What is love? We each have a different perspective or view of what love is. But we all expect love to heal all our wounds and we would like to believe in “happy ever after” endings. In the real world, love takes work and many people expect it to be easy. There is a prevailing belief that love should be effortless. It is not.

According to Dr. Helen Fisher, author of Why We Love, states that there are actually three types of love stemming from three different brain systems. One is the sex drive. Another is romantic love which she describes as obsessive thinking, craving for the person, and elation and heightened energy when things are going well. If things are not going well the person may slip into a deep depression. The third type of love is the attachment and security that you feel with a long-term partner. Most people want to have all three. But one of the problems with the brain is that you can feel deep attachment to a person and still feel intense romantic love for another person, while feeling sexual drive for a variety of people. Therefore to have all three with the same person requires a lot of work.

Dr. Fisher thinks that millions of years ago we had to form pair bonds with a team in order to reproduce and raise the children. We still have that ancient instinct. During the romantic love stage our ego boundaries seem to disappear and we can let the person into areas of our psyche that we usually keep to ourselves. That person seems to be the center of our universe. She feels that romantic love is a drive and is much stronger than the sex drive.

I believe that when we are obsessed with someone that it is not really love. There is an emptiness in us that we try to fill with other people. When no other people are available we may try to fill it with drugs, alcohol or even food. This type of behavior signifies that it isn’t true love but a lack of self-love that drives us. You cannot truly love another person until you love yourself! Click here to read about to increase your self-esteem.

Love seems to be a craving for an emotional union. But perhaps what we are all searching for is the experience of God’s love in our lives. I have read that all you have to do is ask, but it wasn’t that easy for me. I had to actively seek and search for years before I finally began to feel that love. And it still isn’t a constant in my life, more like a work in progress.

There are many good spiritual books to help you on your journey. I specifically like Joyce Meyer and Creflo Dollar. I have added a few links below to Amazon.com. Here is a prayer that I say every morning to help start the day off right.

Dear Heavenly Father,
Thank you for another wonderful day. Please show me Your Face today in everyone I see. Please fill my heart with the love, wisdom and guidance of the Holy Spirit. Help me to grow in Your Love. Please lead all of my steps in the direction you have chosen for me. Bless me into usefulness this day. Please send me a miracle today and let me have the wisdom to recognize it!
Amen

GOD'S WORD ON LOVE
"Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God; and everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. The one who does not love does not know God, for God is love. By this the love of God was manifested in us, that God has sent His only begotten Son into the world so that we might live through Him. In this is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another" (1 John 4:7-11).

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