Love Series - A second-hand emotion?

Oh-oh-oh, what's love got to do, got to do with it?
What's love, but a second-hand emotion?
What's love got to do, got to do with it?
Who needs a heart when a heart can be broken?

Tina Turner -"What's love got to do, got to do with it”

Love. An indescribable feeling of affection and emotions with countless ways to describe and define it. Love seems to be the majority of people desire and want in some way or form. There are 365 songs with love in the title that has made it to the top 100 in the 21st century and likely many more about love that didn’t mention it in the title at all. Romance novels are one of the top genres for film and books and study show that love has a similar physiological effect to being on cocaine - a class A drug. But is love just a second-hand emotion? Do we give love too much credit?

What is love?

There are so many ways to love and it has so many ways to be defined and interpreted. Love is a strong feeling that we know and is hard to fit in a one-shoe-fits-all defintion. Nevertheless, I have listed a couple of classed definitions of perceived love [to people] rather than just the typical “feelings of deep affection”:

• Romantic love: love between two partners characterised by intimacy, passion and commitment

• Familial love: love between family members

• Platonic love: Affection (that is non-romantic) and deep friendship between individuals

• Altruistic love: Selfless concern for the well-being and happiness of others

• Companionate love: affection and attachment between individuals based on mutual trust, respect and companionship

• Conditional love: Love that is contingent upon conditions or expectations being met

• Nurturing Love: Love demonstrated by caring and nurturing the growth and well-being of another person

• Eternal love: Love that endures through time and challenges, remaining constant and unwavering

• Lust: a strong sexual attraction or a strong desire/craving toward someone/something.

Now to answer this question at hand…

Is Love a second-hand emotion?

This will depend on how you define a secondhand emotion and your experiences with love and its many forms.

1) Love is usually second-hand because it is not the first …

Sticking more strictly to the romantic side of love: love is an emotion that we base on experiences and not necessarily on our own. The first issue stems from the idea that can only really experience something for the first time once! No matter how many times you repeat an experience, there is simply nothing like the first time. Therefore unless you have never had a first-time experience, you likely remember it, as much as you try to deny it. This is not to to say that things can never be better than the first and it is likely that they will. Alas, it does open the idea that once the first experience of love has been used the next one is being borrowed from experience, a second-hand emotion. It can be very hard to continue to love or forgive someone once they have hurt you and it is difficult to forget if you continue to compare it.

… but Love is what you make of it.

The interesting thing about love is that it has many different sides and will undergo experience. No two love is the same. Although there may be some comparison or crossover the reason for loving someone will be different to loving the next, both platonic and romantic. People love and show love differently and therefore there is always a chance to rejuvenate something with new experiences and memories. The feeling may be described as the same but it will never be truly the same. There is a lot of freedom in the choice of love and who to give love to, and this includes forgiveness. Most of all though, we should learn to love because we were shown love first - God did love us first. Love is a very powerful thing that can change the mood of anyone just by a tiny thing, no other emotion can move us like love does.

2) Love can feel quite indirect …

I think that any love described as familial, compassionate or platonic can have elements of being seen as quite indirect. These affections can be based on blood- relation, proximately, time spent, networks and communication which can and will change based on the environment and the situations. But a common theme is that it is probably not shown as much as romantic love and therefore in comparison is not likely a conscious or direct way of loving

…but Love should be direct?

It's a very contradicting statement- but here is the thing with love. Love is meant to be played like rugby, but sometimes we spend the whole time avoiding contact or playing tag. As best quoted in loving is a contact sport. Love is not meant to be convenient, it is direct and a conscious effort to love - love is a contact sport. As much as I hate admitting I probably don’t do this enough. The number of times that I have thought of friends and loved ones, and not acted on at times is laughable. And with the amount of low-level activities that can be done in this generation such as texts and phone calls - I don’t have much of a leg to stand on.

3) Love is irrational …

I am not sure if there is much else to be said here… You have all seen it whether it is in a rom-com a romance novel or IRL. Sometimes the decision they made seems so stupid or the red flags are waving right in your face. Why did they do that?

Love can make people do some very questionable things. Whether this is simply ignoring flaws or red flags or even murder. It can be viewed by some as a distraction, a thing that gets in the way of other goals to achieve as it doesn’t provide a lot of usefulness in a situation and is something we can learn from others but not directly experience ourselves. Love is better off as a second-hand emotion.

… but so are we!

Humans are social creatures, we were called for companionship hence why Adam needed Eve. Human behaviour and decision are intertwined with social dynamics relationships and prefers mean the right decision [on paper] is not always the best. More importantly, we Humans are fundamentally irrational, just gifted with the power of rationality. Our well-being and happiness play a bigger role at times than we think or ought to allow it and therefore love is an important impact to consider in a decision rather than just a rational thought process.

These are my thoughts on the matter anyway. Do you think Tiana was right? Is love just a second-hand emotion?

Shine Bright,

Steph