Different kinds of Love

Different kinds of love
Love can not be measured, weighed, bought; you can't even hold it in the palm of your hand. It doesn't hold a consistency, or take on any known color. It is more like your soul, and what makes you who you are. If you have love in your heart, you never have to doubt that it will leave you. You may have your heart broken, but you can not be defeated. Love can be a memory of good times you have spent with another. Love can be the feeling you get when a couple gives each other a kiss. It is just known, understood...and a bond develops in a relationship.

There are different kinds of love...psychologists give them specific names, but I'm not a psychologist. I would much rather tell you from personal experience about the different kinds of love I have encountered.

Family Love
As a little boy I knew love from my parents. They fed me, clothed me, held me, and always let me know how much I meant to them. Growing older, my parents taught me responsibility, what happens as a result of my actions, what's right from what's wrong. Today, they instill these values, to try and keep me safe from harm. They would give up the world if they had it, to protect me. I call this love...Family Love.

Friendship Love
As you gain friendships throughout your life, you may keep a few close friends and lose a few friends you thought were your close friends. Friendship is a lot like Family Love. However, you can tell your friend EVERYTHING, and with your family, some things are kept hidden. Your true friends will always listen, and respect you, and in doing this, you should provide the same goodness. I have very close friends who I know would be at my door in a moment's notice if I needed them and vice-versa. I call this love...Friendship Love.

Soulmate Love
As years go by, and you go through different relationships, you may meet a boy or girl you fall in love with. This love takes a bond of trust and respect between two people. True love is real love, which means you may not know every detail of their life, but you know that while you do learn about each other you don't have to pretend. With love, you can stand with each other and learn to take things as they come. I've heard the comment many times, "You're not married, you don't have to do anything." In my mind, marriage is a beautiful thing, but when you are with someone the same rules apply. You may have disagreements, but those are what we call learning tools. No relationship can exist without disagreements! Now constant disagreements are a different thing, but in the learning process this helps the couple understand their differences, helping them grow together. I call this love...Soul Mate Love.

Passionate Love

Love conjures up the picture of passionate or romantic love, which involves intense feeling and interest in another person with relatively high states of physical arousal. Passionate love, in other words, is emotional, exciting and a state of intense longing for union with another. One feels joy if this experience is reciprocated, or despair, if it is not reciprocated.

Prem through this with his girlfriend. He was somewhat infatuated, and so was she. Together they were wild. Till one day, Prem went through a personal tragedy, and realised that his girlfriend was not there to support him. This not only ended their intense relationship, but changed him, too. The next woman he met, he was a different man, testing the waters before plunging into a long term bond.

Passionate lovers are absorbed in one another, ecstatic at attaining their partner's love, and disconsolate on losing it. This intense feeling is very normal, all of us go through it, so there is no need to question oneself and feel guilty or abnormal about it. For the mathematical minded, the theory of emotion is: Arousal x Label = Emotion

Arousal is like a physiological change, like euphoria over a cricket match, or stress in the family, or appreciation of a film or fights with friends and most often, exam fever. (During exams, most teens tend to feel their love is at a peak! Not just feelings, but the beginning of relations also peak during times of arousal).

Our liking and disliking of people is influenced by the events they are associated with. When we are disturbed and come across someone, we label this emotional arousal to this person and give it a name-love.

In Prem's case, the girl (the second one whom he eventually married) had mentally labeled him as the guy giving her the love for flowers (in fact, that was why a wild man like Prem toned himself down to presenting flowers; she had told him she loved roses. Prem got a rose for her each time they met. One day he did not turn up for a rendezvous with her because he could not find a decent flower!). On the other hand, she helped Prem to come out of his personal tragedy and his own why-did-I-do-it feeling arising out of the bad experience he had with the first girlfriend. Thus, the relationship went on and is still going great guns!

Companionate Love

Though passionate love burns hot, it inevitably simmers down. The high of romance may sustain for a few months, even years, but not forever. The intense absorption in the other, the thrill of the romance, the giddy 'floating on a cloud' feeling, fades. After two years of the best of relationships, partners express intensity half as often. If a relationship is to endure, it will settle to a steadier and warm afterglow-companionate love. Unlike the wild emotions of passionate love, companionate love is a deep, affectionate attachment. The cooling of intense romantic love triggers off disillusion. In the long run, what makes people keep feeling love are factors other than initial attraction and intense longing for union. Like, in the case of Prem with his second girlfriend.

Unconditional Love
I also have a personal love that holds no bounds, and that is the love God has for all of us. I call this Unconditional Love.

There are a lot of branches on the tree, extending to "best friend," "first love," pets...etc. I will never forget those who have played a part in my life. All we can do is start loving people and getting to know those strangers that walk beside us in the grocery store, drive down our same streets, live in the neighborhoods we live in. More and more in the world I see people shut each other out and claim others are invading their space.


I may not have all the great information about love, but I know that I have it in my life. To me, that is the most important thing. We may lose all of our money, run into problems, or fall from grace so to speak...but in the end...those that love you will never leave you. If you love.