"Love" had always been viewed in varied dimensions. It is interesting to know that the most common "feeling" in young age is often least understood. It is a pleasant and interesting sight to watch young guys and girls roaming hand in hand and crooning that they are in love in Saharaganj and other malls in Lucknow. The word "committed" has become a status symbol. The faster you are hooked and booked, you attain the coveted status of a much-in-demand product. Love has turned into an industry with movies portraying a love story irrespective of its fit in the context of the plot. Valentine's day budget of some "just-in-love" (like "just-married") couples run to thousands. A love curve can be traced (x axis representing the "time" and y axis "intensity") - it starts with the "initial phase", proceeds to the "mature phase" and at last ends either in a " commitment phase" or "decay phase", what people normally describe as "breaking off". Its fun to watch all these as an objective onlooker and I do that often i.e. objectively analyse the various parameters that go to make this slope steep ! Steeper the slope, the higher the rate of love. !
After all the above points, I do not know whether I am right in describing love as a "feeling'. And whether I am right in assuming that love is just a phenomenon in young age. So to get my theory to acceptable limits I will specify the assumptions.
1- I limit my theory to the mutual attraction between young members of opposite sex towards each other.
2- By "young" I mean form the onset of puberty to the age of 35. After that one is middle-aged.
3- There is nothing like a hate. Love is a continuum and it extends from "absence of love" to "complete love". Absence of love is not equal to hate.
What I want to achieve out of here is to analyse the various types of relationships young people have and do understand the dynamics of it. Moreover I want to give in my own way a method to sustain relationships.
A random quiz of the so called "committed" people in the campus and outside provided me various clues of how to look at love. It was not always a pleasant experience to quiz; some asking me to "f*** off !" while some asking me to "mind my limits and respect their privacy". Sometimes I wondered whether love is so limited and why are people confusing possesiveness as love. By and large it was a pleasant experience with many forthcoming to challenge my intellectual processing of so called "emotional" feeling.
Some expressed love as to what extent they feel "one" with their other person. "By "one' it means how similar they think, to what extent their likes and dislikes matched and of course the comaptibility factor i.e. how comfortable they are with each other. Another group expressed it as how they respect and "look up" to someone as a frame of reference for judging oneself and also as someone to emulate. Hence from the above discussion we get two dimensions of defining love.
Accordingly we define "love" as the degree of oneness that a person feels with another person in emotive, congnitive and behavioral level. In short we can label this as "degree of relation". The second definition of love goes as the process of idealising and idolising another person and making concious attempts to emulate his/her thinking and behavior. This can also be labelled as "degree of adoration".
Now that we have two dimensions, why not cross them to form a matrix? Having done that, we arrive at the following formutions.
1- high "degree of relation" + high "degree of adoration" = "union"
When a person shares a close bond with his / her lover physically and at the same time adores him / her, it boils down to "duplicates". Such lovers you find going around always jovial and have the same taste, same habits and some even wear the same type of dress with same colors ! Should we conclude this as a happy relationship? May be...but it has a tendency to get boring. So the creative of the two partners should take up to himself/herself to create something new to keep the interest in the relationship alive.
2- high "degree of relation" + low "degree of adoration" = "animosity"
Well this is the classic pre-divorce scenario. "Divorce" is defined here as the moving or parting away of two persons irrespective of marital status. Although the persons are together, they do not have any shared emotions between them. They are emotionally distant and are together just to 'save face' in the society. It is a state of perpetual tension and it can be released by two ways - increase the degree of adoration or breaking apart from relation. The former is very very unlikely and a counsellor is required to facilitate the process while the later is common in a formal breaking apart ceremony that takes place in the courts.
3- low "degree of relation" + high "degree of adoration" = "selflessness" or "longing"
This type of love occurs when there is no actual relationship between individuals but one adores another and try to live up to the other's ideals. There is a shedding up of individuality on the part of the former and a concious attempt to identify with the other. Because there is no actual relationship, the former is always on a state of 'longing' for the later but it may be noted that the love survives because of this longing. If a relationship is established between the two, then there is a chance that this love may die. This type of love usually gets manifested in two ways - 1) Idol - worshipper type where one partner is put on a pedestal and adored by the other. Every aspect of the 'idol" is acceptable to the 'worshipper'. This actually results in spoiling up of the "idol" for the worshipper become attached emotionally and becomes blind to the fault of the idol. 2) The second type is Distancer-pursuer type. It means one individual is always on the run and the other pursues him being attached emotionally. Again the distance is the catalyst that keeps the love alive. Such people may be classified "selfless" too for they are prepared to sacrifice anything to bridge the gap and establish a formal relationship with the person/object of their love.
4- low "degree of relation" + low "degree of adoration" = "indifference"
Last but no the least, we have "indifference" which basically is the state when we meet many people. We are least bothered about all the persons we see in our daily lives, on the road walking by, in train, trams and so on.. We do not feel anything for them. It is as if they do not exist for us. We ignore them. At this stage, we are always on a look out for an attraction that will arrest our mind. This is the first stage of love. And what can attract? It is either those that have already left a past impression in our minds through values norms and beliefs or those that have a shared interest with us. Sometimes it may be persons who have completely contrasting interests and this happens due to hightened level of curiosity in an individual.
So to trace the path to love - from indifference, one finds the object of attraction and becomes selfless to attract the other partner. This leads to union. If all other variables stay put and the individuals are emotionally adpative to them without building up of tension then the story ends in union or else if individuals cannot adapt emotionally, then the story moves forward to 'animosity' which may lead to divorce or an unhappy existence.
After all these exercise, it is better to remember that love is a necessity and not a luxury. Morever it can be independent of relationship which can be extrapolated to divine love. Hence this should primarily address the narrow minded individuals who limit love to a circle of acquaintances. What we need today is a path from indifference to selflessness and finally to union where we have a relation with every man/woman. That alone will fulfill the biblical pronouncement - 'Fatherhood of God, Brotherhood of man'. Can we do it?
