LETS TALK ABOUT LOVE

Whats the definition?

Types of love?

How do we love?

How do we where loved?

Now must we go and find love?

Must we be loved?

Summary,

What is love?

an intense feeling of deep affection.

"Babies fill parents with intense feelings of love"

show reverence and adoration for (a deity); honor with religious rites.

"the Maya built jungle pyramids to worship their gods"

synonyms:

revere, reverence, venerate, pay homage to, honor, adore, praise, pray to, glorify, exalt, extol;

Types of love?

Need/gift love,

Taking his start from St. John's words "God is Love", Lewis initially thought to contrast "Need-love" (such as the love of a child for its mother) and "Gift-love" (epitomized by God's love for humanity), to the disparagement of the former However he swiftly happened on the insight that the natures of even these basic categorizations of love are more complicated than they at first seemed: a child's need for parental comfort is a necessity, not a selfish indulgence, while conversely parental Gift-love in excessive form can be a perversion of its own.

Pleasures,

Lewis continued his examination by exploring the nature of pleasure, distinguishing Need-pleasures (such as water for the thirsty) from Pleasures of Appreciation, such as the love of nature From the latter, he developed what he called “a third element in love...Appreciative love to go along with Need-love and Gift-love.

Throughout the rest of the book, Lewis would go on to counterpart that three-fold, qualitative distinction against the four broad types of loves indicated in his title

In his remaining four chapters, Lewis treats of love under four categories ("the highest does not stand without the lowest"), based in part on the four Greek words for love: affection, friendship, eros, and charity. Lewis states that just as Lucifer—a former archangel—perverted himself by pride and fell into depravity, so too can love—commonly held to be the arch-emotion—become corrupt by presuming itself to be what it is not.

A fictional treatment of these loves is the main theme of Lewis's novel Till We Have Faces.

Stoirge – affection

Affection (stoirge, στοργή) is fondness through familiarity (a brotherly love), especially between family members or people who have otherwise found themselves together by chance. It is described as the most natural, emotive, and widely diffused of loves: natural in that it is present without coercion; emotive because it is the result of fondness due to familiarity; and most widely diffused because it pays the least attention to those characteristics deemed "valuable" or worthy of love and, as a result, is able to transcend most discriminating factors.

Affection, for Lewis, included both Need-love and Gift-love; he considered it responsible for 9/10th of all solid and lasting human happiness

Ironically, however, affection's strength is also what makes it vulnerable. Affection has the appearance of being "built-in" or "ready-made", says Lewis, and as a result people come to expect it irrespective of their behavior and its natural consequences Both in its Need and its Gift form, affection then is liable to 'go bad', and to be corrupted by such forces as jealousy, ambivalence and smothering

Philia – friendship

Philia (Greek: φιλία) is the love between friends. Friendship is the strong bond existing between people who share common interest or activity Lewis immediately differentiates Friendship Love from the other Loves. He describes friendship as, "the least biological, organic, instinctive, gregarious and necessary...the least natural of loves - our species does not need friendship in order to reproduce - but to the classical and medieval worlds the more profound precisely because it is freely chosen.

Lewis explains that true friendships, like the friendship between David and Jonathan in the Bible, are almost a lost art. He expresses a strong distaste for the way modern society ignores friendship. He notes that he cannot remember any poem that celebrated true friendship like that between David and Jonathan, Orestes and Pylades, Roland and Oliver,Amis and Amiles. Lewis goes on to say, "to the Ancients, Friendship seemed the happiest and most fully human of all loves; the crown of life and the school of virtue. The modern world, in comparison, ignores it".

Growing companionship friendship for Lewis was a deeply Appreciative love, though one which he felt few people in modern society could value at its worth, because so few actually experienced true friendship

Nevertheless Lewis was not blind to the dangers of friendships, such as its potential for cliqueyness, anti-authoritarianism, and pride

Eros – romance

Eros (ἔρως) for Lewis was love in the sense of 'being in love' or 'loving' someone, as opposed to the raw sexuality of what he called Venus: the illustration Lewis uses was the distinction between 'wanting a woman' and wanting one particular woman - something that matched his (classical) view of man as a rational animal a composite both of reasoning angel and instinctual alley-cat.

