"Love is in the air "says a song by John Paul Young and this is 100% real. As much as we are not in a couple, we realize that this feeling is hidden, or rather, it can be seen, in different places and people. And that is why it is present in every corner and composition, from music to poetry, through movies, works of art and sculptures.
If we asked each person what is love? Sure we would have millions of different definitions. Love is a concept that can be used in various contexts or relationships. And in addition, it is a phenomenon studied for many years ... but that has not yet been fully understood.
It seems that there is no single way to feel love, it all depends on the people involved. An investigation in Canada indicated that there are 93 different kinds of love. Yes, as you read, 93! Do you think too many? What happens is that people do not realize that love is everywhere and not only in the people around us.
The prototype of love that most of us have in mind is the one we know and experience first, that is, maternal love (mother to child and vice versa). Then we have the paternal, the brothers, the friends, the passionate, the sexual, the romantic and even the Platonic.
Now, what do these types of love have in common? And how are they different? According to the study, everything has to do with how we perceive it. That is, what we feel when we see a person or think about them.
In addition, within what is called "love" we can encompass other feelings, such as affection, affection, attraction, care, respect, joy and protection. That is why the human race does not have the capacity (yet) to offer a unique definition of love, everything will depend on our personal experiences and the emotions we feel in each particular situation.
There is no delimitation, either logical or not, of the word "love". If what we feel is so complex, imagine how complicated it is to want to explain it! And because it involves so many feelings, everything becomes even more difficult, fortunately.
There is a triangular theory about love, by R. Sternberg, which indicates that there are only seven ways of feeling love and they are all related to each other. Here the subject is much simpler than before, we had to decide between almost 100 different options.
Each vertex of this triangle represents the most genuine feelings that a person can have. Maybe not at the same time, but at different stages of life. And this theory has nothing to do with love triangles or third parties in discord. Many say that this hypothesis is only based on the love of a couple, but it can be used for all the relationships we have throughout our passage through the Earth.
In order to understand this theory, it is good that we first imagine a triangle. Or we can also draw it on paper. At the tip of the triangle we find "affection", which appears when there is intimacy (and does not refer to sex). In the right vertex, there is "empty love", which occurs when there is only commitment. The sum of these two (love and empty love) brings as a consequence the "sociable love", a mixture of intimacy and commitment.
In the left corner of the triangle we find the "whim", which only takes into account the passion. If we add it with the tip of the triangle (the "love"), the result is "romantic love" (intimacy plus passion) and if the sum is with the right vertex ("empty love"), we will get "love" fatuous (passion and commitment). Finally, in the center of the pyramid, we have "consummate love", a perfect symbiosis between intimacy, passion and commitment.
The latter would be the "ideal love", which is so much talked about and that we all aspire to feel at least once in life.