What is love?” is the question we always find the answer, sometime we encounter this question by other or by our self. I was also as and when demanded the answer of same or relative questions. I could find various one two lines of definitions about love. I felt definition of love can not be so straight and simple and it can not be generalized. I had various thought about it and when I tried to define the same, found before defining this I have to define various thing.

Everybody would expect that Love is a feeling but I say love is a combination of feelings like NEED, HABIT, OWNERSHIP, COST FOR OWNING, and HONESTY and all of these can be quantified therefore intensity of love too can be quantified.

We always can rate love on scale 1-10. Here what I said can confuse most of you.

 I categorize Love in two types, Love for Need & Love by Habit

1. Love for Need – When we get option to choose & plan before we love & it becomes very practical approach.

2. Love by Habit – This is the situation when we unknowingly start loving something. 

First we would discuss about Love for Need

 Here first a person gets feeling of Need – This need can be different on different age, time & person. These needs can be of Toy, Opposite Sex, House, Car, Money etc. At this stage person explore and try to find the option to get one but that is not the time when he is in love with one. This feeling has different intensity also, based on behavior of a person, type of need and maturity and level of patience he has.

 Feeling of Ownership – Now person gets feeling of ownership for the same object, this can be on different level like he might own this, he finally owned this or he partially owned this. This is very starting stage of love.  That time his need become desire

Examples –

1. When you make a friend with opposite sex person, who had passed criteria of your need, you get feeling of owner ship as you might own his/her. And as you find him/her spending lot of time with you or very positive behavior, you can get feeling as you partially owned him/her. And you put cost & efforts to get a final owner ship.  When the other person commits to be of yours, you finally get into next step of love.
2. Take an example of Kid, when he likes toy and his father pay for it and give in his hand he gets feeling of owner ship and which make him love his toy at certain level.
3. If some people participate in QUIZ competition, where one can win a brand new car, the person gets out of the competition at very early stage gets less hurt then the person who lose at very last stage. Because as you keep clearing round, your feeling that you can own this car gets higher and you start loving it at some level.

Cost for Owning – There is always some cost involve in owning something partially or finally. When I say cost, it can time, energy, money, respect in society and various other factors. Even cost is involved in maintaining ownership, that means even you have owned something but to keep owning or to make your ownership stronger you might pay something. The intensity of the love directly depends on this cost.

Examples – If I bought a very costly car by my money and some how I got a same kind of car free of cost, I might love more, which I bought my self.

Break off in a relationship at the early stage hurt less then longer period relation.

If a virgin girl falls into love with some boy and on his demand gets ready to make physical relationship, she is at max stage of love, as she knows she had paid her virginity to own this person, which she cant pay to any one else.

Feeling of Attachment (Habit) – Now we come to attachment & Habit, which can start after or before ownership, we can get habit of person or other object as we spend lot of time with it or keep using it. The intensity of this habit can be different and which effects intensity of love.

One can fall in love with prostitute also, if goes regularly to same prostitute and have sex with her. Even he knows he doesn’t own her, he has to pay for this service every time. But he gets habit of her or you can say he gets an attachment.

If someone gives me his car for few months to use, I might get bad feeling when it is to be returned back. That’s why you even start loving a rented house, if you spent very long time in that.

Honesty – Now that also play a very good role in love, which brings care & respect. Here person define his self what he has to return honestly for what he is getting. When you propose a girl – you say she is your need, when girl accepts this proposal – she says she is yours now. Now at this stage you commit yourself that what you need to return for that and you decide to take care for her whole life, fulfill her every need and that is honesty. At the same time commitment comes into picture.

So here what I tried to explain is Love start with need, which gets stronger at ownership stage, depends on Cost of owning, and gets stronger when you get Habit of it.  

Now let’s discuss a bit about second kind of LOVE (Love by Habit). Here I would say difference is only that it is initiated by Habit instead of Need. If you listen some statement in LOVE that I never came to know, when I started loving him is the same example.  The way you love your brother, sister or parents give the same example. If you are forced to marry and stay with a girl, whom you don’t like at all and not at all interested, there are still chances you start loving her after sometime, as you get habit of her in period of time.  Even when I say this love is initiated by Habit but other feelings like ownership, honesty etc are also involved in same or later time, which define intensity of love.

We fall in low intensity of love might be every day but we fall in high intensity of love very few times in life.

As I discussed Feeling of Ownership is important base of Love, if we see in our general life, we might find we love everything which belongs to us.  We love our body, father, mother, children, and house. Even sometime we love our responsibility, our nation. If you really experience that statement by some person as “This is mine” clearly indicates that he loves this and the other statement as “This is not mine” indicates that he doesn’t care for it.

Now you really see a Body Builder loves his own body more than a normal person must love his own body. Reason is that he has put lot of efforts to shape his body and here is cost involved in owning shaped body.

There is always a question, does the love gets stronger or weaker as time goes?

Here I observed, it can be stronger or weaker both, depends on situation and behavior.

As I said Need, Habit, Feeling of ownership, cost for owning are the factors, which define intensity of love. Intensity of each factor varies along with time, and some goes higher side, some goes lower. You might find you keep loving your partner in very longer relationship and but the reason for love keeps changing. Initially you might love your wife as a beautiful woman, later on as a good life partner, who shared your burden and responsibilities. Some time as a good mother of your kids, sometime when you get old you might find that is only the person, who takes care you and you need her badly.

Our brain has got great intelligence, we can use its outer intelligence to analysis, calculation and to define sometime, which can be wrong sometime. But if you know, its inner intelligence also does various analysis and calculation, which we don’t operate. It just happens automatically. This inner intelligence after analysis immediately gives us conclusion, which is indicated to us by feeling. That is why, it’s sometime said, when you are confused, do what you feel like.

If you take an example of arrange marriage, when father of girls give you commitment to marry his beautiful daughter with you even against with her own wish. You might not have feeling of love for her. Because your internal intelligence knows very well this is not the way you can own her or can win her.

While in opposite case when girl say, she truly likes to be yours but can’t get married with you as her father doesn’t want and she can’t marry to someone as she doesn’t want. That is the time, when you are sad but you getting more feeling of love towards this girl. As this time you have totally won her, not physically but actually. While if after sometime you come to know, she has compromised and getting married to someone else. You get very sad. Simple because here you know, even girl doesn’t love the person, with whom she is getting married now. But in period of time she will get strong habit of him and her feeling for you surely will go off. And you are actually going to lose her on that stage.