What Does Love Mean?

What does "Love" actually mean?

Science unlocks secrets of our deepest love

The mystery of what drives us to offer unconditional love is being unravelled

The Sunday Times
April 12, 2009

THE secrets of unconditional love, one of the most mysterious emotions, are being uncovered by scientists tracing the unique brain activity it creates.

They have found that the emotion, experienced as a desire to care for another person without any thought of reward, emerges from a complex interplay between seven separate areas of the brain.

Such brain activity has only limited overlap with the cerebral impulses seen in romantic or sexual love, suggesting it should be seen as an entirely separate emotion.

Professor Mario Beauregard, of Montreal University’s centre for research into neurophysiology and cognition, who led the study, said: “Unconditional love, extended to others without exception, is considered to be one of the highest expressions of spirituality. “However, nothing has been known regarding its neural underpinnings until now.”

Scientists are interested in unconditional love as evolutionary theory suggests we should feel such emotions only for people who help us pass our genes to future generations, such as spouses and children.

Our fascination with the many forms of love is reflected by Hollywood, with films such as War of the Worlds, where Tom Cruise’s character risks his life to save his estranged daughter. The unconditional love he displays contrasts with the obsessive sexual emotions in films such as Basic Instinct or the romantic love portrayed by Nicole Kidman and Hugh Jackman in the epic Australia.

In the real world, however, unconditional love is often experienced towards people with whom there is no connection. The question is: why? To carry out the study, Beauregard recruited subjects with a proven ability to feel strong unconditional love: low-paid assistants looking after people with learning difficulties. Beauregard asked them to evoke feelings of unconditional love and hold them in their minds while they had a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scan.

Of the seven brain areas that became active, three were similar to those of romantic love. The others were different, suggesting a separate kind of love.

Beauregard’s discoveries showed that some of the areas activated when experiencing unconditional love were also involved in releasing dopamine. This chemical is deeply involved in sensing pleasure, with rising levels strongly linked to feelings of reward and even euphoria.

In a research paper in an academic journal, he said: “The rewarding nature of unconditional love facilitates the creation of strong emotional links. Such robust bonds may critically contribute to the survival of the human species.”

Scientists: True love can last a lifetime

Scientists have discovered that people can have a love that lasts a lifetime. About 10 percent of couples appear to feel young love's first blush permanently. Research has suggested first stages of romantic love fade within 15 months

CNN
Jan 4, 2009

Love's first blush fading? Lost that loving feeling? Love is not all around?

Sick of cliches?

Take heart, scientists have discovered that people can have a love that lasts a lifetime.

Using brain scans, researchers at Stony Brook University in New York have discovered a small number of couples respond with as much passion after 20 years together as most people only do during the early throes of romance, Britain's Sunday Times newspaper reported.

The researchers scanned the brains of couples together for 20 years and compared them with results from new lovers, the Sunday Times said.

About 10 percent of the mature couples had the same chemical reactions when shown photographs of their loved ones as those just starting out.

Previous research has suggested that the first stages of romantic love fade within 15 months and after 10 years it has gone completely, the newspaper said.

"The findings go against the traditional view of romance -- that it drops off sharply in the first decade -- but we are sure it's real," said Arthur Aron, a psychologist at Stony Brook, told the Sunday Times.

Too Much Commitment May Be Unhealthy For Relationships, Professor Says

Romantic relationships establish special bonds between partners. Oftentimes, passionate rapport leads to permanent partnerships, and ultimately, the start of families.

ScienceDaily
Dec. 3, 2008

Sometimes, however, one or both partners place too much emotional weight on their relationship. As a result, men or women may tend to evaluate their self-worth solely based on the outcomes of their romantic interactions. This is what psychologists term as relationship-contingent self-esteem (RCSE), and, according to University of Houston researcher Chip Knee, it's an unhealthy factor in romantic relationships.

"Individuals with high levels of RCSE are very committed to their relationships, but they also find themselves at risk to become devastated when something goes wrong -- even a relatively minor event," said Knee, UH assistant professor of psychology and director of the university's Interpersonal Relations and Motivation Research Group. "An overwhelming amount of the wrong kind of commitment can actually undermine a relationship."

Knee added that RCSE can trigger depression and anxieties during even the most minor or common relationship-based incidents, such as miscommunication, short spats over noncritical matters or a critique of one's personality or appearance.

It also factors into one or more partners developing manic, obsessive (or needy) behaviors with regard to love.

RCSE might place one at risk for serious mood changes after break-ups, divorce or threats to one's relationship. Identifying it during the early stages of a relationship can prevent such negative outcomes or help partners recognize that they are incompatible.

