What is Love, really?

[Beryl77]

Love is just some chemical reactions going on in the brain. It makes you feel great and since it comes when people are around certain persons, they want to be together with these persons. In evolution it was mostly made for the purpose of bringing people together and having children, so that a race won't become extinct. Thanks to the feeling the parents want to protect their children and because of the feeling they also want to stay together with their partner, which makes protecting the children and organising work a lot easier.
It's none of that whole miraculous and mystical think that many people claim it to be.

It's not really worth it nowadays. But it's nearly impossible to fight against that because even if we know what it is, we still can't stop it from happening. When you fall in love, you also fall under that illusion and can't change that by trying to think rationally. Even if that sad thing happened to you, you don't have to worry because there isn't just the one and only person out there. There are a lot of people who suit you.

 

[kjrubberducky]

Love is a decision, a choice made that you will live for someone else instead of yourself. Even if you don't feel "in love" with someone, you can, and you did, choose to still love them. Anything else is just a feeling, and feelings are created by chemical interactions in the brain; feelings never stay the same, always changing and vulnerable to outside influences. But the choosing to love, that is your choice alone. The pain comes when you give your love, but the other person just takes, never giving their love back; but the feeling of getting that kind of love in return makes the pain endurable, and the love worthwhile.

 

[2012 Wont Happen]

At the most basic level, like every other emotion, just another chemical reaction in our heads.

 

[Justanothergamer300]

Don't have a solid answer but it's up to you to make your own choice about that. This is something that you think and wonder about as you get older

 

[Togs]

haha "love is a cruel trick played on us to help perpetuate the species"

 

[geldonyetich]

As for romantic love, of all the flash animations on the net, I think There She Is! series captured it best.

http://sambakza.net/works_tsi/tsi_main.html

 

[zehydra]

Baby don't hurt me!

Love is just a word.

Is falling in love worth it? Having both been in love, and having my heart broken. HELL YES.

Don't worry OP, you'll find another girl. It just takes time.

 

[SilverStrike]

Love is giving someone the power to destroy you, and trusting them to not.
Or at least, part of it is.
Love is being with someone and wanting to be with them for a long time to come.
Love is being able to stay with someone at their worst, otherwise you don't deserve them at their best.
Love can be beautiful. Love can be strong.
It can also flip like a coin when scorned and turn into hate, just as strongly.
Love is commitment, reliability, happiness, smiles, laughter, companionship, and unconditional trust.

You have my best wishes and condolences about the situation, there are not words to describe just how disgusting betrayal is.

I'm in love, at the moment. Been with my partner for ten months. In love for nine and a half.
I've felt pain in the past too though. I hope to not feel it again.

Love is like.. a house. First you have to build the foundations of the relationship. Then you have to build the walls to define what principles you share about commitment. Then you open doors together, exploring deeper into what the two of you can achieve. And love never reaches a limit. You can always expand, explore, and keep building and reinforcing.

At least, this is what I think. I'm a bit of a romantic sometimes.

 

[p3t3r]

whoa i like how this guy is struggling and everybody is pulling the chemical reaction card along with song refrences. "the escapist the face of compassion on the internet"

i don't know what love is

 

[Nieroshai]

Love is (usually) just human horniness disguised by multiple layers of supposed meaning and depth, fooling the individual into thinking that they are more than a simple animal.

Sometimes it isn't and two people may want each other for more than the obvious, but that is damn rare.

Then my every daily interaction with my family and fiancee is "damn rare." I also rarely find any of my love-motivated actions to have anything to do with sexual desire where my fiancee is involved. And I am more than a "simple" animal, because there is nothing simple about the human condition. There is nothing simple about emotions either, it's never as straight-forward as "stimulus begets response."

Now to explain myself a little better. I love my fiancee, yes. I also love my sister. I also love my brothers. I also love my parents. I also love my dog. I only have sexual desire for one of them, but how I qualify love is that they are all family to me.

 

[Nieroshai]

At the most basic level, like every other emotion, just another chemical reaction in our heads.

Yes, but why, and how, and why are we even able to ponder such things or even care if everything we do is quantifiable as electrical impulses and enzymes? These are all the things that "what is love?" is really asking.

 

[cthulhumythos]

...What is love...
...and is it worth it...

depends on which love your talking about, like i love my mom, dad, cat, brother, and sister. in that case it's worth it because it's unconditional and that's a freebie.

the love between a man and a women (not strictly speaking, of course), i would say, is a combination of the above, except there's much less, but it's balanced out by lust. but is it worth it? i dunno, i honestly entertain the thought of being a recluse; because this "love" seems so trivial, and has created so many annoying hopeless romantics that i'm content on staying a bachelor if it stops me from becoming some angsty dramatic.

btw sorry 'bout your girlfriend, i'm sure that really sucks.

 

[Daveman]

Chemical reactions? Really people, are we that jaded? Do we have to deconstruct things to a level where we feel secure in our pessimism?

What is love? Love is contentment, where all fears and worries disappear and there is only a warm sensation in your body and you feel it impossible not to smile. It's a feeling of overwhelming understanding and truth. It can last a moment or a lot longer. It's like getting up after an incredible nights sleep. It's like suddenly there is a god and he really is staring down at you like you are a newborn child and there's an expression just like you see on parents faces in movies. I could just die in those moments.

Spoiler: The song that comes to mind is very cheesy, but here it is...

 

[Blind Sight]

Well that's a bit difficult to analyze, but for me personally I thought that Ayn Rand summed it up pretty well in the Virtue of Selfishness:

 

[Platti]

Life is about enjoying yourself, and love IS enjoying yourself. In the short life we have we just have to enjoy our time as much as possible whilst we're around to enjoy it. Love - as previous posts have mentioned - is fucking amazing to experience, and just because it's not this ethereal and depthless unexplainable phenomenon doesn't mean it's not worthwhile. Similary, just because you feel bad as a result of the experience, surely the whole experience of love and loving someone was worth it - even if the person you loved wasn't. Life isn't about logic and reason unless logic and reason makes you happy.


I'm just going throw out two quotes that can explain what I'm trying to say better than I can:

"Positive emotion trumps negative emotion every time."

&

"It is better to have loved and lost than to never have loved at all"

In my opinion love is worth it, of course.

 

[endnuen]

Love is pure insanity. Worth it? Fuck yeah.

There has actually been some studies on it that indicates that the rationalism of a persons decisions when in love is frighteningly similar to the rationalism of someone insane.

I won't dig around for it, but it's out there somewhere.

 

[Fiz_The_Toaster]

What is love? It all depends on the person really. It's either the greatest single emotion known to mankind, something in order to survive, or , to the jaded, the greatest thing to bring a person to their knees.

Is it worth it? Hell if I know. It's all about giving a piece of you to them that they never asked for, so it's really a matter of how much are you willing to give to them.

 

[Sexual Harassment Panda]

I'm understanding that when you say "love". You exclusively mean the gushy, romantic kind.

Whether you believe in chemical reactions, or Hollywood magic is up to you. In practice, you'll feel the same either way...

Personally, I think it's something worth taking a gamble on at least a few times in your life. I refuse to elevate it to the levels of imperative that many would, but it's worth trying...at least long enough for you to figure out whether it is for you or not.

That's not to say you live a loveless life if you fail. You have family, you can make friends...

"Love" is surely broader than romance alone.