The Most Important ingredient in Relationships
The Most Important ingredient in Relationships
Most people would define love as a basic human emotion that includes compassion, desire, trust, adoration, acceptance, joy, and fun. While love is often associated with these same emotions to varying extents, there are many differences between love and the other more common forms of emotional expression. Compassion, desire, trust, joy, adoration, satisfaction and fun all fall under the larger umbrella of “love.”
Love is a psychological association that involves reciprocity, security, and affection. It usually involves caring, intimacy, attachment, security, and affection. It can range from being completely passive in nature to being highly responsive and demanding in one’s intentions. Love can range from being mildly affectionate to intensely demanding, from being completely spontaneous to carefully orchestrated. Love can vary greatly in intensity and may vary significantly over time to the point that it could exist only in the mind or feelings of the one who professes it.
Another related concept to love is the idea of falling in love with one’s own self. The idea of falling in love with one’s self is closely related to the idea of falling in love with another person, which is Agape. The concept of falling in love with one’s self is related to the idea of falling in love with another person as an extension of our own personality. In essence, our “self” is the extension of our true inner self and Agape relates to the way that we view our own personality.
Most people experience love as intense emotions of compassion, hope, trust, joy, security, approval, intimacy, loyalty, devotion, and desire. These are universal, everyday, human emotions. People experience these emotions in their daily lives whether they realize it or not. In addition to the basic, everyday human emotion of love, however, there is another emotion that comes more commonly to the surface in conversations, private moments with ourselves or others, this other emotion is Eros.
Eros is defined as the conscious connection or union of two human beings based on affection, respect, trust, or caring. It is a positive feeling of being loved, nurtured, cared for, supported, cared about, and appreciated. Eros has been described as a natural expression of caring, a natural expression of love, an awareness of our own value, a recognition of another persons’ needs, a sharing of our unique qualities, or a commitment to our own health, safety, happiness and growth. While these are all positive emotions, Eros is closely related to our deeper bonding emotions of attachment, care, trust, support, intimacy, commitment, and passion.
Attraction, on the other hand, is often associated with more physical or sexual attraction. Attraction can involve being physically attracted to another person, being attracted emotionally to another person, or being emotionally attracted to another person. It can involve being attracted to a place, thing, person, or idea. Whatever your experience with attraction, it most often involves intense feelings of desire, excitement, imagination, or intimacy. And while attraction can often be a powerful motivating force in your life, it is important to remember that the goals of any relationship are ultimately driven by love.