Knee and a group of researchers observed the impact of RCSE among heterosexual college students in a series of studies. Their findings were presented in the paper "Relationship-Contingent Self-Esteem - The Ups and Downs of Romantic Relationships," published in the flagship Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.

Collaborating with Knee were Amber L. Bush of UH, Amy Canevello of the University of Michigan and Astrid Cook of Idiro Technologies.

Included in these studies was a 14-day diary procedure in which 198 participants recorded the most positive and negative events in their romantic relationships.

Also documented in this daily diary were participants' feelings about themselves and their relationships.

"What we found with this particular study was that people with higher levels of RCSE felt worse about themselves during negative moments in their relationships," Knee said. "It's as if it doesn't matter why the negative occurrence happens or who was at fault. The partners with stronger RCSE still feel badly about themselves."

Individuals with RCSE also are prone to react more emotionally to relationship-based situations, Knee added. Instead of taking a step back, analyzing a situation and determining how to best address it, those with RCSE respond immediately and impulsively.

"When something happens in a relationship, these individuals don't separate themselves from it," he said. "They immediately feel personally connected to any negative circumstance in a relationship and become anxious, more depressed and hostile."

RCSE is one of the research areas being explored by Knee and UH's Interpersonal Relations and Motivation Research Group (IRMRG).

The group studies close relationships and health and conducts research via laboratory experiments, surveys and longitudinal diary methods.

Research is focused on how individuals' beliefs about relationships guide their thoughts, emotions and behaviors; the unhealthy ways in which people attach themselves to close relationships; and how to reduce or even eliminate interpersonal defensiveness.

'Worthless' gifts get the good girls

Men who spend big money wining and dining their dates are not frittering away hard-earned cash. According to a pair of UK researchers, they are merely employing the best strategy for getting the girl without being taken for granted.

27 July 2005
NewScientist.com
Anna Gosline

Using mathematical modelling, Peter Sozou and Robert Seymour at University College London, UK, found that wooing girls with costly, but essentially worthless gifts such as theatre tickets or expensive dinners out is a winning courtship strategy for both sexes.

Females can assess how serious or committed a male plans to be and males can ensure they are not just seducing 'gold-diggers' girls who take valuable presents with no intention of accepting subsequent dates.

Sozou came about the idea after reading about a man in his local newspaper. The man had been paying the rent of a woman he considered was his girlfriend he was giving her a valuable gift. But she had been heartlessly manipulating him, dating another man on the sly while accepting money from her unwitting sugar daddy.

"It spurred me onto thinking that if he had just been buying her expensive dinners, and not paying her rent, she wouldnt have strung him along so much," says Sozou.
Dating and mating

So he and Seymour built a model based on a series of dating decisions. In the model males had to decide what kind of gift to offer females valuable, extravagant or cheap based on how attractive he finds her. The females had to either accept or decline the gift and then decide whether to mate with the gift-giver a decision also weighted on the 'attractiveness' of their prospective partner.

When they measured the different outcomes of all the steps, they found the best solution for the males was to give extravagant, but intrinsically value-free gifts the vast majority of the time, while giving gifts of material value very occasionally.

The model showed that if males gave valuable gifts too often, the females would start to exploit them: the males have no clue as to the females real intentions in the model. Put simply, the females just take the diamonds and run. But when the gifts are worthless, an uninterested female has little incentive to accept, gaining no return on what could be just turn into the simple waste of an evening. Only girls who are serious would bother to go the distance.
Worthless balls

Sozou and Seymour believe their conclusions about people find support in the actions of animals, such as the dance fly. Males of this species give worthless cotton balls to entice partners into mating and they work although other scientists interpret this as male trickery.

Alison Lenton, a social psychologist at the University of Edinburgh, UK, questions some of the models assumptions, however. For example, one assumption is that females obtain a negative outcome for accepting an unattractive, though committed, male. Women have been shown to prioritise traits associated with good parental care above physical attractiveness, she says.

The model also fails to take the potential effects of cheating females into account. Some female birds raise their chicks with a 'nice' male and engage in short-term copulations with an attractive male - there is similar evidence among humans. In this way, females may get the best of both worlds.

And what is more, says Lenton, psychologists have found that experiential purchases like theatre tickets make people more happy in the long run than material purchases. "I do not necessarily agree that theatre tickets are 'worthless'," she says.

Journal reference: Proceedings of the Royal Society B (DOI: 10.1098/rspb.2005.3152)

Is it over?

Falling out of love can sometimes be just as easy as falling in love. Working out whether it's just a phase or if your relationship has reached the end of the line is one of life's hardest decisions. Relationship psychotherapist Paula Hall asks the difficult questions.