Eros turns the need-pleasure of Venus into the most appreciative of all pleasures; but nevertheless Lewis warned against the modern tendency for Eros to become a god to people who fully submit themselves to it, a justification for selfishness, even a phallic religion

After exploring sexual activity and its spiritual significance in both a pagan and a Christian sense, he notes how Eros (or being in love) is in itself an indifferent, neutral force: how "Eros in all his splendour...may urge to evil as well as good". While accepting that Eros can be an extremely profound experience, he does not overlook the dark way it may lead even to the point of suicide pacts or murder, as well as to furious refusals to part, "mercilessly chaining together two mutual tormentors, each raw all over with the poison of hate-in-love"

Agape – unconditional love

Charity(agapē, ἀγάπη) is the love that brings forth caring regardless of the circumstance. Lewis recognizes this as the greatest of loves, and sees it as a specifically Christian virtue. The chapter on the subject focuses on the need of subordinating the natural loves - as Lewis puts it, "The natural loves are not self-sufficient" - to the love of God, who is full of charitable love, to prevent what he termed their 'demonic' self-aggrandizement Lewis did not actually use the word agape although later commentators did.

How do we love?

If you’re single. . .

You’ve probably experienced your fair share of relationship frustrations. Learn to break free from destructive relational patterns, starting with understanding your love style. Building a healthy foundation now improves future relationships!

If you’re married. . .

Good news: your marriage problems did not begin in your marriage! All couples have a core pattern that becomes a repetitive fight, but if you learn your pattern, you and your mate can become each other’s healer as you face wounds together.

If you’re divorced. . .

When something is broken, you cannot repair it unless you understand how it works. The same is true for marriages, or any relationship for that matter. Learn your core pattern, and get a clear diagnosis that leads to healing.

How do we know where loved?

Love is a series of choices. The first choice is based on many many factors, including chemistry, principles, logic, humor, intelligence, body type, where we are in our lives, what we want/need…

The list goes on and on and the weight of each factor varies depending on the individual. Based on these factors, we either choose to begin the process to love or not. If we decide to enter this process, the action of loving can bring “light switch” moments. The way he looks at us. How hard she makes us laugh. The notes he hides in our purse. The way she makes us feel when we don’t feel anything.

But like an airplane flight, there is turbulence. The fights. The disagreements. The little things that bother us. His socks. Her shopping. We start wondering if we’ve made the right choice.

Once we are in doubt, we have to make another choice: to continue to fly with this person or jump out of the plane. This choice is based on a thousand other factors, again depending on the individual and where they are in their journey.

If we decide to jump, the scary free fall will either make us stronger (grow) or miserable (depressed). But sooner or later, we’ll find ourself back at the airport waiting to board another plane. Then we hit turbulence. Or maybe there is no turbulence. Maybe we’ve changed our mind about the destination. Either way, another choice: Fly or jump?

Love is making a choice every single day  to either love or not love. That’s it.

It’s that simple. Either to continue the process or not. We fall in and out of love. Even in relationships, especially in relationships. This doesn’t mean we don’t love the person. It means we are left with a choice. There is a difference between feeling love for someone (caring about a person) and loving someone (choosing to love that person). We may have love for someone forever, but that doesn’t mean we choose to love that person forever. The choice to love is not a feeling; it is an action.

That is why it is so difficult. It requires us to do something, and I’m not just talking about buying flowers. It might mean putting our wants aside. Also, like chemistry, the ability to love is not a constant: It is a variable. It fluctuates, depending on where we’re at in our life and what we’re struggling with.

Sometimes it is easy to love. Sometimes it is extremely difficult. But at the end of the day, it’s always a choice.

Although love varies, it also deepens  This means the longer we stay on that flight and embark on the journey together, the more fruit the process will bear. Our investment pays off. Our choices become easier. We not only become stronger as a couple, but also as individuals, assuming the love process is healthy—which means we are both doing work. The choice to love creates opportunity to hit notes in life that we could never hit alone, and this is what makes our choice worth it.

So, how do you know if it’s love? That is not the question to ask. The question is: Do you choose to love this person or not? Right now. Not tomorrow. Today. Make a choice. Yes or no. If the answer is yes, love as hard as you can. Love with everything you’ve got (your capacity right now at this point in your life). If the answer is no, promise me one thing.Let the fall make you stronger.

now must we go and find love? 

One thing i learnt in life is this, Love is not found hurriedly and also we tend to find love where its least expected. it just comes and flows naturally. 

must we be loved? 

the answer is so dicey but God so loved us and there fore we must be loved, we all have our different views to this but this my own point of view. 

SUMMARY,

i will summarize by saying that love is a verb, and action word not y mere saying it just act on it we all deserves to be loved in one way or the other no one is perfect and know one knows its all.. Dear LOVE is SEX & SEX is not LOVE. but some people sees sex as a lubricant to maintain love nanananana thats not true if your panther is tired of you honey trust me SEX cant keep him or her back trust me.

GOD IS LOVE & LOVING YOURSELF & GOD GIVES YOU TRUE LOVE in both the sight of man and God and also adds blessings with no sorrows.