Exploring Love (Part 1)

Love

Noun: 

1. A profoundly tender, passionate affection for another person.

2. A feeling of warm personal attachment or deep affection, as for a parent, child, or friend.

3. Sexual passion or desire.

Verb: (used with object)

4. To have love or affection for: All her pupils love her.

5. To have a profoundly tender, passionate affection for (another person).

6. To have a strong liking for; take great pleasure in: to love music.

This is the list of definitions offered by dictionary.com for Love. In the last year or so I've found myself wondering about love as both a concept and an experience. Do you feel like you have a good grasp of either? This simple definition I embedded from the Google search I did confirms that there are at least two elements to love - the naming element (the instance of a tender, passionate affection you feel for another is agreed to be called "love") and the action element (to have profoundly tender, passionate affection for another). 

I think that love as a verb is very crucial to understand, and perhaps overlooked in terms of its level of day to day impact on us. In developmental psychology research, authors such as Bowlby (1958) have introduced the idea of a primary figure. The primary figure is the infant's first social attachment and according to Bowlby, their attachment style with this figure is how the human develops their love concept. Ainsworth, Blehar,Waters & Wall (1978) identified three styles of attachment; secure attachment, anxious attachment, and avoidant attachment. The style of attachment the infant has with their primary attachment figure will determine their future social functionality. 

Bowlby (1980) made the suggestion that the style an individual utilised will be determined by their beliefs about themselves and the world around them. That is, if they believed that they were worthy of love, they would maintain the expectation for this in their relationships (secure). If they believed that the world was not to be trusted then they may be less likely to venture into attachments (avoidant) and if they had anxiety about the pending failure of an attachment, this is how they would approach new and existing relationships (anxious). This would have been an interesting and perhaps easier to swallow alternative to Freudian claims of psychosexual stages of development where the child's attachment to a primary figure (i.e. a parent) is based on an unconscious sexual attraction, satisfied by the normal care taking of the parent. 

There is a therapy, originally utilised with couples called Emotionally Focused therapy (EFT) which specifically targets the origins of a love experience. Sue Johnson and her colleagues have formulated a therapy that differentiates people in terms of their attachment styles. That is, they define the individual's original experience(s) of love and use this as a basis by which they navigate - with the individual - their entire emotional experience. According to Johnson & Sims (2000) all relationships are attachment bonds, and the individual navigates the relationship based on their attachment style. In EFT, emotions bring the past alive. They suggest that the past is the lens through which the present is viewed. Fears, emotional blocks and styles of relating, fuel interaction. This means that the future love emitted and experienced by the individual is subject to their previous experiences of love. Attachment is maintained by the (perceived) responsiveness and accessibility that the individual receives from a loved other and by emotional engagement and contact with the other. When those are uncertain, attachment becomes insecure and then follows protest, clinging, depression or despair and detachment. This often becomes a rigid pattern or negative interaction cycle until the need for a secure attachment is addressed (Johnson, 2002).

And so it seems that these theorists suggest that the concept of love begins in infancy with an attachment. Based on how that attachment is styled, the adult develops a template for their interactions in love. This will colour their relationships, and greater awareness of their attachment style will help the individual to navigate their relationships and recognise their patterns, whether they be secure, anxious or avoidant and how these may be affecting their emotional health or that of their partner/loved one. So, in other words, the love experience is contextual and can be improved by increasing awareness of these contexts - for example, if you are avoidantly attached you may be unable to admit to the basic needs you have to be loved; you have developed a belief in others' inability to give you what you need and therefore create an environment in which this is a self fulfilled prophecy. You would need to come to the point of seeing this pattern, and actively choosing to risk some dependence on a worthy other. If you're anxiously attached, you would recognise the pattern of blame and demand that you subject your other to as a defence against the inevitable hurt you think they will bring you. Once again, awareness of this pattern will mean that you must counteract your own natural responses - first by acknowledging your fears and then by determining that a particular other is worth the risk of attempting to trust in their love.

My theory on this is that you can experience a certain amount of love, spontaneously. For example, the emotion that you naturally have for people who either are, or you consider to be, your family can be defined as spontaneous love - A feeling of warm personal attachment or deep affection. My curiosity is piqued, however, when I consider that sometimes people describe experiences where they "fall out of love" or love is simply not enough. This makes me think that spontaneous love is not necessarily permanent. I believe that the noun Love can only persist if the verb Love is also present. In order to experience love as a verb I think you have to keep the feeling. Utilising Johnson et al's depiction of attachment, a person must come into understanding of the way in which they have formed attachments to others, and then they must counteract the impacts of that attachment style in order to maintain the Love verb internally. That is, to keep love it seems one must fight those personal demons that work against a good and fulfilling experience of love, and that it is a lifelong investment to good love to actively maintain it.