drunk with love than the period when the hormone levels decline. However, when our popular images of love focus on falling in love while neglecting the arguably more important task of maintaining love, we often get the wrong idea about love altogether.
The entertainment industry, of course, keeps making these stories because they are tremendously popular. Who doesn’t want to find love the way people do in the movies? Like Cinderella, we want our perfect lover to appear magically at our door. Likewise, we enjoy stories of people who become rich overnight because of a lucky twist of fate — because we imagine that someday it might happen to us. A story of success achieved through hard labor, discipline, and determination may be inspiring, but it is much less exciting, let alone romantic. In the age of internet billionaires, the entertainment industry’s concept of love fits perfectly. Unfortunately, Hollywood’s take on love is just as unrealistic as most of its other creations. While any of us may indeed fall madly in love at any moment, it requires effort and dedication to keep the fire alive.
Is it true that we all have one perfect partner somewhere out there in the world? Undoubtedly there are couples whose personalities are exceptionally compatible. But the human personality is so complex that complete agreement on any aspect of life is exceedingly unlikely. There is almost always room for improvement in a relationship. Even so, many of us remain sentimentally attached to the idea of this one true love, whose unwavering devotion will survive parting and even death. While there is nothing wrong with this belief, people who adopt it may make life harder on themselves by turning their backs on other possibilities. Each of us is unique, and we may love the unique beauty in more than one person.
As a cardiologist, I find this difficult to admit, but love is more about the brain than the heart. We may savor the elements of chance, magic, and fate in romance and love. Subconsciously, we also want to believe in the role of fate because it lets us deflect responsibility for the lack of love in our lives. It may be easier to believe that we are unlucky in love than to acknowledge that we have not devoted ourselves sufficiently to finding and nurturing love. And the idea that love may strike at any moment is also a source of enduring hope. A concept of love based on effort and focus — without any stroke of magic in its emergence — may not be good news to those who rely on serendipity.
However, the sober view of love as a mental rather than a magical power comes with a silver — if not golden — lining. Embracing our ability to create love is empowering: it means we can fill every moment of our lives with love. We don’t have to wait for the magic of love to strike: we can have it all the time. No, we cannot manufacture or control the intensely euphoric feelings of falling in love, but they are fleeting anyway. The lasting, satisfying contentment from love is ours for the making.
No matter what its source, experiencing love is beautiful. Nothing moves the human soul like love. Goethe’s Faust spends decades studying philosophy, medicine, theology, and more, only to find that it is love that truly moves him to excitement. The mere fact that strangers meet and form unbreakable bonds for life is nothing short of miraculous. Love can unleash determination and forces we never knew existed within us. Knowing that love is indeed an art that we can foster and advance should only increase our excitement about love.
We do not have to be sad about the transient nature of falling in love. On the contrary, knowing that it is fleeting can allow us to embrace it even more closely and cherish every moment. Knowing its physiological causes and its transience may give us the necessary perspective to prevent ourselves from making poor decisions during this time. We may intentionally postpone considerations about marriage and children until after three to four years of courtship to be sure that our relationship has a good chance of lasting.
Knowing that we cannot take ourselves too seriously while we are falling in love may also reduce the anxieties of this state. We can laugh a little at ourselves and indulge in the sweetness of the feeling without fully succumbing to it. We can recognize that our infatuation when we are falling in love may be a wonderful introduction to a relationship, as long as we are willing to play an increasingly active part in moving to the lasting, and even more rewarding, state of love.
Typically, we continue to feel very strong emotions and affections for a partner after the falling-in-love phase. Couples who are committed to their relationship often find that infatuation develops into love. The fact that our experience of love is largely under our control opens the door for happiness and opportunities. We don’t have to wait and see if we are lucky enough to find love: we can have it as soon as we make loving a priority in our lives. It would be nice if love indeed simply presented itself to us and stayed forever without much effort on our part. However, love is no exception to another fundamental rule in life: nothing comes from nothing. Most things of value in life need to be earned; they are the reward for devotion and effort. The reward for working at loving can be immense.
Let us now go deeper into the subject and explore the essence of love. What is the nature of loving? Why are humans so preoccupied with love? What makes us love a particular person? These questions have been asked throughout human existence. Religious thinkers, secular philosophers, artists, and scientists have answered them in different ways.
Contemplations about love and its significance can be found as early as three thousand years ago in the teachings of Zarathustra, the ancient Iranian prophet. Considered by many to be the first philosopher, Zarathustra taught that by doing good to others, we align ourselves with the divine force and move closer to being one with the creator.1 He captured essential themes of love that have been reiterated by many prominent thinkers since.
Even ancient contemplations of love differentiate between the forms I have already discussed: a physically driven desire for human contact, close to what we would categorize as lust, described in Hinduism and Buddhism as kama; a less intense form of caring that we would call compassion, known in Buddhism as karuna; and the highest, most noble, and elevated form of love, which is unconditional and selfless — described in Hinduism as prema and in Buddhism as metta, with equivalents in other religious texts.
Similar distinctions can be found in the best-known comprehensive discussion on the nature of love, in Plato’s Symposium, from approximately 380 BCE.2 Plato discusses different analyses of love by assuming the identities of contemporary intellectuals. In the discussion, the character Pausanias describes two kinds of love: a heavenly love — a deep love associated with the intellect that is long-lasting and committed — and a common love, driven by physical attraction and lust. Thinkers more than two thousand years ago recognized the complexity of love, its multifaceted nature, and the difference between short-term infatuation and lasting love. Plato makes a clear distinction between affection based on sexual desire, fleeting passion, and a deep, enduring concern for another person (true love).
In the same text, Plato’s teacher, Socrates, portrays love as the force striving for divinity, arguing that our fear of death and our yearning for immortality are expressed in our physical and intellectual desire for procreation. Platonic love is a term commonly used today to refer to nonsexual love, but it is more accurately defined as the yearning for the unattainable, ideal beauty in the world that may be reflected in somebody or something. The recognition of this beauty or purity in a person moves us closer to divinity. In Plato’s conception, we feel love not for the individual but rather for the inherent beauty in that person, a beauty that transcends individual existence. Thus, a person who loves one person in fact loves the beauty in any person — a very astute and important observation. Plato went beyond descriptions of a selfless, caring attitude toward others and attempted to understand its underlying cause.
For many centuries, Plato’s concepts of love, which his students, particularly Aristotle, expanded on, profoundly influenced views of love. Indeed, the ancient Greek terms are still being used for describing different kinds of love, as in C. S. Lewis’s 1960 book The Four Loves.3 Philia refers to brotherly love, or loving friendship. Storge is generally understood as the somewhat more intense bonds between parents and children or exceptionally close friends. Eros refers to the passionate and romantic feelings,