What is Love?

When I was little, I used to watch movies where a boy and a girl would kiss for the first time, and almost immediately the boy would say, “I love you.” I remember asking my parents what love was. My mother told me, “When you grow up, you will know.” Looking back, I suspect she did not really know what it was either.

And perhaps that is the real issue. Love is one of the most spoken-about ideas in human life, yet few people can define it with any real clarity. We are surrounded by songs about love, films about love, vows made in the name of love, and entire industries built around the image of love. But do people truly know what it means? Or have they simply inherited a performance of it?

Is love the amount of carats in your diamond? Is it the wedding vows spoken before a crowd? Is it the honeymoon destination, the photographs, the flowers, and the carefully staged moments that signal romance to the outside world? Is that what people genuinely want, or is that what society has trained them to want?

From a young age, many of us are taught to recognise love through so-called “love languages” — touch, gifts, words, gestures, and displays of affection. We are shown grand gestures, expensive presents, public declarations, and emotional intensity, often without any serious thought about what all of this costs in reality. Few people stop to ask what that does to a household’s profit and loss, or whether long-term planning has simply become unromantic in the modern imagination.

We are rarely taught to look deeper. We are rarely told that many things can resemble love without actually being love at all. Desire can look like love. Attachment can look like love. Dependency can look like love. Possession can look like love. Even loneliness can disguise itself as love when a person is desperate not to be alone.

I have seen many people discover that their spouses cheated on them, only to hear the explanation framed in sentimental terms: that the relationship was no longer romantic, that the spark was gone, or that something was missing. But I think many people fail to recognise the financial strain and emotional pressure placed on the other person when love is measured by constant excitement, endless novelty, and continuous displays of romance. There is a cost to always having to deliver bells and whistles instead of simply bringing home bread and butter. Sometimes that cost is mental health. Sometimes it is peace of mind. Sometimes it is sanity.

No human being can be exciting every moment of every day. That is not real life. That is a fairy tale people tell each other to feel better. That is performance. And relationships built on performance do not endure for long. The demand for constant stimulation usually reflects insecurity more than love, and insecurity is far too unstable a foundation to sustain anything meaningful.

I once knew a woman who was deeply upset after being rejected by a wealthy suitor. She saw it as a loss. I did not. The moment I heard her describe the situation, I realised she had likely dodged a bullet. Wealth, status, and prestige can easily be mistaken for security, desirability, or even love. But in many wealthy families, their children are placed above all else. They protect their own first. No matter what a person of lower social standing does, it may never be enough. That is not love. That is hierarchy. And many people are not heartbroken over the loss of love, but over the loss of what they thought that social position might have given them.

Love also depends on the understanding you have of yourself. Do you love yourself? Do you love yourself with your strengths, your weaknesses, and your flaws? If you have not yet learned to love yourself, then the people who become attracted to you for various reasons may not be the shining knights you imagine them to be. Until you learn to accept yourself fully, you may not even recognise the depth of character it takes for a person to stay, to build, and to remain faithful through time.

Additionally, love cannot be a one-way street. It has to come from both sides: honesty and development. Without honesty, there is no trust. Without development, there is no future. Love that only flows in one direction eventually becomes duty, resentment, or performance.

So what is love? It is the constant appreciation of God for gifting you with your love, the appreciation of yourself for trying so hard regardless of the outcome, and the appreciation of your partner for his or her strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. You may try to change the other person, but unless you change yourself, you cannot ask your partner to.

In the end, love is not merely romance, excitement, or appearances. It is mutual truth, mutual growth, and mutual gratitude. It is the ability to see clearly, stay honestly, and build patiently. It is not measured by spectacle, but by substance; not by what is displayed, but by what is sustained. And perhaps that is why so many people speak of love, while so few truly understand what it asks of them.