What Is Love?!

Love is the constant, intense desire existing in two persons or more that impels them together into situations in which each of them can show the truth of himself, and together they create an intellectual state and a flourishing emotional atmosphere far better than what each of them could bring about alone.

In a true marriage, both the man and the woman think of their common affairs more than each thinks of himself. There the sharing begins in every benefit, and every sacrifice is for both sides. Likewise the feeling of security and contentment comes from mutual efforts.

As in dancing, so in marriage: the pleasure does not come by way of one person's movement, but from the blending and joining of all the movements and actions. From this we see that the more fully and completely a person can show the truth of himself to another person, the more this becomes a cause for the increase of his love for him.

This means that a man can speak with his wife sincerely and let her know what is really in his mind without fearing any misunderstanding or opposition. When a man says to his wife without fear, "I forgive your sister, but I shall never forget the wounding words she said to me"... then the man has expressed himself spontaneously. He might have said nothing of the kind for the sake of his wife's happiness; but if he refrains from it because he fears a misunderstanding with his wife and revenge from her, then they are not living in a mental and emotional atmosphere in which each can show the truth of himself.

There are states of false emotional excitement that may lead us into a failed marriage — for example, a sexual desire arising from physical beauty or from mere vitality. Therefore we must know the difference between physical attraction and deep feeling.

We may feel that we love because another person makes us feel so; love is not confined to "myself" — it is the result of a feeling that we both sense.

Two persons can desire each other intensely without love, each of them finding that he feels a natural, simple inclination toward the other. And love, as it may appear, is nothing but a blind pleasure a person takes in seeing himself made much of, as if he were perfection itself.

It often takes five years for a bridal couple to discover that their agreement and their shared activities are sentiment and not love. If the husband likes hunting, for example, and the wife does not, they give it up; and if the wife likes parties and the husband does not, they stay away from them; so their social amusement is confined to what pleases them both. And it is feared that if each of them takes his amusement alone, discord will creep into their life, and disagreement and separation will follow.

Their failure to agree with each other shows itself

plain as the sun, sooner or later. Troubled faces confront each other even at the dinner table.

But the woman and the man who love each other with a true love do not care about disagreement over trifling things, knowing that a difference of opinion is not equal to the loss of emotional understanding.

True love is not blind; it sees the virtues and the faults, admitting without hesitation that no human being is "perfect."

Love says with all humility: "I know I shall be annoyed because you do not respect appointments, and I know you are annoyed when I smoke, and I know there is a difference in the harmony of our natures; but each of us sees in the other a great value that allows us to create together a happy life far surpassing anything either of us could achieve alone. The important thing is that each of us likes and loves what is in the other's personality and wants to cherish the other as he is."

There are no two persons on the face of the earth who can live in permanently friendly relations without the one troubling the other's life from time to time. Understanding is necessary, for when love strikes an obstacle it turns into anger and hatred.

And if a person believes that no sacrifice at all is needed from either side, this means that love has no price in his eyes. Love is a discovery and a fulfillment of the self: that a person live and grow and work for the good of the other person.

True love grows with the passing of the years, and lasting love helps in discovering a way of reaching a better love.

The only thing that equals love in its severity is truth. Where marriage is concerned, they are two different manifestations of one thing: love is nothing but the emotional response to a mental acknowledgment of the reality of another person. It is a constant expansion — not like the tree in its straightness, but in an irregular fashion; and the art of love is like patience for the return of spring. What we have truly loved cannot be lost: its trace will remain in our soul, and it cannot be torn from us even by death.

Translated from the "Reader's Digest"