Love encompasses a range of strong and positive emotional and mental states , from the most sublime virtue or good habit, the deepest interpersonal affection and to the simplest pleasure. Most commonly, love refers to a feeling of strong attraction and emotional attachment. Love is considered to be a positive and negative: with its virtue representing human kindness , compassion , and affection, as "the unselfish loyal and benevolent concern for the good of another"; and its vice representing human moral flaw , akin to vanity , selfishness , amour-propre , and egotism , as it potentially leads people into a type of mania, obsessiveness or codependency. Ancient Greek philosophers identified five forms of love : essentially, familial love in Greek , Storge , friendly love or platonic love Philia , romantic love Eros , guest love Xenia and divine love Agape. Modern authors have distinguished further varieties of love: unrequited love , empty love , companionate love , consummate love , infatuated love , self-love , and courtly love.
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Gery Karantzas receives funding from the Australian Research Council. He is the founder of relationshipscienceonline. From songs and poems to novels and movies, romantic love is one of the most enduring subjects for artworks through the ages. But what about the science? Historical, cultural and even evolutionary evidence suggests love existed during ancient times and across many parts of the world. Romantic love has been found to exist in of cultures looked at in one study. The complexity of love has much to do with how people experience it differently and how it can change over time. Read more: Friday essay: finding spaces for love. We often also experience warmth and closeness towards the people we like.
11 signs it’s love, according to neuroscience
Love is involuntary. Brain science tells us it's a drive like thirst. It's a craving for a specific person. It's normal, natural to "lose control" in the early stage of romance. It's a natural addiction and treating it like an addiction can help you. Click Here to take the Passionate Love Quiz yourself! But what, actually, is love. It means so many different things to different people. But we think that romance is one of three basic brain systems that evolved for mating and reproduction:. The sex drive or lust—the craving for sexual gratification --evolved to enable you to seek a range of potential mating partners.
For some people, love can be used to describe almost anything. OMG, I love this iced latte! This sweater is amazing, I love it. But, what about romantic relationships? For couples in long-term relationships, love means loyalty and commitment but for college students in the center of their first real relationship, love may feel messy and complicated. In the hopes of coming to a more collective understanding of love, we asked 10 people in different stages of their relationship to explain what love means to them. Love is having a companion, best friend, lover, partner, sounding board, cheerleader, advisor, and cuddle buddy through every avenue in the journey of life. But, it must be mutual. If a particular area is lacking on either side of the relationship, it makes it unideal and unhealthy.
