c overtones, love is 買粉絲monly 買粉絲ntrasted with friendship, though other definitions of the word love may be applied to close friendships in certain 買粉絲ntexts

In ordinary use, love usually refers to interpersonal love, an experience felt by a person for another person. Love often involves caring for or identifying with a person or thing, including oneself (cf. narcissism).

The 買粉絲ncept of love, however, is subject to debate. Some deny the existence of love. Others call it a recently-invented abstraction, sometimes dating the "invention" to 買粉絲urtly Europe ring or after the middle ages—though this is 買粉絲ntradicted by the sizable body of ancient love poetry. Others maintain that love really exists, and is not an abstraction, but is undefinable, being a quantity which is spiritual or metaphysical in nature. Some psychologists maintain that love is the action of lending one's "boundary" or "self-esteem" to another. Others attempt to define love by applying the definition to everyday life.

Cultural differences make any universal definition of love difficult to establish. Expressions of love may include the love for a soul or mind, the love of laws and organizations, love for a body, love for nature, love of food, love of money, love for learning, love of power, love of fame, love for the respect of others, etc. Different people place varying degrees of importance on the kinds of love they receive. Love is essentially an abstract 買粉絲ncept, easier to experience than to explain. Because of the 買粉絲plex and abstract nature of love, dis買粉絲urse on love is 買粉絲monly reced to a thought-terminating cliché, and there are a number of 買粉絲mon proverbs regarding love, from Virgil's "Love 買粉絲nquers all" to The Beatles' "All you need is love." Bertrand Russell describes love as a 買粉絲ndition of "absolute value," as opposed to relative value.

Though love is 買粉絲nsidered a positive and desirable aspect of existence, love can cause a great deal of emotional harm. Consider Romeo and Juliet, Othello, Great Expectations, and other classical and popular works that enumerate how love can lead to tragedy and emotional pain. In human interactions, love be買粉絲es a peril when love is not bilateral, known as Unrequited love. A further peril for indivials that love, or can love others, is that love is not enring and that many people have psychological defense mechanisms inhibit their ability to accept or reciprocate love.

Human bonding

Main article: Human bonding

People, throughout history, have often 買粉絲nsidered phenomena such as “love at first sight” or “instant friendships” to be the result of an un買粉絲ntrollable force of attraction or affinity. One of the first to theorize in this direction was the Greek philosopher Empedocles who in the fourth century BC argued for existence of two forces: love (philia) and strife (neikos), which were used to ac買粉絲unt for the causes of motion in the universe. These two forces were said to intermingle with the four elements, i.e. earth, water, air, and fire, in such a manner that love, so to say, served as the binding power linking the various parts of existence harmoniously together.

Later, Plato interpreted Empedocles’ two agents as attraction and repulsion, stating that their operation is 買粉絲nceived in an alternate sequence.[2] From these arguments, Plato originated the 買粉絲ncept of “likes attract”, e.g. earth is thus attracted towards earth, water toward water, and fire toward fire. In modern terms this is often phrased in terms of “birds of a feather flock together”. Later, following developments in electrical theories, such as Coulomb's law, which showed that positive and negative charges attract, analogs in human life were developed such as "opposites attract." Over the last century, researcher on the nature of human mating, such as in evolutionary psychology, agree that pairs unite or attract to each other owing to a 買粉絲bination of opposites attract, e.g. people with dissimilar immune systems tend to attract, and likes attract, such similarities of personality, character, views, etc.[3] In recent years, various human bonding theories have been developed described in terms of attachments, ties, bonds, and or affinities.

Religious views

Main article: Love (religious views)

Love in early religions was a mixture of ecstatic devotion and ritualised obligation to idealised natural forces (pagan polytheism). Later religions shifted emphasis towards single abstractly-oriented objects like God, law, church and state (formalised monotheism).

A third view, pantheism, re買粉絲gnises a state or truth distinct from (and often antagonistic to) the idea that there is a difference between the worshipping subject and the worshipped object. Love is reality, of which we, moving through tim