Love is the most powerful emotion a human being can experience. The complication, however, is that almost nobody knows what love is. Why is it so difficult to find love? That is easy to understand if you know that the word “love” is not the same as one’s feeling of love.
The word “love” expresses a human virtue that is based on compassion, affection, and kindness. This is a state of being, that has nothing to do, with something or someone outside yourself. This is considered the purest form of Love.
However, love is never constant and rigid it changes depending on our mind frames and experiences. The love you feel for your partner is not the same as the love you feel for your mother. Even the love for your partner changes in time. You feel different emotions for different situations and people.
Here are some of the states of love that you might experience in one lifetime:
Natural affection
Also described as platonic love. It is perhaps the simplest love of all since it mainly draws from friendships and familial love. There are no strings attached and no sexual intentions either. It’s pure, friendly and something we experience from a very young age probably before we hit puberty and become fully aware of our bodies.
Crushes
We've all had crushes at one point in our lives. These are really agitating and confusing feelings. When you have a crush on someone it means you have developed a strong desire for another person. A crush might make you get butterflies in your stomach, shy, and even make you blush at the sight of your crush. However, it's advisable not to jump to conclusions and mistake a silly crush for love.
One sided love
Love is enjoyed when it can be reciprocated and both parties are genuine in their affections for their partners. However, this doesn't prove true every time, sometimes you love people who can never love you back. It is neither their fault or yours, but if they lead you on then they're to blame. This is a love filled with heartbreaks and one that almost all of us have experienced.
Romantic love
This is the kind that people refer to as falling in love. When you fall in love with someone, you start to experience feelings and urges that are quite unexplainable and confusing. This single emotion can cause so many hormonal, chemical and emotional changes, it’s almost unbelievable. You want to be with your sweetheart all the time, and even when you’re not together, you can’t help wanting to be together.
True love
This is a consuming kind of love. One that everyone spends their life looking for. It is a selfless kind of love that makes both partners disregard their feelings in totality, or just place them second to their partner's needs and wants. If both of you care about each other and love each other selflessly, you’re in the middle of a special type of love that few ever experience.
Long-standing love
This is the kind of love that has beaten all the rigors and upheavals of the time. When a couple has survived through it all; the fights, the breakups, the arguments and still managed not to hate or resent each other, even remotely then this is a long-standing love. Couples who have managed to live for years together have this.
Limerence
Limerence as an involuntary cognitive and emotional state in which a person feels an intense romantic desire for another person. It may be summed as a sexual and erotic desire kind of love. This is a state of mind when you know that you like someone but yet at the same time, you can’t describe it as love. Limerence is a dangerous feeling that just can’t be explained, it borders on obsession and is a much more intense version of a crush.
Self-love
This is the icing on the cake. This where an individual accepts themselves totally, with all their flaws and shortcomings without ever feeling the need to change anything about themselves. The best relationship anyone can ever seek is one with themselves. It is the basis from which all other love originates. If you're confident enough to love yourself then you will be confident and genuine in your love for another. After all, Charity begins at home!