Love remains to this day as one of the most convoluted and indescribable aspects of our lives; ask anyone to define love and watch them draw a blank. People have written poems and ballads about it, fought wars over it, and built civilisations with it as the epicentre, and yet when pressed, most people would struggle to define it effectively. The inability to pin down the emotion we feel so deeply is what makes it so fascinating.

What is Love?

One reason as to why love is so hard to define is because it isn’t really one thing. Ethicist Joseph Fletcher identified four times of love; agape, the unconditional, selfless love that begs nothing in return; philia, the platonic love; storge, the familial and instinctual love; and eros, the creative, procreative love that draws individuals as partners.

The modern world carved things up differently; psychologist Robert Sternberg suggested that love is made up of three components: intimacy, which he defined as “the feeling of closeness and truly being known by someone”, passion, “the physical and romantic pull toward another person”, and commitment, “the conscious choice to stay”. By combining this different proportions, you get very different experiences; the dizzy infatuation of a new relationship, the quiet warmth of a long-lasting friendship, or the complete blend of all three that Sternberg called consummate love (1986).

Anthropologist Helen Fisher further added a neurological perspective. She identified three overlapping brain systems at work in love: lust, which is fuelled by sex hormones; attraction, fuelled by dopamine and norepinephrine; and attachment, fuelled by oxytocin and vasopressin (Fisher, 2004).

Love and the Body

The effects of love are not confined to how we feel. They also show up in our physical health too in unusual and peculiar ways. A large-scale analysis which spanned more than 300,000 people found that those with strong social relationships were 50% more likely to still be alive at their next analysis than those who were isolated (Holt-Lunstad, Smith and Layton, 2010). The researchers compared the negative impacts of isolation to that of smoking, even.

Furthermore, people in close, loving relationships tend to have lower blood pressures, stronger immune systems and faster recoveries from illnesses than those who are not. Married individuals on average live longer than those who are single, but interestingly the quality of the relationship matters enormously; a difficult marriage with continuous conflicts and high tension can inadvertently be worse for your physical health than being on your own (Kiecolt-Glaser and Newton, 2001).

Love and the Mind

The psychological case for love is just as interesting; adults who form secure attachments in their romantic relationships demonstrates better emotional regulation, lower rates of depression and anxiety, and a stronger sense of self-attribution (Mikulincer and Shaver, 2007).

On the other hand, the inverse is as equally insightful. Neuroimaging research suggests that social pain activates the same regions of the brain as physical pain does (Eisenburger, 2012). Therefore, the body does not distinguish between a broken bone and a broken heart; psychologically, those two pains which may appear distinct to us are identical to our bodies.

For some people, the end of a significant relationship can spiral into clinical depression as if they were involved in grave incident, which serves as a remainder of the importance of love to our psychological foundations.

Determinants of Attraction

But how do we fall in love, specifically eros, the procreational love? Research may suggest it is rarely as sporadic as it appears. Proximity is one of its driving factors; we tend to form romantic bonds with individuals of a particular demographic we encounter repeatedly, such as race or other genetic characteristics. Additionally, the similarity of someone in relation to us matters too, whether it be shared values or interests, humour or worldviews, similarity consistently predicts romantic compatibility more effectively than the notion of “opposites attract.”

The Loss of Love

And now the part no one wants to say out loud; love ends. Sometimes gradually, sometimes abruptly. The grief that follows the loss of a relationship, whether it be through a breakup or estrangement, can be psychologically devastating in way that are only recently being taken seriously.

On top of that, bodily regulatory systems, such as sleep or appetite, have been shown by researchers Sbarra and Hazan (2008) to deteriorate following the dissolution of an attachment bond with another person. The brain is forced to rewire to accommodate for the absence of an individual it had otherwise reorganised itself around. Routines change, and identity that was quietly shaped around a partner requires reconstruction.

Final Thought

The polymorphic attributes of love make it difficult to define in one sentence. Throughout one’s lifetime it takes on many different forms, in its presence or its absence, and depends on who we are, who we are with and who we aren’t with. It shapes mental health, whether for the better or the worse, and leaves its mark on us long after it’s made its impact. If I were to summarise it the best I can, it would be that love is more of a process than a feeling; a process we are constantly in the middle of. That is why we try to define it.

References

• Eisenberger, N. I. (2012). The pain of social disconnection: Examining the shared neural underpinnings of physical and social pain. Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 13(6), 421–434.
• Fisher, H. (2004). Why We Love: The Nature and Chemistry of Romantic Love. Henry Holt and Company.
• Holt-Lunstad, J., Smith, T. B., & Layton, J. B. (2010). Social relationships and mortality risk: A meta-analytic review. PLOS Medicine, 7(7), e1000316.
• Kiecolt-Glaser, J. K., & Newton, T. L. (2001). Marriage and health: His and hers. Psychological Bulletin, 127(4), 472–503.
• Mikulincer, M., & Shaver, P. R. (2007). Attachment in Adulthood: Structure, Dynamics, and Change. Guilford Press.
• Sternberg, R. J. (1986). A triangular theory of love. Psychological Review, 93(2), 119–135.
• Sbarra & Hazan (2008). Coregulation, dysregulation, self-regulation: An integrative analysis and empirical agenda for understanding adult attachment, separation, loss, and recovery. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 12(2), 141-167

Written by Fola A