What is Love?

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Galnextdoor

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I know what it means to love my children. I nurture them, provide for them, instruct them, laugh with them, defend them ferociously, and protect them as much as possible. I would sacrifice everything I have for them. I try to be a good example and make good choices in everything I do. The only thing that matters more is God, because that is the way it is supposed to be.

But what is love? I’ve read that it’s a choice or a decision we make. I’ve read some of Christopher West’s books about love between man and woman, but it sounds like a romance fantasy.

I never believed in love until I had children. When I heard that God is love, you could have knocked me over with a feather. God is supposed to love me more than I love my children, because his love is perfect and mine isn’t.

What does it mean to love your neighbor? Am I supposed to love my neighbor like I love my children?
I feel intense emotion when I think of my children. I sometimes feel that way when I think of God. But I am told that God is not an emotion he is a choice. I’ve read that emotions are the lowest part of the human being, but Jesus wept. Jesus was also angry.

Is a decision to behave a certain way and love the same thing?
Is doing the right thing for someone the same thing as love?
I experience intense joy and compassion through being a mother, but I’ve never felt anything like this directed towards me. I assume what I feel is love, but love is supposed to be a decision. There is no decision in how I treat my children. Loving my children is as innate to me as breathing.

So …what is love?
 
You definitely hit on some solid definitions of what love is. I’d say the most accurate one was that God is love.

Think of it this way: we are people, being people involves breathing, eating, laughing, etc. We have lots of activities we do Philosophically, our essence is that we are rational creatures.

God, however, IS love. His very existence is to love. Simply by existing, he loves.

I have no doubt that you love your children, and it probably is innate to you. But when you ask how we love our neighbors, and state that you’ve never received the love you feel for your children, you’re simply stating in almost every case the natural human condition.

We realize how much we can love someone, but we can’t love everyone like that.

Love itself (God) is that reality which would allow you to love everyone like your children. And that is what Adam and Eve experienced until the Fall.

I guess the short answer would be that love is God, and the glimpse you get of it through your own maternity should lead you to seek God ever more, so that you can love your children, yourself, and your neighbor more perfectly.
 
Wow. What a question!

Well, fortunately I think we are supposed to love our neighbor as ourselves, not as we love our children.😃 But seriously, I wonder if most of us even know when we are called to love our neighbor. I suspect we sometimes think we are called to do so when we are not and we miss the times when we are truly being called to love them.

Well there is the matter of there being several types of love: familial love, friendship love, and erotic love. I think the love God has for us as elements of all those kinds of love.

I also think that the emotions surrounding love do just that: they surround it. But the emotions are not intrinsic to love. I do think that sacrifice is intrinsic to love.

In English we use “love” as both a noun and as a verb. I think most of us think noun before we think verb. We probably need to think verb first.
 
Is a decision to behave a certain way and love the same thing?
Is doing the right thing for someone the same thing as love?
I experience intense joy and compassion through being a mother, but I’ve never felt anything like this directed towards me. I assume what I feel is love, but love is supposed to be a decision. There is no decision in how I treat my children. Loving my children is as innate to me as breathing.
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So …what is love?
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youtube.com/watch?v=z9OGfBGOCpk
 
Luke_Arredondo said:
You definitely hit on some solid definitions of what love is. I’d say the most accurate one was that God is love.

I guess the short answer would be that love is God, and the glimpse you get of it through your own maternity should lead you to seek God ever more, so that you can love your children, yourself, and your neighbor more perfectly.
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Are you saying that what I feel for my children is God?

SMHW You say there are different types of love. Do you mean there are different degrees of love?

I’m really confused. I just don’t get how God is love. He’s a Supreme Being. Is he an emotion too? Father Mitch Pacwa said that adoring God doesn’t have anything to do with emotions.

I was taught that emotions were a weakness that we have to control or they will drag you to hell. If God is an emotion, he wont drag me to hell. How can God be an emotion?
 
Wow! kage_ar Thanks for that great link. It will take awhile for me to digest the whole thing, but thanks for giving me something to chew on. 😃
 
When you are in the most foul mood, infuriated, enraged, walking down a sidewalk.
Suddenly, a poor beggar asks for some spare change.
Of course, you are in no mood to be caring or loving in the least.
And yet, you reach into your pocket and give him spare change.

THAT is true love.
Showing kindness when you least feel like showing it.

I mean, look at us and God. We are diseased with what God hates most - sin. Yet, he shows us mercy. He sent His son to DIE for us, even though he knows we continue to sin daily.
That is true love.
 
Galnextdoor… since you have children I am making an assumption, so forgive me if this is not appropriate…

Don’t you love your husband? Doesn’t he love you? That seemed to me to be a big gaping hole in your account of loving your children. I mean, if you are divorced or have otherwise been left by your children’s father, then I guess I understand where that hole is coming from. But if you are married… why aren’t you describing that relationship as love? Why do you dismiss West’s description as “romantic fantasy?” (I have not read West, BTW, so cannot comment on his description.)

Would you believe me if I told you that I am still passionately in love with the man to whom I have been married more than 11 years ago, and who I have been with for more than 15? Much of my thoughts during the day revolve around how to best make him feel wanted, needed, and loved. I put his best interests ahead of my own wants or needs, second only to my children’s. And when we get some time alone after the 5 crumb crunchers are in bed, well, let’s just say we still act like those same breathless, hormonal teenagers we started out as.

Love is in many ways a decision. When your emotions tell you you want to stick his hand in the blender and hit frappe, you have to be mature and mindful enough of your commitment to decide to be loving anyway. But love is a feeling too. A motivation to make that other person happy and to meet their needs.
 
