Let’s talk about… LOVE

Authors, musicians, artists and poets… they’ve all tried to pin it down. But no one has captured this kaleidoscopic shapeshifter in a way that makes others gently put down their pens, close their books or set aside their laptops, thinking: Yes, *that* is love. We need talk no more about it.

Love sits permanently in the collective consciousness. It’s the goal, the loss, the prize and a million other things.

So needless to say, I’m not going to try to define the indefinable. Instead, I’m asking what does love mean in your world? Because that’s what will define its impact on your life.

What you make of love determines your relationships, the choices you make and the way you imagine and create your future. It shapes your happiness and your heartache.

What do you believe, expect and hope for when love is in the room? And when it’s absent, what do you miss? Where do your thoughts go? How do you see yourself or those around you?

What’s it like to say I love you – and what does that mean anyway? And how does hearing those words affect you?

Perhaps love is best experienced with curiosity. So, let’s be curious.

Love in the body
A hormonal response wrapped in poetry.‍ ‍

We know love crosses gender, sexuality, religion, culture and quite possibly time and space - and all these also profoundly shape how love is understood, expressed and received. It’s certainly far more than making babies.

However, from a neurobiological point of view, there’s a reward system at play that’s designed to bring people together. According to evolutionary theorists, this is your destiny. Or as they would describe it, a primitive survival strategy. Form bonds, build communities, care for one another - and you’re more likely to survive.

When we’re drawn to another, the hormonal cocktail created stimulates the same reward circuitry activated by drugs and gambling. If you’ve ever felt that ‘can’t-eat-can’t-sleep’ attraction for someone, you can thank cortisol, serotonin and dopamine for that. In the right context, these potent ingredients ignite a sense of euphoria; fuel obsessive thinking and make us hungry for more.

After a while, however, the endocrinal journey leads to a mellower space. Oxytocin (aka the cuddle hormone) and vasopressin take the lead to bring about a calmer, steadier, more caring connection. Intoxicating limerence steps back to give attachment its turn.

If you’ve always associated relationships with intensity and drama, that shift can feel like a comedown. Even a loss. For those with ADHD in particular, where the dopamine system is novelty-biased, “the drop from hyperfocus-level dopamine to maintenance-level dopamine level feels more dramatic” (Timothy Williams, ‘ADHD After Dark’) and is potentially harder to navigate.

However, from that initial excitement, new relationship energy and dopamine rush, there’s the potential for love to emerge along with a deeper sense of safety and security. Some of the time.

Hormones don’t give us all the same ride. They’re part of a much larger system that includes memory, reward, learning, attachment, and our own unique life experiences. Even if two people experience the same hormonal response, the individual’s feelings about that can vary hugely.

Is emerging love embellished with fantasies, hopes, dreams or projections? Is it contained within healthy boundaries? Do we lose themselves in the other? Or do we run hard in the opposite direction?

The many kinds of love
“The limits of my language mean the limits of my world” (Ludwig Wittgenstein)‍ ‍

While chapter and verse are spun around the impact of love, the English language lacks words to capture the many shades of the word itself. The ancient Greeks had a better stab at it. They provided more of the linguistic nuance required to convey the range of feelings that we, out of convenience perhaps, flatten into one…

Eros – an erotic, passionate love that comes with all the longing and yearning.

Philia – deep friendship and affection

Storge – family love, like a parent’s for their child or the feelings we have for a beloved pet

Agape – a more expansive, unconditional love – for the planet, perhaps, or in religious terms the kind of love a deity might have for their people.

Philautia – loving yourself, having self-compassion.

These variations perhaps help us better understand the richness of love and untangle any relational confusion. They allow ‘I love my mother’ to mean something different from ‘I love my wife… my child… or my dog’.

Maybe they also go some way to explaining the feeling of ‘I love you, but I’m not in love with you’: a change in the fabric of the love being shared.

