Romantic Love

Today – oh sorry it is already yesterday – being the Romance Day, let me come back to the feelings and emotions again. Think of it, if you LIKE somebody or something what is your instinct? You would have an inclination to know more about the subject/object, to spend more time on/with that. In opposite when you do not like some subject/object, then you feel like going away and not to deal with it. Try spending time with subject/object for which you do not feel positive emotion. You feel bored and burdened!

A denser form of this emotion would what I will call as LOVE. You no longer only feel positive for this subject/object; you try actually devoting and spending more time and feeling happy in doing so. If this is for a person we also want reciprocation and try to do things to get the same. You take effort in becoming more aware about the other person and letting know about yourself. You feel attracted and drawn to this person and feel inclined to attract him/her. If the feeling is mutual then each one tries to make the other happy, take care of the other and make the other feel special.

When this mutual feeling reaches a certain denser threshold, a very special emotional reaction is triggered – ROMANTIC LOVE. You no longer simply attracted to the person, what you experience now is a feeling of incredible attraction to her/him.

This feeling of love is the way our emotions encourage us to spend more time with someone who takes exclusive care of us -- someone who is effective at making us very happy and knows how to avoid making us unhappy, someone who makes us feel special and the most important person in her/his life. We all would certainly want to spend time with someone we simply liked, but when you are in romantic love, your emotions give you added motivation. You find yourself not only wanting to be with the loved person, but also intensely craving for that person. In this realm of emotion, when you and your beloved are together you both feel fulfilled, and when apart you feel lonely, empty and incomplete. So the feeling of love is usually effective in drawing people together for significant amounts of time, withdrawn out from other people/aspects of life without any compunction.

In this state of intense emotion, when we identify someone who makes us happy, this emotion also motivates us to reciprocate; by encouraging us to make that person happy. At this state of emotion, doing anything, going that extra mile, putting that additional effort seem almost effortless and doing that makes most of us the happiest. Have you ever noticed that when you are in love, you seem instinctively affectionate, conversant, admiring and willing to make love? That's because your emotions want to keep that person around, so it gives you instincts to help you make that person happy which, if effective, triggers his or her feeling of love for you. The "look of love" not only communicates our feeling of love for someone, but also reflects our instinct to do whatever it takes to make that person happy.

When two persons share mutual love, their emotions encourage them to make each other happy for life. In fact, the thought of spending life apart is usually frightening, at that point of time. It seems to them that they were made to be together for eternity. This is the state of emotion when lovers do seemingly irrational things, even taking away own life for the fear of being apart from the other.

However if the density of this emotion due to some reason drop below the romantic love threshold for one of the two, s/he not only lose her/his feeling of passion for the other, but lose the instinct to make the other happy. In some cases it might be one sided, in some mutual. What was once effortless now becomes awkward, and at times even repulsive. The expression of love gets replaced by a matching expression of apathy. And without love, you no longer want to spend that kind of time, effort and interest with the other. Instead of proximity now you move away from the earlier beloved - a reverse cycle sets in motion.