I was married to a man who has a Narcissistic Personality Disorder.
The counselors said he was incapable of loving anyone but himself.
He really likes himself alot. :o
 
One way or another I think however much or little we love someone must be seen and measured by our actions. Love must be something we do, not say or even think or feel.

Now as far as what love* is*, I prefer to go with the Sesame Street answer…

“Love is something that always hugs and kisses and a warm feeling inside”
 
Gal,
.
I’m so sorry to hear you were married to a man with NPD. I have a girlfriend married to a guy who has never been diagnosed with it but surely exhibits many of the signs, and her marriage is hell.

What I wanted to address is the fact that you said you were taught that emotions are a weakness that you have to control or “they will drag you to hell”. That’s very sad to me. I feel that emotions are a huge gift from God—joy, love, awe. I can’t imagine viewing these feelings as anything but a wonderful gift from a loving creator. Even the emotions we tend to regard as “negative”—anger, resentment, jealousy—can be gifts in that they can be warning signs to us of problems, both interiorly and exteriorly, among other things. There is such a thing as righteous anger, as well.

I know I’m not expressing myself very well because it’s late, and I’m tired. But your comment about emotions dragging us to hell sends off all sorts of warning bells. I just don’t think it’s a healthy way to view ourselves or the world around us. Certainly emotions not properly ordered can get us into trouble, but so can a whole lot of other things that are good in themselves but become problematic when disordered.

I don’t know who has taught you or is telling you now that emotions in themselves are bad. I’d be wary of that kind of thinking. Suppressing emotions, trying to pretend you don’t have them, can be very unhealthy.

God bless,
Lauren
 
Love is the attraction of the will toward the good as known.

There are many (created) goods, though one (uncreated) Good.

Since there are many goods, there are many loves.

But the more perfectly we love the Good, we more perfectly love created goods.

God is love because God is Good, and knows himself as Good, and loves himself as Good…sounds like the Trinity, right???
 
mizznicole said:
Love is the attraction of the will toward the good as known.

There are many (created) goods, though one (uncreated) Good.

Since there are many goods, there are many loves.

But the more perfectly we love the Good, we more perfectly love created goods.

God is love because God is Good, and knows himself as Good, and loves himself as Good…sounds like the Trinity, right???
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This very simplistic, yet interesting. So basically there are degrees of love with God being the perfect love?
 
I think I personally would sum up love as the will to sacrifice for another. Now, that can take many forms…I sacrifice for my husband in a different way that I sacrifice for my kids. But, woven throughout, is the sacrifice for another. Putting one’s needs above my own. I look back at old flames before my husband…and I remember not being willing to sacrifice, or tolerate much. I think that is how I know it’s really true love with my husband all of these years–that we sacrifice for one another, and it feels awesome to do so. (not always easy to do so, but always worth it) ❤️
 
basilisk said:
Galnextdoor… since you have children I am making an assumption, so forgive me if this is not appropriate…

Would you believe me if I told you that I am still passionately in love with the man to whom I have been married more than 11 years ago, and who I have been with for more than 15? Much of my thoughts during the day revolve around how to best make him feel wanted, needed, and loved. I put his best interests ahead of my own wants or needs, second only to my children’s. And when we get some time alone after the 5 crumb crunchers are in bed, well, let’s just say we still act like those same breathless, hormonal teenagers we started out as.
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In all my years of living, I’ve never known anyone who felt that way about their spouse. I think that your situation must be very rare. Do you mind if I ask if he feels the same way about you? I’ve seen newly weds who are all dewey eyed, but from my observations that lasts about a year. Then the couple begins to treat each other like a ball and chain.
 
Galnextdoor said:
In all my years of living, I’ve never known anyone who felt that way about their spouse. I think that your situation must be very rare. Do you mind if I ask if he feels the same way about you? I’ve seen newly weds who are all dewey eyed, but from my observations that lasts about a year. Then the couple begins to treat each other like a ball and chain.
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It’s not as rare as one might think…Not to say that it doesn’t take effort at times, when my dh and I don’t see eye to eye on a topic…but, we definitely have a newfound love for one another, enriched by our faith. I honestly don’t think we’d feel this way about one another, if God wasn’t front and center in our lives. I feel sad for people who talk about their spouses as their ball and chain. All it takes is a change of attitude, and a commitment to looking at that person as a gift, to turn all of that around. 🙂
 
Gal,

It’s not as rare as you think. My husband and I have been married 17 years and are still madly in love with each other. Yes, passionately, deeply, in love. Much more deeply in love than we were when we first married. That doesn’t mean I feel l like a giddy teenager all the time, but I do still feel that way occasionally 🙂 And if I were stuck on a desert island, there is nobody on this earth I’d rather have with me than my husband.

I’m sorry you had such a horrible marriage experience, and I will agree with you that there are very few truly blissfully married people out there, but it does happen. That doesn’t mean it’s always easy or that it doesn’t require sacrifice, but generally nothing that’s worthwhile is easy in this world! It’s my love for my husband and my husband’s love for me that has helped me understand God’s love in a way I was never able to before.

Lauren
 
I’m certain you love each of your children; you’ve said so much yourself. I am sure you can understand the God and you relationship through that. Then God tells you to love your neighbor. So what do you think it would mean for your children to love each other? Now I am pretty sure that is what you want, but I’m sure you can see there is a gap in there where they don’t always seem to have that same love you have towards your children. Of course you may not ask them to have that degree or type of love due to them not having the capablity for doing it now, but you do expect something alike. Would that reflection give you any new ideas?
 
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