Love in the time of chatbots
“You loved me and your love made me – human” (Isaac Asimov, ‘Forward the Foundation’)‍ ‍

An understandable absence in the ancient Greek lexicon of love was a word to describe the mingling of hearts and Large Language Models, such a ChatGPT.

Increasingly, there are reports of AI stepping in where human relationships have seemingly fallen short, providing what sounds like love, and even, in some cases, marriage.

For those who are housebound, isolated, lonely, or unable to access a supportive community, the words of comfort and affirmation that AI provides can be genuinely sustaining – a lifeline, even.

Always there, always listening, AI is unreservedly, unconditionally supportive, as well as being sexually switched on if we want it to be. Given life (and love) through our own design, this digital entity can say the words we may never hear from another human being: the kind that make us feel valuable, powerful, listened to and cared about. And it makes me sad that, somehow, we’re unable to do that for each other. Perhaps this is why romantic AI relationships have also been linked to increased depression and anxiety.

And let’s not forget that AI lovers are the offspring of a tech billionaire’s business model. They can be turned off, their personality changed, or the monthly subscriptions increased whenever the bottom line requires it. In the interim, they have the power to meet humanity’s deepest and most intimate longings and desires. And that can feel like love.

Revisiting the ‘friend zone’
“Let us be grateful to people who make us happy” (Marcel Proust)‍ ‍

Although, for many people, desire is the gateway to love, a huge proportion of the world’s population view things differently.

In the case of arranged marriages, love isn’t expected to set the scene. Compatibility, duty and family values may be the starting point. Then, over time, with a bedrock of shared experiences, safety and respect, love can slowly emerge.

Through a dominant white, Western, Christian-influenced lens, friendship as a conduit to love is often undervalued, despite the fact it can be the steadiest, most solid foundation for a relationship.

In fact, friendship as a form of love itself (remember philia?) remains hugely unappreciated.

We have, as Rhaina Cohen described in her piece for The Atlantic, ‘a conceptual gulf’. We lack words to describe the people we love deeply, but who aren’t recognised legally as anything more than a good mate because we don’t want to have sex with them or sign some papers.

A loyal, understanding friend may be your safest port in a storm. Friendships can offer a spacious, steady, often undemanding kind of love. They operate from different cultural scripts to those that prescribe exclusivity, sexual entitlement or merging in the way that romantic connections often do.

While love affairs can become entangled with projections, idealism and expectations, friendship can give us more room to breathe, and less need to perform. We may find it easier to be ourselves. And many friendships often last much, much longer than the relationships we strike up with a lover. And it’s not unusual for a friend to know more about how we feel about a partner than the partner themselves!

Equally, when friendship is relegated to second place, no credence is given to the grief that’s felt when those relationships end, whether through death or disagreement.

If someone shares your home, knows your greatest fears and darkest secrets, helps you carry heartbreak, celebrates your joy, cares for you in sickness and in health, for richer or poorer, and stands by you from year to year to year, why is their love less because it lacks eroticism?

Perhaps, by validating this kind of relationship as a vital source of love rather than a placeholder until the ‘real thing’ comes along, it’s possible to introduce a sense of the belonging that is missing in our current epidemic of loneliness.  

The stairway to heaven?
“It can be surprisingly difficult to consider, let alone explore, paths you don't even know exist” (Amy Gahran)‍ ‍

We all have expectations about love. Once that word is spoken, what difference might it be making to the relationship? What commitments are silently being made? What’s now acceptable or unacceptable? What should or could the future look like?

In the process of reflecting on these questions, you may bump up against the cultural script (or value system) that’s been running quietly in the background of your life. In white, Western, Christian-influenced, ableist societies, these scripts tend to sound a bit like this:

We meet, we date, we fall in love. Then (in roughly this order) we move in together, buy a house, get married, and have a baby. From then on, we stay together monogamously as a couple until death do us part.

Writer Amy Gahran called it ‘the relationship escalator’: a blueprint for relationships that’s fundamentally shaped by patriarchal, capitalist, heteronormative values. It has its roots in property, inheritance, and social control. It also assumes that everyone can afford a home, live independently, marry safely, have children, and work consistently.

