The Elusive Question
Does love exist? We use the word constantly, we make life-altering decisions in its name, we create art and literature celebrating it, and yet many of us harbor a quiet uncertainty about what, precisely, we’re referring to when we speak of love.
We might describe love through a kaleidoscope of qualities: romantic, unconditional, familiar, difficult, worthwhile, platonic, understanding, warm, eternal, anxious, unsettling, self-sacrificing, gentle, giving, forgiving, spontaneous, destined, painful, comforting. These words circle around something central that somehow remains just beyond our grasp.
The emotions associated with love—the nervous excitement of early attraction, the comfort of familiar intimacy, the ache of separation—are so vivid that we often mistake them for love itself. But these are merely the weather patterns on love’s surface, not its deeper nature.
Love Beyond Emotion
What if love isn’t primarily an emotion at all?
The emotions we associate with love fluctuate constantly, sometimes within the span of hours or even minutes. We can feel irritated with someone we love in the morning and deeply connected to them by afternoon. This volatility makes emotions unreliable guides when asking ourselves the question, “Do I love this person?”
Perhaps love is better understood as an orientation or a stance—a particular way of positioning ourselves in relation to another person. It’s less about how we feel at any given moment and more about a sustained attitude that operates beneath our changing emotional states.
The French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan suggested something revealing when he wrote: “What could be more convincing, moreover, than the gesture of laying one’s cards face up on the table?” This points to something essential about love: a particular kind of transparency and vulnerability that doesn’t typically occur in our more casual relationships.
The Certainty of Reconciliation
One of the most telling indicators of love is what we might call “the certainty of reconciliation.” Consider how differently we behave with those we love deeply versus those we merely like or respect.
With a casual acquaintance, we typically maintain careful boundaries. We avoid topics that might lead to conflict. We rarely express unfiltered criticism. We’re cautious with our opinions and guarded with our vulnerabilities.
With those we truly love, however, we often feel secure enough to be brutally honest. We might criticize a family member in ways that would end a casual friendship. We might argue passionately with a romantic partner, revealing parts of ourselves we’d never show a colleague.
What makes this possible is an underlying trust that the relationship is resilient enough to absorb these tensions. We have an intuitive understanding that no matter how heated the disagreement, reconciliation is virtually certain. The bond itself transcends the particular conflict at hand.
This certainty creates a rare kind of freedom—the freedom to be fully ourselves, including the less appealing aspects of our characters. It allows us to navigate the ocean of a relationship without constantly fearing that we’ll be abandoned on its shores.
The Shared Experience
Love rarely appears in abstraction. It typically emerges from shared experiences that create a sense of connection and mutual understanding.
These can be dramatic, life-altering events, but more often they’re surprisingly modest: standing together under an awning during an unexpected rainstorm, waiting for the downpour to pass; struggling through a challenging university course with a classmate; navigating the small frustrations of daily work with a colleague.
As the psychologist Carl Jung observed, “The meeting of two personalities is like the contact of two chemical substances: if there is any reaction, both are transformed.” These shared moments create the conditions for such transformations to occur.
Something about being in the same situation with another person—experiencing the same challenges, frustrations, joys, or even just the same weather—creates the beginnings of understanding. We feel less alone in our particular experience of the world. We recognize something of ourselves in the other person, and something of them in ourselves.
This is why we often feel that significant relationships enter our lives at precisely the right moment. It’s less about cosmic orchestration and more about mutual resonance—each person having something the other needs at that particular point in their development.
The Most Difficult Love: Self-Reconciliation
Perhaps the most challenging form of love is the one we direct toward ourselves. Unlike our relationships with others, we cannot take breaks from our relationship with ourselves. There is no temporary separation, no cooling-off period, no shore to retreat to when the waters get too turbulent.
We are, as Montaigne suggested, tasked with “living together gently and justly with ourselves,” which he believed was “more remarkable, more rare and more difficult” than even the grandest public achievements.
The Buddha pointed to a similar truth when he observed that “Searching all directions with one’s awareness, one finds no one dearer than oneself.” And yet, despite this natural self-concern, many of us struggle to extend to ourselves the same understanding and forgiveness we offer others.
Genuine self-love requires a willingness to reconcile with even our most damaged parts—not through denial or evasion, but through honest confrontation and gradual integration. It asks us to keep swimming through difficult waters rather than allowing ourselves to drift or sink.
This work rarely happens in isolation. It often requires the help of others—therapists, friends, family members—who can offer perspectives we cannot access on our own. But the fundamental responsibility remains ours: to commit to an ongoing relationship with ourselves that allows for growth and transformation.
The Shared Struggle
There is something deeply comforting in recognizing that this struggle is universal. Each of us navigates the complexities of love—both for others and for ourselves—without a definitive map. We all experience moments of doubt, confusion, and uncertainty about what love is and how to practice it well.
In this sense, love might be understood not as a discoverable object or achievable state, but as a continuous practice—something we do rather than something we find or fall into. It’s the practice of orienting ourselves toward others (and ourselves) with attentiveness, care, and a willingness to reconcile despite inevitable disappointments.
This ongoing work of love might be the most meaningful shared human experience—our collective standing in the rain, looking out at the same uncertain future, finding comfort in the simple knowledge that we’re not facing it alone.
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