In the Name of Love: A Definitional Essay

If one hopes to define “love”, one should turn on the radio. Englebert Humperdinck tells us that “love is a many splendored thing,” and Pat Benatar argues, “Love is a battlefield,” while the Beatles believe that “Love is all you need.” Defining “love” can be difficult because it can mean so many different things to so many people. This becomes especially tricky when one considers the fact that different cultures have their own opposing ideas of love. If one really wants to find an acceptable definition for the word “love”, there are several ways to go about doing so. To begin with, look at what real love is not. After that, one can explore how love was viewed in the past. Finally, examining the psychological definition of love will definitely help an individual understand just exactly how to define “love.”

Merriam-Webster defines “love” as “strong affection for another arising out of kinship or personal ties.” While this is accurate, it does not paint the whole picture. First of all, this definition could also be applied to the word “like.” So when defining “love” it is important that an individual does not get it confused with other similar words. One way to do this is to make sure that there is a full understanding of what love is not. Love is not “like.” It is possible to like something without loving it, but it is not so easy to love something without liking it. Love is also not the same thing as “lust.” Lust, unlike love, refers to a physical attraction. One can feel lust toward someone that they do not love at all. And as most people know, love is the opposite of hate. All of these words that are definitely not love can help a person, through process of elimination, decide what the definition of love should be.

The Greeks contributed a lot to the modern world. One of these things was the breaking down of love into four categories. The categories are: Storage, Philia, Agape, and Eros. Each one represents to a different kind of love. W.M.J. Kreucher describes these types of love in his book, Dandelion Man. The first love, storage, is the love felt between family members or other people who come together based on their circumstances. Love between a brother and sister would be categorized this way. The second, eros, is the romantic love shared between two people. Ideally, a married couple would feel this type of love. The third type of love, as defined by the Greeks is agape love, which is simply unconditional love. This type of love is most often associated with God. The last type of love, philia, describes a love between friends. As Kreucher explains, “It is not biological but a sense of just wanting to be with the other person” (introduction). According to the Greeks, every time an individual feels love, they should be able to classify it under one of these headings.

To really understand love, one may want to examine what it is from a psychological standpoint. Psychology defines love as something that happens partly in the brain and party as a social concept (as it most often occurs between two people). It has three separate components. These three parts are intimacy, commitment, and passion. The first, intimacy, occurs when two people share personal details about their lives. Friends and romantic partners often engage in intimacy. The second component, commitment, relates to a person’s belief that a relationship is permanent. Commitment can be shared between friends, but usually it is reserved for romantic partners. The third aspect, passion, is the sexual attraction between two people. If someone simply likes another person, then only intimacy will be present. If an individual is infatuated with someone else, passion is at play; however, passion is also present in romantic love. If there is only a sense of commitment involved, the love is referred to as “empty love.” Companionate love is made up of intimacy and commitment, while consummate love includes all three. Consummate love is most often associated with married couples. This three-pronged approach to love and relationships is known as “Triangular love” (Cavendish 460). Its goal is to, psychologically, categorize the many different relationships that make up human interaction.

As long as there has been language, there have been love poems. As long as there has been music, there have been love songs. Human beings are obsessed with the idea of love—what it means to love someone and what it means to be in love with someone. There are many ways to approach understanding love. One way is to define what love is and isn’t. While a dictionary can try to give a concrete example, it is not always the most accurate, and so it must be expanded upon. Understanding what love is not is one way to bring clarity to the subject. The Greeks attempted to explain love by breaking it down into four categories: storage, eros, agape, and philia. Each of these categories represents a different type of love between two people. The field of psychology has gone even further, defining the basic components of various types of love and describing how the different ways the three combine to make up certain types of love. It is important to consider that not all of these various ways of defining love agree with one another. But they don’t have to. Defining love concretely is impossible. Love is a feeling and love is subjective. All of these different approaches aim to help an individual better understand just what love is and what it can be. At the end of the day, though, it does not necessarily matter what a bunch of dead philosophers or a psychology book says. As the Beatles sand, “Love is All You Need.” And that is the best description for love we’ve found so far.

Works Cited

Cavendish, Marshall. Sex and society. Marshall Cavendish, 2010.

Kreucher, W.M.J. Dandelion Man - The Four Loves. CreateSpace, 2012.