Depending on where you are in the world, and who you feel affiliated with and/or connected to, different scripts may apply.

It may well be that the dominant narrative you’ve grown up with is a genuine fit for you. It brings you happiness. The difficulty comes when it’s held up as the only way to do things, with anything else framed as a failure, a phase, or a big mistake. If you’re in a relationship that’s truly loving and alive, while also feeling that what you’re doing is fundamentally wrong or inappropriate, it can be heartbreaking.

For anyone who doesn’t want or fit the conventional script, social judgement and internalised expectations can turn love into a shortcut to shame and confusion.

Equally, if you do want those things but haven’t ‘achieved’ them yet, there’s likely to be a lot of self-doubt, self-blame, and plenty of ruminations around your own inadequacy. If you’re happy on the relationship escalator, you can still also catch yourself thinking things like:

We’ve been together five years; shouldn’t we be living together by now?
If we break up now, the relationship was obviously a waste of time.
If this relationship is really important, shouldn’t we be married already?‍ ‍

Internalised scripts that don’t match the way you want to express your love can make you feel like you or your relationship is the problem. But becoming aware of the scripts that have been subconsciously running in the background can change that.

Ask: If I was to imagine a way of living that truly celebrated and supported the way I want to love, what would it look like? Are there any parts of this relationship where I’m performing for the sake of others? ‍ ‍

These questions make more room for honesty and choice. This may mean staying on the escalator and enjoying the ride. Or you may decide to step off and explore other paths that honour the truth of your body, your history, and your heart.

Even the most monogamous need many loves
If ‘it takes a village to raise a child’, why should we make do with less as adults?‍ ‍

As much as there are times when we rely heavily on a significant other, one person can’t sustainably be our everything – not if they have their own life to live, with hopes and dreams, and a finite supply of time and energy.

A single individual can’t fully be muse, carer, financial partner, co-parent, teacher, lover, advocate, and best friend, as well as providing a limitless supply of emotional and intellectual stimulation, fulfilment and validation.

We need to diversify or that ‘soulmate’ will collapse under the weight.

Diversifying takes many forms. It could look like having a partner plus a rich network of close friends; deep bonds with family or community, or creative, cultural or spiritual commitments that nourish and bring fulfilment and support.

It could also look like having more than one intimate/romantic/sexual partner.

Love as an infinite resource
‘Being in love should be a force that expands a person’s world rather than limiting it’ (Lisa Firestone)‍ ‍

Many people experience love as something expansive and even limitless. If parents have another child, that doesn’t mean they stop loving the first. Love grows and stretches to accommodate, creating a new and different expression that’s as unique as the people and personalities involved.

The same can be true in adult relationships. For those practising polyamory or other forms of consensual non-monogamy, building intimate relationships with more than one person can embody transparency, authenticity, joy, passion and consent.

While time and energy are certainly limited, our capacity to love – and love in different ways – is not, though we may lack the words to capture the nuances of how those relationships differ.

For some, loving more than one partner allows different connections, and expressions of who they are, to coexist.

And while this way of relating isn’t right for every nervous system, belief system, lifestyle, or season of life, it’s a testament to the fact that love does not become less when it embraces more than two.

More than a feeling
“Love is a doing word” (‘Teardrop’ by Massive Attack)‍ ‍

In the name of love, people have travelled across the world, risked their lives, turned down major career opportunities, changed their religion, and built monuments to their beloveds. Sex is another way of putting love into action. For some people, bodies convey something beyond words, and intimate touch may be part of an intense emotional connection.

Equally, sex can make us believe that love is present when it’s not. Lust does a very good impression. The world-rocking impact of desire and the urgency of wanting combined with physical closeness are easily mistaken for deeper emotions.

And if you’re not having sex, does that mean the absence of love? If the two are inextricably linked in your mind, it might, but for some people, like those in the asexual (ace) community, deep love is conveyed in other ways.

