Love: what it means and how to respond

A feeling and a commitment

People use one word for several things. There is the surge of love you feel in a moment, such as hearing your partner laugh from the next room. There is the steady attachment that persists when you are annoyed with the same person. And there is love as a set of choices: showing up, keeping promises, repairing after a fight. This page is mostly about the first two, the felt part, while recognizing that the third is what keeps them going.

How love can feel

In the moment, love often feels warm and expansive: softening eyes, an urge to touch or be near, a protective pull. Over years it can feel quieter, more like home than fireworks. Love also has painful edges. Worry about someone you love, and the ache of their absence, are part of the same attachment.

What love signals

Love signals that a relationship has become part of how you understand your own life. After reviewing the evidence, Baumeister and Leary concluded that people have a powerful, fundamental need to form and keep strong, stable relationships, and that lacking such bonds is linked to poorer health and well-being (Baumeister and Leary, 1995). It is a review, not a single test, but it helps explain why love can feel like a need rather than a luxury.

Love also needs maintenance after conflict. In a study following 73 young adults and their partners, having a partner who recovered well after a conflict discussion went with more positive relationship emotions and greater satisfaction (Salvatore and colleagues, 2011). In other words, the way you come back after a hard conversation is part of how love feels to the other person.

Love, affection, and longing

Affection is lighter and more everyday: fondness that can extend to coworkers, neighbors, and pets. Trust is the expectation that someone will be reliable; you can love someone you do not fully trust, which is often painful. Longing is love reaching toward someone who is absent or out of reach.

Example: love on an ordinary Tuesday

Aisha and her husband argued the night before about money. In the morning she is still irritated, but she notices he looks exhausted. She makes his coffee the way he likes it and leaves a note: “Still want to finish last night's conversation. Still on your side.” They talk again that evening. The irritation did not cancel the love; the love shaped how she carried the irritation.

Three ways to act on love

1. Say it specifically. “I love how you talk to our daughter when she's upset” lands more than a general “love you.”
2. Come back after conflict. Name that you are still on the same side, even if the problem is not solved yet.
3. Notice what the other person experiences as love, which may differ from what you would want, and ask them directly.

Words you could use

• “Still annoyed about last night, and still on your side.”
• “I love how patient you were with her today.”
• “What makes you feel most cared for when you've had a hard week?”

A reflection prompt

How would the people I love say they know I love them, and does that match what I think I am showing?

The EQTiger dimension it relates to

Love connects to Relationship Communication: the feeling matters most when it is expressed in ways the other person can actually recognize. Read what the communication score describes.