Love: A Word We Think We Know
Love: A Word We Think We Know
Sooner or later, a question catches up with us. It gives no warning. It can surface as we watch a couple who have been together for thirty years, or on an ordinary evening while folding the laundry: what do I really mean when I say I love someone?
A definition we never chose
Most of us have never answered that question honestly. We carry an idea of love the way we carry an accent: it settled in without our choosing it, without our ever examining it. It comes from the family table we grew up around, from early relationships that left their mark, from films we saw too young to take as anything but literal truth. Sometimes it also comes from a wound that never fully healed, one that quietly goes on dictating what we accept and what we run from.
We didn't write this inherited definition. Yet it's the one making the choices for us: who we're drawn to, what we put up with, when we leave, and when we stay though we ought to go.
The rush is not proof
One misconception dies hard, kept alive by decades of love songs and screenplays: the idea that intensity is the measure of love. The more it overwhelms us, the more real it must be. The more the longing burns, the greater the love.
In his triangular theory of love, psychologist Robert Sternberg distinguishes three ingredients that don't move at the same pace: passion, intimacy and commitment. Passion flares up quickly and burns out just as fast. Intimacy builds quietly, one conversation at a time, one shared silence after another. Commitment, finally, takes over when neither of the other two is enough on its own. It is a decision we keep renewing, whereas passion is a fire that simply happens to us.
The rush of early love is a signal, sometimes accurate, sometimes misleading, that deserves to be questioned rather than obeyed.
What lasting couples do differently
Researcher John Gottman spent much of his career observing couples, some heading for a break-up, others in it for the long haul. One finding comes up again and again in his work: the couples who last aren't the ones who avoid conflict, but the ones who know how to repair things afterwards. A hurtful remark, a sulk that drags on, a clumsy moment: everything hinges on what comes next, the gesture that mends the rift.
Seen this way, love looks less like a permanent state than a practice. One we take up again every day, imperfectly, and can never take for granted.
Asking the question, for real
Redefining what we call love doesn't happen in a single evening of reflection. Still, some questions, asked honestly, can open a door:
- Do I love this person, or do I love what their attention says about me?
- Am I staying by choice, or out of fear of the emptiness I'd face if I left?
- When everything is fine, what do I feel: peace, or merely the absence of danger?
- Who taught me what I think I know about love, and is that really the story I want to carry on?
None of them has a ready-made right answer. They're there to switch off the autopilot, if only for a moment.
An idea we can rewrite
There is something reassuring about this emotional inheritance: what was passed down can also be corrected. We can't change our story, but we can change how we read it, and with it, what it keeps writing inside us.
Perhaps loving truly depends less on how strongly we feel than on how clearly we choose. It begins with the courage to ask ourselves what we mean by love, without settling for the first answer that comes to mind.
