The Differences Between Love and Attraction

“Love is a beautiful flower that grows from the earth and sends its fragrance into your heart and mind.” – William Shakespeare. The importance of love to our lives cannot be underestimated. Love is an ever changing array of behaviors and emotions characterized by intense intimacy, emotional commitment, purity, desire, and passion. It typically involves caring, intimacy, adoration, security, affection, and sharing, but love can vary tremendously in intensity and will change over time. It’s often associated with a wide range of positive emotional states, including happiness, novelty, exhilaration, life fulfillment, and joy, but it can also lead to negative emotions such as frustration, anger, resentment, boredom, sadness, envy, fear, embarrassment, anxiety, isolation, sorrow, humiliation, guilt, or even paranoia.

Love and relationships are complex and take work, energy, commitment, compassion, patience, kindness, understanding, empathy, commitment, imagination, practice, and intuition. People come in all types and shapes, but most have certain characteristics shared by at least half of the people I’ve met with love in their lives. Generally, when people come into a relationship they share basic characteristics – loving, compassionate, responsible, sensitive, honest, and willing to communicate. However, love and relationships may vary depending on the other person, the situation, the length of the relationship, the chemistry between the partners, the preferences of the two people, the needs of the individual, the timing of the relationship, the culture, the lifestyle, and the goals of the relationship. Love differs from person to person and depends on the circumstances.

People vary in their love style – they’re either very in love with just themselves or intensely in love with another person. They share deep feelings, but they use those feelings for different things. Some people use their love style with their partner as a way of sharing their deepest feelings, while others use their love style with themselves as an escape from realities of life. Intense feelings like love for oneself can be used as an expression, while other more passive kinds of intense feelings like love for another person can be used as intimacy.

Intensity of intimacy is one of the most common expressions of love and is usually accompanied by a desire to spend time with that person. The intensity of this love form often results in meeting the other person frequently, sometimes daily. The attraction itself can be quite powerful. However, sometimes the intense feelings of passion created through love create complications such as jealousy, resentment, boredom, loneliness and insecurity.

Physical attraction is not the only form of attraction when it comes to love. Physical attraction may be the easiest form of attraction to maintain in a relationship. A man will often find a woman attractive if they get attracted to her body first. However, if this physical attraction is not tempered with true feelings of love, the relationship may easily fall apart. In many cases, the desire for physical intimacy that creates the love bond may also create problems in the relationship such as cheating.

True, all relationships require some level of intimacy in order for them to thrive. Intensity of attraction can be a strong force within a relationship, however, the level of commitment and closeness that comes from loving someone and being with them on a regular basis is what makes a relationship worth having. Unfaithfulness in any relationship is damaging to all relationships, so it is important for couples to make sure that their love for each other does not end in divorce or broken hearts. Couples who do not make their relationship a priority have not made an effort to build strong relationships.