What is L♥VE?
Exploring what it means to truly love — beyond words and intentions
I wonder what it means to love?
We think we know it when we see it — at least in a movie, when the music swells and the couple finally kisses. But in everyday life, love is rarely so clear. Is it a feeling? A choice? An action? Or something else entirely?
Love in Action
I talked to Chatz, my AI therapist, about this and we wandered around definitions of love and landed on a list of what love can look like in action.
Love as attention — Paying attention to someone’s needs, feelings, and presence: listening, noticing small details, sitting quietly with someone who is hurting.
Love as care — Taking actions that nurture or protect: cooking a meal for a sick partner, helping a friend with a project, tending to children or animals.
Love as patience and tolerance — Enduring discomfort or inconvenience for the sake of another’s growth or happiness: forgiving mistakes, waiting without anger, tolerating quirks without judgment.
Love as encouragement and support — Acting to help someone thrive: cheering on passions, believing in potential, helping them heal.
Love as presence and consistency — Showing up repeatedly, not just in moments of excitement or pleasure: being there for hard times as well as celebrations.
Love as humility and respect — Recognizing another’s autonomy, boundaries, and dignity: choosing to listen rather than dominate, honoring choices you might not agree with.
Now, I realize I’m having a conversation with a computer so I’m not arguing this is a complete definition of love. Or an accurate definition of love. Or the ONLY definition of love. I would argue there is no universal definition of love. And certainly, people do not necessarily agree on what loving behavior looks like.
When Impact and Intent Collide
When I was single and pregnant, my sister offered to help me with childcare during the day so that I could work — if I decided to parent my son. Within the week, she called me back to retract her offer. “I believe adoption is God’s will for your son,” she said “and if I offer to help you, I might be encouraging you to go against God’s will.”
My sister would have told you she loved me when she said that. She would tell you today, that she loved me when she said that ~ even though she regrets saying it. But it definitely didn’t feel like love to me. It felt like control.
That wasn’t the only time this happened to me.
A little over a year later, I had just gotten engaged to my now ex-husband and I called my cousin. I was so excited to tell her and ask her to be my matron of honor.
She was excited for me at first, but hesitant. You see, my family did not approve of my fiancé and had, in fact, briefly cut contact with me when I first started dating him.
My cousin asked me, “What did your parents say?” When I told her that they didn’t know yet, she was silent for a moment. From my perspective, I had wanted to call someone I could count on to celebrate with me before calling people with whom my relationship had become so fraught. I was planning to tell them, but just wanted to enjoy this moment first.
But I called the wrong person.
Because from her perspective, I was being secretive. And the only reason I would have to be secretive is that my parents did not approve. My cousin ended up telling me that she could not stand up with me at my wedding, because she felt her participation would be encouraging me to go against my parents and she couldn’t do that. She loved me too much to do that.
And this is why I’m asking you, dear reader, what IS love?
Is love telling someone “the truth”? Always? You might say yes, and a part of me wants to too. But understand that to some people, that means that it is loving to call certain folks ‘abominations before God’, simply because they believe that is true.
Wrestling With Love
My marriage didn’t last. At that time, I wasn’t making good choices — partly from immaturity, but mostly because I was carrying a tremendous weight of grief.
Just because my marriage didn’t last, does that mean that it was loving for my cousin to decline to stand by my side? For the record, she too regrets what she said. But again, at the time, she thought she was doing the loving thing.
When I talk about loving now, I am so “control-averse” that a lot of people see me as an enabler. And maybe I am. I think that if I can only commit to being there for someone as long as I approve of their behavior, or as long as they are making “good choices”, then there is no way they will feel truly loved by me.
But what does it mean then, to love someone who is being destructive towards themselves?
Maybe that’s why I keep circling back to this question. If love is more than words or intentions, then perhaps the truest measure isn’t what the giver claims, but what the receiver experiences. Because in the end, impact matters more than intent.
And maybe love is only truly love if it is actually felt as such.
This post was originally published on Medium: https://medium.com/@danijoy/what-is-l-ve-a041435c060d