Is Love a Feeling or State of Being?

If love is a feeling, than we are rather helpless. Feelings are spontaneous, based on obscure chemical processes and incomprehensible to most of us. I believe many consider themselves at the mercy of their emotions. If love is a state of being, then it is a decision to love and completely under our control. For me, the answer is in what love is or what it is not, as I understand it.

To me, love is not desire, it is not sex, it is not the tingling we feel the first time we meet someone we're attracted to. It isn't the feeling we get eating chocolate, or riding roller coasters, or watching movies. It isn't euphoria or lust or happiness or joy.

To me, love is the opposite of fear, and that's all it needs to be.

If we only feel love, we can never understand it beyond ourselves. If we express love by opposing fear, understanding is given.

reply to post by TravelerintheDark


I think it is both.

It is a feeling when first experienced with someone or something new. It is a state of mind when the feeling solidifies into something more permanent and lasting.

JMO....

You can love someone and know it's an absolute disaster, that person would be very bad for you through no fault of their own, so I reckon you need both the feeling and the holism for it to be balanced.

I'd say it's a feeling that starts out immensely strong, but then subsides over time...

[edit on 12-10-2008 by JediK]

Love is an action, it is what you do. There are both good and bad feelings that acompany this, but to love someone/thing is not to have a giddy feeling, but self-sacrificing actions toward them and the same in return.

ninth beat me to it. Love is an action. It's something I do.

My love for my husband has grown stronger over time. The more we love, the stronger we are.

Love is when your soul finds something more important than itself.

I believe it is a choice of ones thoughts such that they produce the chemicals in your body that you crave.

See Choice Theory; see What the Bleep do We KNow?

Thank you for the responses thus far. I'd like to say, I don't see any answer as right or wrong as it is a personal question. My own experiences have involved finding inherent familial love to be a fallacy yet being engulfed in the mystery of the love of someone who was a stranger to me most of my life. I've spent 16 years with the same person, long past the light-hearted giddiness, reaching a point where love has become the dedication of doing what I can to fulfill her life just as she does mine. In this way I find love becomes much less confined and easier to apply as it only requires me to understand my own limitations.

For this reason I see love as neither automatic or uncontrollable. So I'd like to pose a couple follow-up questions if anyone is interested:

How does your view of love apply to your sense of self-love?

In your view, can you love someone without expectation of return?

Ultimately I wonder if we can view love as an equal opportunity. To this end, I work to separate acts of love from the emotions they inspire. I give to someone and feel good about myself. The love is in the giving. The good feeling is a nice fringe benefit.

[edit on 12-10-2008 by TravelerintheDark]

Love is a psychic connection with another.

This doesn't necessarily involve telepathy or anything weird. Most of us experience it automatically when being kind to our children or our pets.

The ability to love can be developed by developing understanding, learning to trust, and being kind to each other.

It is damaged by guilt, greed and fear.

As we mature, we learn how to choose our thoughts and actions in order to enhance the self we want to be.

Some learn to love more, some learn to stop loving.

reply to post by TravelerintheDark


View of love and self love? If you can't love yourself, you can never truly love anyone or anything else. Trite, but personally, I've found it to be true. I was in numerous relationships where it didn't work because I was always trying to overcompensate with the other person to make up for perceived shortcomings I saw in myself. I quit doing that and spent time (a lot of time) alone, getting to know myself. Once I did that, came to terms with "me" and grew to like me, I found a real love outside of myself. And, it started off as that giddy, high-flying feeling and has settled into something real and solid.

Love without expectation of return? Of course. I don't love my man because I want something from him. I love him because of who and what he is. In my mind and heart, real love is wanting the other person to be happy....with or without me. Love can't be selfish.

I've learned to look at love with a little less emotion and a little more logic.

[edit on 10/12/2008 by skeptic1]

Both, IMO, love is an energy, we are made of energy and our emotions(feelings) are energy therefore it is both..

reply to post by TravelerintheDark


Love is the opposite of fear, that's all.

To me, love is not desire, it is not sex, it is not the tingling we feel the first time we meet someone we're attracted to. It isn't the feeling we get eating chocolate, or riding roller coasters, or watching movies. It isn't euphoria or lust or happiness or joy.

To me, love is the opposite of fear, and that's all it needs to be.

If we only feel love, we can never understand it beyond ourselves. If we express love by opposing fear, understanding is given.

Currect. Love is the ultimate of acceptance of all and everything, love is when you have a disagreement you still believe in love, love is passion of all emotions.

Anger is of just one.

Anger is a emotion but it is a lost emotion, love is emotion of feeling thy self.

If you come to accept life, the world, of all creations then you will come to understand the answer to your questions "why am i here".

trust in thy self and you shall be free.

Love is everything, Love is every single emotion you can imagine, Love brings out every emotion you can imagine.

Love is your soul, your inner hidden being, if you try and produce Love it is never fulfilling, Love just happens and is not in our control, you realise Love, you don't just do it, nobody is capable of just deciding to Love something or someone, your soul has to desire it, and then its there, you cant turn it off, you cant switch it on.

Love is so misunderstood, even if you try and not Love, you cant do it, you can kid yourself and convince yourself you cant love, but it is unavoidable, it is mistaken for Lust, mistaken for desire.

How many of us are capable of unconditional Love? that is a kind of Love where you Love someone so much and with so much of yourself, and the only way to tell is by Loving someone so much that you will allow anything to happen to make the happiness of that person a reality, even if they want to be with someone else or go somewhere else, do you Love someone enough to let them go? do you Love someone enough to understand that the person you Love, that their happiness is what your own heart desires the most, and even though it will rip out your heart and stamp on it, you Love them enough to accept the heartache.

So therefore Love is nothing any of us can control, can you tell me of an emotion that in some way is not connected to love? it is the only part of who we are as Humans that we can not ever dream of controlling, and IMO proof that the soul does exist.