#love #serious-thoughts There are so many different types of love that this is a difficult question to answer. As a society, we sort of just lump love into a huge catch-all that ends up meaning everything and nothing all at once. It's also why, when people tell me to "work on myself" and "focus on self-love" when I'm looking for a relationship, I react viscerally negatively. Shut the fuck up! Self-love and romantic love feel like two different things, and I like myself reasonably enough. The nuances of the specific dynamics of love aside, I'll observe it in a more general sense. The dictionary defines love as "an intense feeling of deep affection". But this is still so vague and general. There are two very helpful concepts to master: * The first is to separate love into love as a verb (something you do) from a noun (something you feel), * and the second is to separate giving love from receiving love. It's important because somebody could love someone else more than anything in the universe, but as long as that's a feeling in their head, it means absolutely nothing to the person being loved. And conversely, someone could make you feel so intensely loved by their actions, but feel absolutely nothing for you. Or, they could love you, but you don't interpret it as love, and so you feel nothing. In terms of difficulty, it's far easier to feel love for someone else than it is to feel loved by another, because feeling loved requires them to often feel love for you, then perform actions that show you you're loved, and then for you to interpret it as love. There's so many steps here that things can get so lost in translation easily, and it is strongly dependent on the person. The obvious concept of love languages aside, even culture or gender can change how certain acts or feelings are interpreted. Individuals need different things to feel loved, and they express love differently, but reciprocity and gratitude are a good place to start. True love is fundamentally selfless. The only way to "transmit" love is via verb love, and that implies that love is hard work and self-sacrifice. If you get married and feel intense love for them (i.e. the noun kind that exists in your head), but then they become very ill - would you want to take care of them (love as a verb)? Most people would do that for a child, but there are instances of couples who get divorced when one of them becomes ill, and that's because **love as a noun is selfish**, while **love as a verb is selfless**. In summary, there are 4 types of love: 1) The love you feel for others inside your head. This is the safest place to begin. If you can learn to just feel deep affection for others, that is already a net positive in your life. But do note that you should be mindful about freely loving those who should not deserve this as well. 2) The love you give to others via your actions. This is dangerous, especially for people pleasers (heyy). You should only give love if you want to and don't expect anything in return. Otherwise, this ends up being a huge pit for you. 3) The love others give you via their actions. This is something you can't control, and the only thing you should do is try to feel worthy of love, and feel gratitude when you do feel love in this manner. 4) The love others feel for you inside their heads. This is also something you can't control, and it's incredibly dangerous to focus on, leading to narcissism or the craving for external validation. We should feel love strongly, and accept love freely.