Love : The most misunderstood emotion of all
We use the same four-letter word to describe our affinity for a cheese burst pepperoni pizza as we do for the person we’ve shared a mortgage with for twenty years. We say we "love" that song, "love" our parents, and "love" our favorite pair of shoes. It’s no wonder we’re confused.
Using one "bucket" word for everything, we’ve lost the plot on what love actually is. We’ve turned a complex, active discipline into a vague, misty feeling that we "fall" in and out of like a rabbit hole in the sidewalk.
If we want to understand love, we have to stop looking at it as a pattern and start looking at it as an art.
The Biological "Bribe"
Let’s address the wanna-be-woke in the room first. From a purely scientific standpoint, love is essentialy a neurochemical bribe. Evolution floods our brains with dopamine (the reward), oxytocin (the bond), and vasopressin (the commitment) for one reason: survival.
It is a biological trick designed to keep two humans together just long enough to raise a helpless, infant, into a full grown adult to repeat the cycle.
But while biology gave us the direction, humanity built the full cross-road networks. We’ve taken a survival instinct and refined it into poetry, sacrifice, and tapestry. If love were only biology, we wouldn't care for the friend fighting with stage 4 cancer or feel the ache of grief decades after a person is gone.
We’ve used our instincts to create something transcendent.
The "Pizza" vs. The "Person"
The biggest misunderstanding is the confusion between consumption and witnessing.
Consumption Love (The Pizza Level): You "love" things that make you feel good. This is love based on how the object serves you. When the pizza gets cold or the "spark" fades, the love evaporates because the utility is gone.
And most of the "Love at first sight" falls under this category because you can't fall in love with someone on the first sight without knowing their thoughts, their psyche and them. And this is essentially lust and desire. Not love.
Actual Love (The Devotion Level): This is the radical acceptance of a person as they are, not as a project. If you can stand on a podium and say that you would still love your partner even if they don't change a single attribute about them in next 5 years. Than that is the love we are talking about.
Ofcourse you can want them to grow and achieve new heights but if you can't love the current version of them forever than maybe you love the idea of the version of them you created in your head and not them.
True love is a shift from "I love you because you make me feel good" to "I love you, therefore I want you to be whole even if it doesn't benefit me."
How to Tell if It’s "Actual" Love
Since feelings are notoriously unreliable narrators, we have to look for the quiet indicators:
The "No-Upgrade" Test: If this person never changed a single habit or flaw, would you still want to be standing next to them in five years? Infatuation loves potential; actual love loves the reality.
The "Boredom" Test: Can you sit in a room in total silence and feel completely at home? True love doesn't require a constant performance or high-octane "sparks." It’s the comfort of being alone together, you won't need constant reminders from them.
The "Will" Over the "Pulse": Feelings are fleeting they vanish the moment you’re tired or annoyed. Love is the safety net under that anger. It’s the decision to be kind and protective of someone’s dignity even when you don't particularly "like" them in that moment.
Love is a Skill, Not an Accident
We’ve been sold a lie that love is something that happens to us. But you don’t "fall" into a piano concerto; you learn to play it.
Actual love is the active practice of patience, the discipline of listening, and the daily choice to show up. It isn't a mystery; it’s a series of actions. Once we stop waiting for the "feeling" to carry us, we can finally start doing the work of loving.
The Soul vs. The Packaging
We often claim that love is the highest form of human connection something "pure" and "soul-to-soul." But if we truly believe that love is an sacred bond between two souls, we have to ask ourselves a difficult question: Why is the world still so heavy with homophobia?
why is it we can't accept a male loving male or female loving other female? If love is truly a connection of souls, then the gender, the exterior, and the "packaging" of those souls shouldn't matter.
When we judge who someone is allowed to love, we are admitting that we don’t actually believe love is a soul-to-soul connection, we are treating it as a social contract and a biological checklist.
To be homophobic is to deny the very "purity" we claim love has. It is a refusal to see the actuality of love because we are too distracted by the bodies. If we are going to call love "sacred," we have to be brave enough to recognize it wherever it shows up, regardless of whether the "vessels" match our personal expectations.
So the next time you feel like falling in Love. Wait and ask yourself, is it actually love?
Post written by - @lairs.bug
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