What is love...

Someone asked online for people to define love... I wrote this and thought, yes I want to blog that:

When you are really and truly in love, you know it (as they say) "balls to bone". Its really true! I often wondered in the past, "am I in love?, I feel so much for this person, more than anything i've felt before?".

What I learned is that if you wondering if you are in love, you really are not! It might be you aren't yet (I don't know) but you are not.

For me, I first fell truly in love at 32, when it happened to me, I knew it was right! I just knew it! Everything added up, there wasn't a doubt in my mind.

I was always annoyed when I was younger because older people would say stuff like "Ahh, when your in love you just know it!" and I was always really p*ssed off with that answer because it was so unhelpful (to my thinking). I thought "I might well be in love now then? but how do I know if I can't define it?" Well, older now, I hate that those people where actually right and that I have to pass on the same advice.

So, if you have any doubt, your really not in love, your mearly either falling in love, comming to love or experiencing an emotional love for a person (not true love). I made a key mistake by thinking like I used to think. I got together with my ex girl friend based on the fact I cared for her so deeply I thought it must have been love. It wasn't (at least not true love). I knew it wasn't at the start really, but I rationalised that I was just scared or that I needed to grow up (which to be fair in some ways I still do) but when I met my someone, I knew, I knew I would love her forever. Right from the moment I fell for her.

Now it could happen differently for you. You might meet someone, grow to love them, then come to truly love them. I don't know how it happens or what makes one person different from the next. I just know the feeling of being totally sure your in love and with whom and that it will last a lifetime (of course, I'm undergoing stress tests on this as we speak.. but not from her. That's part of the point. Everything with her is easy, even the hard stuff... its not simple, but its easy). Also, just because you know its true love for you doesn't mean it will necesarily pan out the way you want it to... all you know is that you will love them forever (and always in the same way, you just are certain of this at every level).

So, I can't actually define love! This kinda makes sense because when I was younger and really tired although I came up with some good traits of love, it would never add up to the whole of what love is. Love cannot be defined because it is much more than the sum of its parts.

I can only say what it is and what it isn't in fact:

It is:

• Being truely, deeply and completely certain of your feelings,
• Being happy to sacrifice for the person but not having to because of them,
• Being completely understood (though this does not prevent misunderstanding, it just a sense you get from them),
• Finding you comletely understand them, and that the understanding comes easy (though maybe the second part is unique to me and my love),
• Always caring for them, no matter what (though, in love, this should not be tested nor should things happen to test it often)

It isn't:

• Controlling (excepting in that you both compromise for one another to meet eachothers needs and make each other happy),
• Without problems (excepting in love all problems have a solution),
• About passion (though there is passion in love, love is not defined by passion),
• About sex (you make love when your in love. If your just "having sex" your not in love),
• Free (Love is about mutual captivity, but always feeling free in a sense.. its a lovely contradiction because love binds two people together, but its always by mutual choice so your captive because you can never part, but your always choosing each other at every moment so are both free in a sense)

Think I did that justice!