There's love of your family, which is its own thing and deserves an explanation from someone other than me. There's love of your friends, which I can explain but don't want to talk about right now. And then there's love of your partner.

For romantic love, I think there are basically two species. There is something like limerence, and there is something like agape, but these are pretty rough approximations. Each participates in, but is not coextensive with, something like eros.

I say 'something like limerence' because I do not mean the term as it is defined in the literature, such as the literature is. But I do mean something that is obsessive, that is unsustainable as a daily practice, that is consuming. Limerence is typically understood as a kind of deranged fascination from afar where a connection is merely imagined; but, as anyone who has been truly deep into the suck knows, the kind of obsession oftentimes identified with 'limerence' is completely possible, and even common, in actual connections.

The difficulties attendant to this species of 'love' are manifold, but they all mostly amount to: it's very, very hard to have the energy matched by your partner--at least, at the same time--and it's very, very unlikely to plant either party's feet beneath them. Unfortunately for those who experience this kind of love, it's fully outside of their control. I am one such. It's come along really rarely for me. Twice in my life--once recently. Unfortunately, it won't work out with this second one. So I am thinking, maybe, I remain unpaired forever. I have to figure out what that sort of life looks like.

Agape, on the other hand--again, I'm using these terms as approximations, because they're both situated in intellectual and historical contexts that don't quite meet the experience of most in the here and now--is that nice, warm feeling that many experience when eros titrates down. I think what makes this sort of bond so strong is a couple of things: (1) mere repetition / exposure. (2) An inability to experience limerent love, which characterizes most lives, I think. But this has to be a better way to live, because it is the only path toward true rootedness. The limerent species is life on a razor's edge--an ultimately exhausting exercise for most who experience it. And as life is so full of other things, agape love with a partner can actually fortify you for those other things, rather than leave you barely able to function. It's clearly the more adaptive variety.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5809776&forum_id=2,#49506262)

Everything was cinematic. She held me like she was afraid I was going to float away.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5809776&forum_id=2,#49506296)

For women love is transactional. It's did you fulfill her needs today. If ever you don't meet the standard vs the alternative, you're out. As long as she believes she's getting the best deal, she will subjectively experience love, whatever that means, to birdbrains in their birdbrain way.

It's as simple as.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5809776&forum_id=2,#49506282)