We search for love our whole lives. We write songs about it, make movies about it, build religions around it. And yet — when it actually shows up — we often don't recognise it. Or we call something love that isn't.
The word "love" covers such a vast, contradictory territory. It names the feeling a mother has for her child, the obsession of a new romance, the quiet comfort of a thirty-year marriage, the ache after someone leaves.
Love or Attachment?
One of the first distinctions worth making is between love and attachment. Attachment is about need — I need you, I feel safer with you, I'm afraid to lose you. It's rooted in survival. It can feel intensely like love, especially at the beginning of a relationship.
But attachment without love can become possessive, controlling, or self-erasing. You stay not because of joy — but because of fear.
Love, on the other hand, has space in it. Love allows the other person to be fully themselves — even when that's inconvenient. Love says: I want you to flourish, even if that means you change, even if it means you outgrow this.
The Biochemistry of Falling
When we "fall in love," the brain floods with dopamine, norepinephrine, and serotonin. We experience something very close to a mild addiction. The other person becomes a source of pleasure and relief. Everything feels heightened, electric.
This phase lasts, on average, 18 months to 3 years. After that, the chemistry shifts. And this is where many people confuse the end of infatuation with the end of love.
What comes after — the quieter, steadier feeling — is actually the beginning of real love. It's less dramatic, but it's deeper. It's chosen, not just felt.
Love as a Practice
The psychologist Erich Fromm wrote in The Art of Loving that love is not primarily a feeling but a decision, a practice, and a skill. We don't "fall" into love the way we fall into a hole. We learn love. We practice it daily, imperfectly.
- Love requires presence — not just physical proximity, but real attention.
- Love requires care — actively attending to the other's wellbeing.
- Love requires respect — seeing the other as they are, not as we need them to be.
- Love requires knowledge — the willingness to really know someone, including the uncomfortable parts.
How to Know If It's Love
Ask yourself:
- Do I feel like myself around this person, or do I perform?
- Do I want good things for them, even if it costs me something?
- Can I tell them the truth?
- Do I feel seen — not just desired?
- When things are hard, do we move toward each other — or away?
Love isn't the absence of conflict. It's the presence of repair.
Yours, Ksenia Trefilova
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