Q&A: What Is Love?
What Is Love?
Question
Hello Rabbi,
Despite your well-known aversion to psychology, could you suggest a definition of what is called “love”? How can I identify such a feeling within myself and understand that it is indeed love?
My question is about romantic love between partners, but also about the general concept of love.
I’m asking you as someone with clear thinking who knows how to conceptualize things impressively.
Answer
I don’t know how to define it. But I also don’t really see the difficulty in understanding it even without a definition. It’s a basic emotion that all of us know. A definition would place this emotion in relation to other things, that is, other emotions, and then the question would arise what their definition is.
One can discuss the relationship between love and desire, and many have already written about that. I think this distinction is close to the truth: desire puts me at the center (I want my partner for myself), whereas love puts the other person at the center (I want to live with them and give to them).
Discussion on Answer
Hello Rabbi Michael,
Do you think that with regard to love of God as well, there is no need to define what love is, and that it is simply that same intuitive love you spoke about in your answer?
I think not. See Column 22.
Love is connected to pleasure.
The desire to cause the other person pleasure as an end in itself (and to prevent harm) stems from love.
(It’s important that this be an end in itself and not for other benefits, like gaining from it personally. Because then it’s exploitation.)