Love is ...

Love ain't ... 

What is love?

By Dr. James C. Wadley

Marriage, Family, and Sexuality Therapist

As a marriage, family, and sexuality therapist, I have had the opportunity to interact with couples, families, and individuals from all walks of life who maintain various beliefs about relationships.  Perhaps the most frequent and compelling conversation that emerges in my private practice and work in the community is how people define what love is and what it means to them.  Oftentimes in couple’s therapy, one of the individuals will pause and look around as if gathering his or her thoughts about how to define a concept previously taken for granted.  Eventually, one of the two individuals will shout out a phrase and their partner will chime in with their thoughts about what they believe love REALLY is. 

Along the same lines, I recently conducted a workshop at a local university about the dynamics that exist in a loving relationship.  The participants in the workshop came up with myriad ways to define “love” and the types of relationships that they wanted to have with their partners.  Here are some of their responses about what love is:

§ “A commitment to someone”

§ “Doing things for people that you don’t do for everyone else”

§ “A strong feeling that you have for another person”

§ “Wanting