What is love: in search of its meaning

Poets write on this subject relentlessly. Likewise, singers, philosophers and novelists can only be fascinated by this vast and complex theme, which defies any univocal definition. The term "love" has always made people talk, sometimes even discuss, precisely because of its difficulty and abstractness."What is love?" it is a question that many ask themselves, but few have managed to find an answer shared by others, since it can vary according to the different disciplines, from philosophy to psychology, to science and poetry.

We will try to understand all the possible meanings and nuances of love, also taking into consideration when passing from "falling in love to" true love and the different descriptions that various poets and writers have given over the centuries. However, did you know that Are there people who are afraid to love? This fear is called philophobia and it occurs more often than you can imagine ...

What does "love" mean

Everyone thinks they know what love is, but the truth is that few really know its meaning. First of all, love, the real one, is not an "emotion, but a feeling. The latter" differs from "love. simple "emotion for its duration: in fact, a feeling lasts over time, is built day by day and is not instantaneous and fleeting like emotion. Love is born spontaneously, but must be nurtured and cultivated with the passage of time.

If we looked for its exact definition in the dictionary, we would find this: "Feeling of deep affection towards a person who manifests itself as a desire to procure his good and seek his company". However correct it may be, it will never be able to satisfy us because love is certainly much more. It is the feeling of contrasts, in its being both irrational, because when it "hits" us we cannot control it, but it is also logical. for it touches both the heart and the mind Finally, it is both a spiritual and a physical affection.

See also

Platonic love: discovering its meaning

Infinite love: when love lasts forever

When love ends: how to overcome a loving breakup

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What does it mean to love

The term "love" comes from the Latin amor, amoris and initially it indicated that desire that attracts us to "another person. This feeling had a more physical and impulsive connotation, which made it carnal and almost animalistic. With the passage of time, however, love has also taken on its metaphysical component. and spiritual, especially close to the religious sentiment shared by God and men.

So, today, when we say we love someone, we mean both a physical bond and a relationship of harmony and mental complicity. To truly love means to appreciate someone for who they are, with their strengths and weaknesses. It means choosing a person in freedom and wanting the best for her, wanting to always be close to her, in the positive and difficult moments of her life. To love corresponds to putting the happiness of the other before one's own. It is the verb of those who prefer to give rather than receive, without expecting anything in return, dedicating themselves to the other with daily attention and not necessarily with great gestures.

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When we go from "falling in love to" love

When you fall in love, there are pretty obvious signs. You keep thinking about that person, counting the days, hours and minutes until the next meeting. His presence or even the thought of seeing her again can make a day difficult, in which everything is going wrong, less thinking and more positive. In the same way, remembering it in the mind accelerates the heartbeat, isolates us in the intimacy of our reflection, making it a constant in our speeches aloud and not. Falling in love is the idyll, it is the phase of the idealization of the other and at the same time the moment where passion takes over. However, how do you know when you are transitioning from this period to true love?

First of all, as we have already anticipated, true love is built and cultivated over time. There is no precise "temporal" rule, but the closer you get, the more you begin to see your partner for what he is, without ideals. One loves his person with all the defects, putting the impulse to change him in the background. For this, true love requires commitment, mediation and a willingness to compromise. Furthermore, for a relationship to last for a lifetime, intimacy must never be lacking. Intimacy means both the sexual sphere, with the passion and sensuality essential for a couple, and the emotional harmony, made up of confidences and mental complicity.

Phrases about love

Since love is one of the most fascinating feelings, but also complex and difficult to explain, many poets and novelists have written about it in their lyrics, while almost every singer has tried to explain it in their songs. For this reason, we leave now the word to the great authors, so that we can see how "the verb to love" has been explained in the various disciplines and over time.

Phrases about love in poetry and literature

True love begins when nothing is required in return.
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

Love is a vaporous mist formed by sighs; if it dissolves, it is fire that sparkles and sparkles in the eyes of lovers; it is hindered, it is a sea fed by the tears of the lovers themselves. What else is it? A secret madness, gall that strangles and sweetness that heals.
William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet

Love that exempts no one loved from loving in return
Dante Alighieri

Love is a mystery. Why on earth do we fall in love? It is a great fury that calms us from all our torments, it is a great pain that heals us from all wars. The lover is a strange warrior who smiles and loves others. The lover makes all the roses in the world blossom, but the others trample on them for a sudden impulse of burning jealousy.
Alda Merini

Only when we stop placing conditions on our love do we really begin to understand what it means to love.
Leo Buscaglia

True love is neither physical nor romantic. True love is the acceptance of all that is, has been, will be and will not be.
Khalil Gibran

Love prevents death. Love is life. Everything, everything that I understand, I understand only because I love. This is what holds it all together.
Lev Tostoj

Loving yourself is the beginning of a life-long love story.
Oscar Wilde

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Phrases about love in philosophy

The most punished phrase I have ever heard: in true love it is the soul that envelops the body.
Friedrich Nietzsche

Love is made up of a single soul that lives in two bodies.
Aristotle

Love is not seen in a place and is not sought with the eyes of the body. His words are not heard, and when he comes to you, his steps are not heard.
Sant "Agostino

To love is to rejoice, while we believe we rejoice only if we are loved.
Aristotle

Phrases about love in psychology

Love is possible only if two people communicate with each other from the depths of their being, that is, if each of them feels themselves from the center of their being.
Erich Fromm

Love is an extensible concept that goes from heaven to hell, it brings together good and evil, the sublime and the infinite.
Carl Jung

Love is an active feeling, not a passive one; it is an achievement, not a surrender. Its active character can be summarized in the concept that love is above all giving and not receiving.
Erich Fromm

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Phrases about love in songs

Love is the greatest beauty.
Joni Mitchell

What is love
ask the wind
whipping his wail on the gravel
of the avenue of sunset.
Vinicio Capossela

Love is a temple, a supreme law.
U2

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