17 July 2005

The pros and cons

When people try to decide if their relationship's over, they often find themselves weighing up the pros and cons.

On the pros side they put all their partner's positive character traits, the happy memories and the advantages of being together.

On the cons they list all the things they don't like about their partner, the painful memories and the reasons why living together sometimes feels impossible.

The problem with this system is that they're never measuring like for like. For example, when listing personal qualities, how many negatives would it take to counteract being an excellent mother? And how many happy memories does it take to outweigh an affair?

Unfortunately, there's no formula and no conclusive tests when it comes to deciding whether your relationship's over. All you can do is ask yourself some difficult, soul-searching questions and see what the answers bring.
Is love enough?

Love means different things to different people and at different stages of their lives, so can it be relied on in the decision-making process? For example, one woman may spend years in an abusive relationship, saying "I love him," while another will walk away from a seemingly idyllic marriage because she's no longer "in love".

Love can sometimes blind us to the reality of what we really have. And although it's difficult, we can choose to love someone and we can choose to stop loving them. As well as being a feeling, love is something we do.
Do you like your partner?

Before you can love someone, you have to like them.

If you enjoy being with your partner, agree with how they think and behave, and share the same dreams in life, you're doing well. If your partner is also someone whom you respect, trust and feel affection for, you have all the basics for love to grow.
Can you communicate?

All relationships hit problems at one time or another; the key to overcoming them is communication.

Within your relationship, there needs to be a genuine capacity for sharing and expressing your thoughts and feelings in a way that feels OK for you both. There also need to be ways to resolve conflict and for you both to address any unmet needs.
Is change possible?

If there's a particular issue that makes you want to leave, you first need to consider whether it's possible to make changes to resolve the problem.

Is the problem something you can let go, or is it fundamental to your happiness? If it's the former, you have to ask yourself if you can change; if it's the latter, can your partner do the changing?

If your partner doesn't agree that there's a problem, they won't change. If they do agree and are willing to change, you have to decide whether you believe they have the capacity to change.
Is it too late?

There's no doubt that some situations do get better with time. Even the most painful betrayals can become less significant if there's an ability to forgive and move on.

But if either you or your partner has been hanging on to a grudge for years and there's no indication that the pain has eased at all, you may decide it's too late for a resolution.

Another indication that it may be too late to save the relationship is if one of you has already started to develop a life that excludes the other. This might include a change in career or lifestyle, or starting another relationship that you don't want to end. If this is the case, then even though you haven't made a verbal decision to end the relationship, it may be that emotionally you've already left.
Further help

Deciding to end a relationship is extremely difficult and not a decision to be taken quickly or lightly. Many people find that talking through their thoughts and feelings with a counsellor can help. To find out more, see Do you need counselling?
Recommended reading

Too Good to Leave, Too Bad to Stay: A Step-by-Step Guide to Resolving Your Relationship by Mira Kirshenbaum (Michael Joseph)

How do I love thee? Which of the nine ways?

Next time you board the streetcar named desire, ask yourself: is this hedonistic love, or are you already in a role-bound relationship? If the first, your love will be gone with the wind. If the second, brace yourself for a brief encounter.

Tim Radford, science editor
June 8, 2005
Guardian

Simon Watts of Nottingham Trent University and Paul Stenner of University College London analysed the nature of modern love by asking 34 women and 16 men to agree or disagree with a set of 60 propositions. They identified nine varieties of love, reported in the British Journal of Social Psychology today. They are:

A grown-up version that involves mutual trust, recognition and support

The "Cupid's dart" variety, in which couples - think Antony and Cleopatra or even Burt Lancaster and Deborah Kerr in From Here to Eternity - are swept away by blind passion

Hedonistic love, concerned with personal and perhaps fleeting pleasure, the theme of much Hollywood film noir

Love as the ultimate connection: an essentially romantic view

Demythologised love that recognises the need for hard work, patience and compromise to make things work

Love as transformative adventure: the emotional rollercoaster experience of a Bridget Jones figure

From Cupid's arrow to a role-bound relationship dictated by society's expectations - the experience of the tortured couple in David Lean's film Brief Encounter

From Cupid's arrow to the security of close friendship

Dyadic partnership love, in which two people become a single unit (and tend to finish each other's sentences)

"I wanted to try and find a way of capturing people's experiences that went beyond asking them," said Mr Watts. "When you do ask them they are very rarely able - even if they wish to - to tell you the whole story, to get it into words. We want to map the cultural state of love. What is the climate of love at the current time?" he said.