The Real Nature of Romantic Love
What is love? What does it mean to be loved? We know that love is the strongest force in the universe and that it exists in all living things, but what do we mean when we talk about love? In this article I will define love as it relates to relationships.
Love is a collection of feelings and behaviors characterized by emotional intimacy, romance, concern, devotion, and commitment. It often involves reciprocity, empathy, tenderness, caring, compassion, acceptance, tolerance, concern, and loyalty. Love can range from undetectable feelings of love to intense feelings of adoration and passion to consistently caring and nurturing behaviors for another person or for oneself.
Love is often described as a basic human need that motivates us to procreate, care for, protect, and provide for another human being. Love is also a powerful emotion that can cause our heart to beat faster when someone we love is in pain or in danger, or that can cause our muscles to relax and our body to tremble with joy when someone we love is happy. When we are in love there is an elevated vibration, meaning we feel happier, more expansive, more alive, more connected and capable of love. We are attracted to each other because love has given us the ability to be who we are and share who we are without fear of rejection.
What is unconditional love then? Unconditional love means you love someone without conditions on the part of either the giver or the receiver. It is characterized by the presence of positive emotions such as trust, compassion, approval, kindness, delight, happiness, trust, and empathy for the other person. It is also frequently characterized by an openness to experience and share the other person’s world. In essence, unconditional love is willing to experience and share the other person’s world with them, but not necessary burdened by any expectations of return or consequence.
Intimacy, which is the most common form of romantic relationship, involves intense feelings of attraction that often involves physical contact, but is not necessarily accompanied by sexual engagement or sex. Intimacy is the romantic engagement and physical connection between two people that often involves emotional intimacy, or even just sexual attraction. Intimacy is very similar to the feeling you get when you meet a great friend. It is often accompanied with an excitement and enthusiasm that can actually blind us to the feelings and realities of love. It is the exciting feeling that can blind us to our higher inner desires.
As mentioned above, passion and attraction are the two main factors that drive our romantic love relationships. Passion is defined as the strong urge to want something highly. In other words, it is the extreme level of desire we have for a relationship or mate. Attraction is the strong desire to like someone; this leads to the more intense desire to engage in a romantic relationship with that person.