The word love does a lot of jobs. It points to the dopamine rush of a new crush. It points to the slow, oxytocin-warm sense of being at home with someone you’ve known for years. It points to the actual daily practice of caring for another person’s flourishing whether or not the feeling shows up that morning. Three meanings, one word, and most arguments about love come from people using one meaning and hearing another.
The chemistry version
Pop songs hand you the chemistry and call it love. The hyper-focus, the obsessive thinking, the loss of appetite — that’s not love. That’s attraction, running on dopamine and norepinephrine, doing what biology designed it to do: focus your attention long enough to consider building a life with another person.
The fantasy version
Movies hand you the fantasy of a person who fixes everything broken in you and call that love too. Both will let you down on a long enough timeline.
The practice
The third meaning, the practice, is the one you build a life on. Sustained care for another person’s flourishing, with or without the rush of feeling. It’s also the one that sounds boring until you’ve watched two people do it for forty years, and then it doesn’t look boring at all.
The practice is the one that stays.
The rest of the site is about all three.