By: burgundy bug
Pink Rose
Source: Pink Roses 03 | Penelope Peru Photography P3
A flush as red as roses paints itself wide across your cheeks. Nervous giggles force themselves through your smile as your lungs beg for oxygen.
That’s love.
… Right?
Earlier in the month, we talked about what happens to your brain when you’re in love. Your body is flooded with a rush of hormones including dopamine, oxytocin, and vasopressin; resulting in euphoria, a sense of connectedness, and a level of obsession.
While this explains why love makes us experience certain feelings and changes throughout our body, it leaves out a rather large and important piece of the puzzle.
How Do You Know if You’re in Love?
Cosmopolitan offers a few anecdotal signs that may indicate you’re in love: a sense of security and comfort, a level of spontaneity, and the ease of the overall relationship.
Psychology Today reports very similar indications: a level of addiction to your significant other, a desire to integrate them into your social circles, positive self-developments, and perhaps even a bit of jealousy.
Although these are hallmark traits of love that have been reaffirmed by countless songs, TV shows, movies, personal accounts, and research throughout history, they still remain very subjective accounts of romance.
Give Us the Cold, Hard Facts, Bug!
That’s not to say these articles or the endless stream of media across globe since the very dawn of time should be discredited. The level of subjectivity is just something that should be kept in the back of your mind while binging on web-based love tests or pleading for insight from the relationship gurus on Yahoo Answers.
It’s hard to talk about love without subjectivity, perhaps even impossible. The four-letter word carries an immense amount of weight. Although it is defined in Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary as:
- “a strong affection for another arising out of kinship or personal ties”
- “attraction based on sexual desire : affection and tenderness felt by lovers”
- “affection based on admiration, benevolence, or common interests”
- “an assurance of affection”
- “warm attachment, enthusiasm, or devotion”
- “the object of attachment, devotion, or admiration”
- “a beloved person”
- “unselfish loyal and benevolent concern for the good of another”
- “a god or personification of love”
- “an amorous episode”
- “the sexual embrace”
- “a score of zero (as in tennis)”
- “to hold dear”
- “to like or desire actively”
- “to thrive in”
All of these definitions mean something a little different to just about everyone who’s ever loved or been loved.
It becomes an even bigger grey area when discussing the experience of being in-love.
What is Love? Baby, Don’t Hurt Meeeee!
What is Love – Haddaway
Source: Haddaway – What Is Love [Official] | CoconutMusicGermany
Taking an Interpersonal Approach
In the late 20th century, Prof. Mark L. Knapp created Knapp’s Relational Development Model. Knapp’s model boils relationships down into ten stages within the categories Coming Together and Coming Apart.
Knapp’s Relational Development Model
Source: Knapp’s Staircase Model | Samuel Ellis
Knapp demonstrated the process of “coming together” begins with initiation and continues through experimentation until you reach a point of intensification.
As the level of your relationship intensifies, walls begin to fall and courtship ensues. It is a process of mutually revealing more personal information and striving to impress one another.
Intensification leads to integration, the stage in which Knapp theorized individuals begin “falling in-love” before finally bonding.
Once the bond has been established, the relationship is officially honored and recognized, often through marriage.
While Knapp’s Relational Development model is a wonderful demonstration of how strangers evolve into friends and eventually lovers, it still leaves us to marvel at what in-love – or “intensification” – truly means.
Taking a Philosophical Approach
Arguably, the most infamous philosophy of love comes from no other than Plato. The Ancient Greek Philosopher defined three different types of love, according to the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy (IEP):
- Eros – an intense, passionate, often sexual desire
- Philia – a fondness and appreciation, not limited to friends, family members, or coworkers
- Agape – a fondness and passion that is not contingent upon reciprocity
From Plato’s approach, agape is hailed as the “perfect” kind of love. It is a more refined blend of eros and philia. It is pure, sacred, even holy.
You feel agape when you “love thy neighbor as thyself,” as the IEP explains. It founds love on the grounds of selflessness and the importance of loving others.
Plato and other philosophers of his era value romantic attraction higher than both sexual and physical attraction.
“Modern romantic love returns to Aristotle’s version of the special love two people find in each other’s virtues-one soul and two bodies, as he poetically puts it,” the IEP states.
An article published in The Philosophy Quarterly analyzes love as a reactive emotion.
This reaction may be:
- An affectionate attachment
- A altruistic response to character
- A response to acts of goodwill and other motivational behaviors
You may also mistake superficial feelings of physical attraction or monetary benefits as “love,” but they are not the qualities of a meaningful, intimate relationship.
This approach demonstrates why you may react to someone with such great admiration, or why someone may admire you based upon your overall character in conjunction with your behavior towards your significant other.
We understand the progression of a romantic relationship from Knapp’s perspective, the different kinds of love defined by Plato, and why you may respond to someone with such intense admiration, but…
HOW
DO
YOU
KNOW
IF
YOU’RE
IN
LOVE!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?
!?
Perhaps there is no tangible way to define when infatuation evolves into affection or when affection evolves into this state of being “in-love.”
It is simply a natural progression; something you just know – like your favorite flavor, for example. You know your tongue is capable of tasting sweet, salty, sour, and bitter, but you don’t know why you prefer sour over sweet. You just… Well, you just do.
Sure, you could argue the culture you grew up in played a hand in forming your bias towards a particular taste, but couldn’t the same be said for love? We will all experience it differently based on our own morals, conception of love, and the environment we grew up in – yet, it is universally recognized and (albeit vaguely) understood.
You know you’re in love when this person roams around your thoughts like ghosts in a graveyard.
You know you’re in love when you go out of your way to do little things for your partner, even if it means a bit of compromise.
You know you’re in love after you’ve gorged on each other’s deepest, darkest secrets, and yet you still find yourself longing to be in their presence, let alone embrace.
Goddamnit, if you have to ask yourself whether or not you’re in-love, I’m willing to bet you are in-love.
Stop overthinking it and just enjoy it!
Read: Homeschooler “Leaves the House for the First Time” and Meets the Love of her Life
Source: The Burgundy Zine
XtaSeay and Burgundy Bug holding hands
Source: The End of May | Penelope Peru Photography P³
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