Love, Love, Love, Love

Hello dear friends. I was recently reminded by a someone, that I was going to make a post discussing "love." Or more specifically, what it is.
We must first realize that there are several different kinds of love, and it's easy to get them confused considering we only have one word for them all. I will list them here.
1) Marital love- as between husband and wife.
2) Friendship love- as between two friends
3) Like-Love- as between the first stages of boyfriend/girlfriend
4) Spiritual love- as between God and a human being
5) Family love- as between two blood relatives

Now, let us find all the other words that could possibly be used in place of the usual "love."

1) To cherish
2) To appreciate
3) To idolize
4) To exalt
5) To admire

Please take note that I have used verbs for all of these. Because without the action there is no feeling. (Ever notice how a marriage tends to lose it's flavor when they stop going on dates and the like? Yep, lack of action, lack of love).

Let's discuss marital love. I chose Cherish for this one. Why? Because as a husband and wife, in order to last, you must cherish each other. You must love each other to the extent that you can't live without each other. If you can't live without each other, then there can be no divorce. If a couple gets divorced and goes on living, this is not true love. One of the definitions of love in the dictionary is: To need or require. This is what marital love is.

Then we have the boyfriend/girlfriend love. All I can say is, do not be fooled! This is not love! This is mockery of marital love! This is no verb! It's a silly little feeling that makes you go haywire and act like an idiot, where the girls are always clinging to the boys arms, whispering "sweet nothings" in each other's ears. It's disgusting is what it is! Okay, okay, I don't want to offend anyone. I'm not saying that ALL boyfriends and girlfriends are like this. Just the majority. But if love were really a feeling, you wouldn't be able to "fall out of love" as they say. If you have this feeling that you're meant for each other, by gosh, you'll be meant for each other! But how can you be meant for each other one minute and not the next? This makes no sense whatsoever! If you can bear with each others faults, if you can get through the tough situations, THAT is when you can know you're really in love! Buying someone a gigantic present for their birthday is not love. Again, do not be fooled!

Okay, after all that, it's quite refreshing to move on to friendship love. The thing with friendship is that it can often look like it's there, but it's really one sided. I have a lot of people who like to think of me as their friend, but I still just think of them as an acquaintance. There are also people I have once thought of as friends, that I don't think of as friends anymore, and there are people who are the same way with me as well, I'm sure. Do you really have as many friends as you say you do? Not everyone on facebook is really your friend you know. I consider it truly imposible to have 250 friends. I don't think I've even said hello to that many people. I think that of everyone who calls me their friend only twelve or so are truly my friend. So how can you tell if they're your friend or not? Easy. Just ask yourself this one question: Do I gossip about them? If you do, they're not your real friend. If you only have good things to say about them, they're your friend. If you don't talk about them at all, they're still an acquaintance. Got it?

Now family love. Ah yes. The constant bickering, the forever of jealousy, the continuous argument of who has it worse. Love? If you can do all this and then forgive each other and still live in the same house, I'd say yes. If you can bear one another, I believe so. I think it's imposible not to love your family, though it may be buried deep within. You are bound by shared memories and experiences. This in itself is love. Some of them may be good experiences, some may be bad experiences, but they're still experiences.

I have saved the best for last. Spiritual love. I have one word to describe it: everlasting.

From all this I think I can give one pure and simple definition of love for all kinds: Giving without boasting of it, and without asking for anything back.