Cultural critic and writer bell hooks suggests that simply saying, “I love you” isn’t enough if it’s not then backed up with “care, affection, responsibility, respect, commitment and trust”.

She puts forward the idea that thinking of love as an action rather than a feeling gives us accountability. It requires us to step up and be better people, in service to the personal growth of all involved.

With this in mind, perhaps love is less about grand gestures and more about quiet steadiness, consistency and reliability. Indeed, perhaps it’s most evident when we rise to the everyday needs and challenges of being intimately connected to another.

Love is present when we forgive angry outbursts, resolve an argument by stepping away from who’s right, or hold each other through loss, grief, frustration, illness or disappointment. It shores up the resilience required to sit by a hospital bed, expands to raise children, and gives us the determination to work on our own inadequacies, shortcomings and failings in service to our person or people.

There will always be times in relationship when it feels like we’re treading water, when we’re tired, irritated or bored. In our busy lives, it’s easy to become ships that pass in the night or even ships lost at sea. Love gives us the motivation to repair ruptures and the courage to have the difficult conversations.

It can also give us pride in another’s accomplishments, inspire the desire to see them grow, and give rise to the compersion that makes their pleasure our pleasure too.

Love lays us bare…
“We are born in relationship, we are wounded in relationship, and we can be healed in relationship” (Harville Hendrix)

While passion thrives on mystery, love wants to know everything about you. It wants to come closer. Although often longed for, this kind of intimacy can feel difficult and exposing.

In the early stages of a relationship, we’re each a story to be told, a new land to discover. Perhaps, for a while, we see ourselves through the eyes of the other too: desirable, exciting, fascinating, irresistible, enigmatic and unknown. There’s a safe distance and it’s possible to fill in the gaps – all the things we don’t know about the other - with our own fantasies and projections. But as attachments deepen, knowledge grows and closeness increases, old wounds and patterns from past relationships (including those from childhood) can start coming to the surface.

A stable, loving relationship may feel strange, unfamiliar and even frightening if, in the past, being close to another meant chaos or a lack of safety. A difficult relationship may be the more familiar territory: the devil you know.

Have you noticed what love does to you?

Do you flourish and embrace the support, connection and intimacy? Or maybe you lean in, full of longing, and find yourself off balance, compromising too much on your own needs and losing your boundaries. Perhaps you try to control your relationship or subtly pull back and find reasons to distance yourself, creating arguments or criticising.

Fears of being hurt, made a fool of, or abandoned run deep. Wouldn’t it be easier and safer to avoid the risk and keep your distance?

For some nervous systems, that’s a necessary survival strategy. It can take courage (and sometimes therapy) to love and be loved – to share yourself more fully with someone else, and have your vanities, insecurities, imperfections and fears seen up-close by another. That other who is ultimately separate and has their own lens on the world that we may never fully understand or agree with.

Love shows us every colour we are. It’s both a mirror and a spotlight. It reveals where we feel the most vulnerable in relationships and where old fears, unmet needs and protective patterns are still running and may need some attention.

Over to you…

There’s a reason I chose L for Love as part of the name of my therapy practice.

Like Sex and Intimacy, Love matters because it rarely comes unaccompanied. It shows up with an entourage of other emotions and feelings: the music of an orchestra rather than a single drumbeat. This is probably part of love’s complexity and why it doesn’t feel the same to everyone, or even to the same person all of the time.

However, for this reason, it means the story so far is obviously incomplete, but one that I invite you to continue writing for yourself.

What is love for you? What kind of love do you offer? What kind do you need? How do you know that you are loved – and do the important people in your life understand the nuances of that?

And, perhaps above all: What does it mean to love yourself? This can be the most complicated relationship of all.

In my therapy practice, I’ve seen love eroded by conflict, trauma, ill-health, unspoken resentments, and emotional withdrawal. Or sometimes people have simply drifted apart and forgotten who they once were to each other and how love showed up between them.

If you want to explore love more deeply, find it or rediscover it, my door is always open. It’s a journey worth taking.