, hoping, wanting, smiling, living, loving.
WANTING love still even knowing how hard it will be. This is love.
The Conclusion or Ultimate Answer
There has been one thing I have never questioned in life until now and that is….love. When I say the words and when I’ve said the words, “I love you,” I have meant it because I’ve felt it. I’ve been moved by it, physically and emotionally. It is maybe the only thing in my life that has remained unchanged. So to those of you, who may lie up at night questioning the process of love, I say this; love is never vague. It’s in your every pore, on the surface of your skin, and bleeds through every organ. Love is all things ignited. A heart in love will not beat vaguely.
There is a less singular, multifaceted feeling in life which can defy and simultaneously exhaust all explanation. This is love. You can’t miss it.
Holly