I have been asked many times since I have arrived at this site: "For you, what is love?"
I thought this question could be answered in addition to other questions. I imagined it would be entertainment to read some of the questions that have been posed, along with my answers. Yet the question of how people see love, and how I also see it, and how I once saw it in the past; it is a question I am not callous enough yet to take so lightly. It is a subject important enough to devote many blogs and no other subjects to distract.
So with barely an opening to thoughts yet to share it is through tears and smiles and such grief for the memory of my first time to fall in love that is fresh in my mind as the day I first fell, I recall as I write. Still I must start at the beginning.
As some of you may know I believe in God and His Son Jesus Christ for salvation. For me it is not a religious perspective, as my opinion on religion is that such matters are tainted with the greedy and power craving hand of man and so religion is too easily spoiled and twisted by petty desires of corruptible man. I chose long ago to simplify; and such a blessing to see on the pages of His Word that the Gospel of Grace also teaches such simplification. Paul teaches a new way better than miracles, it is love. I learned long ago love bears fruit such as patience, kindness, ability to bear pain, ability to defeat fear, hate, jealousy, and greed. I learned the different types of love. These can be researched but basically are love between family as brothers and sisters love ; love between friends and neighbors, which bears fruit such as loyalty; and love shared between husband and wife or 'lovers' and even the best friends, through which we can find deepest meaning in life and such deep despair and sorrow. I have since felt, for me a new and better way to learn of love, feeling that all forms of love can be combined and that love can be flavored with such a variety of experiences and other feelings, perhaps too many variables to quantify. I am not interested in measuring such an intense and dynamic thing that is better expressed in feelings than in words or chemical reactions.
So love is a gift. As love is one of God's attributes, that we can experience such forms of it surely is a gift.
So love is a choice. We all have the choice to have and to give love, or not. Those of us who deny love, withhold love, or hide love will live with more bitterness, hate, jealousy, greed.

So love is the meaning of life. All love comes from God, and flows to God. A wise old man, a friend told me this, but I do believe it is true. If it is true then we exist so that God can express His love and also enjoy our expressions of love for each other, and for Him.

Perhaps I could end this article there, but I feel to share more of my perspective. I believe the chemical reactions in our bodies are also part of a gift we are given to focus our experiences in the moments we have together. But to classify these reactions in our physical bodies as being love itself I think is not at all precise. Certainly our bodies respond to different stimuli and certain reactions are more common in a romantic or lustful setting. Such reactions are merely bodily functions but what occurs in the mind and what is considered in our thoughts are worth questioning for this subject. Depending on our upbringing and our values, also our understanding of respect and what each person believes love is for him or her can greatly impact the quality of love we receive and give. Some people lack an understanding of respect, so the quality of their love can be lacking. Some people lack a fundamental understanding of what love is or what love is not (love is kind, love is patient... LOVE IS NOT QUICK TO ANGER, love does not boast, love is not selfish...)
Some people think of love as being purely physical and as reactions to stimuli as machines or the instinct of animals. We differ from machines in that we have a spirit and free will, and we differ from animals in that we have a soul and share spoken and written language; I believe animals have a spirit and can understand spoken word, just as animals can love. Such intense physical experiences as attraction can lead to different outcomes depending on our choices, to think or not to think and act about our temptations and pursue lustful thoughts and actions. It is not love to engage in passionate sexual acts, nor to me is such a thing "making love", no, but rather just to have sex or 'sleep with' someone. For me to make love is to combine first the choice to give and receive love and then to enjoy any way to share it, most intensely shared by talk and touch. Some who do not know of this love to be a choice to give and consciously to consider the aspects of love as being patient, quick to forgive, slow to anger, unconditional; these people may feel that to give love is like to give money or to give good cooking. Such a shallow view of love can too easily be reversed. Difficult times can hide this false love so that in a crisis or the most important moments when love is most needed it may be denied because of fear or anger. I learned of such damaged love from my ex.
So some people do not understand love is a choice. Such an understanding of love will always lead to hurt for others during difficult times.
So love can be sudden, intense, filled with sexual passion, or completely devoid of any sexual feeling.
I met my first lover when I was 21. She was 39. I was alone and feeling lonely. She was hurt and feeling lonely. We both felt attraction for each other. She looked at me with a look I had never seen. Perhaps it was lust, perhaps longing, or just attraction. I think it was all of that. I looked back, but with surprise, I had no experience to be sure what she might be thinking with such a look. I looked behind me to see if it was someone else. I walked by a pillar to peak around the other side and see if she was really looking at me! Yes, our attraction was very exciting. She seduced me, it must have been easy for her because I was willing to entertain any idea she plotted to request my help. I was torn between my own temptations and my spiritual beliefs. I chose to combine them and to simply choose to love her. So then 12 years to learn some things... She did not understand love then but I believe she does now. I have learned that some horrible experiences in our lives, in our past, can damage our ability to love or to understand the nature of this choice we make, this gift from God we are all given. I learned that my love could be used against me to hurt. And so some of you have also learned that not only can love be a painful experience, but our deep love for others can be used against us to cut and scar deeply. These acts are not loving acts, and at the very least such acts or cruelty demonstrate a lack of understanding of love the gift, love the choice. People who repeatedly use our love to hurt us should be avoided. Ultimately we identified our failure to communicate in a loving way was destructive and we were able to part ways before we generated hatred or regrets too deep to reconcile friendship. She misses me, we are friends. She does want me back because she remembers my deep unconditional love. I do not, because I remember such horrible communication and hurt. Our communication is much better now.
So I was alone for some time and looked for someone special with dating sites. I experienced many fraudulent sites and also met individuals who desired only to take money. I discovered this site almost 2 years ago. I met acquaintances here and we spoke through personal email. I left the site last Christmas and unfortunately my new friendships did not grow.
So I was working good hours and enjoyed free time and freedom of movement and one day I noticed a girl. An attractive and bright smiling young lady, 21; working at my favorite coffee shop. Tall, blue eyes, bright red hair. I decided I should meet her. One day soon after I found an excuse to see her during her break time. And as before, there was a look. This time was very different. I felt her deeply. I felt something from her. My experience, last summer, has been shockingly different, and far far more intense than anything else in my lifetime to experience. She looked deeply into my eyes, and I felt no feelings of lust or strong attraction to me, but rather I felt as though I had been measured from the inside. I still feel like she took something from me. I was not myself, I have not been myself since that moment. I discovered feelings inside me that I had not imagined. Perhaps so long to be with a woman, choosing to love her but not understanding, never having felt what it is to "fall in love". I know now I fell in love with that girl the moment she looked in my eyes. And what she took, I felt it everywhere she went. I may never be able to explain how I can feel her. I only know that I had feelings afterward, that I should go some place for a walk at a strange time and as though not my own desire to go walking, but I went walking and she was in front of my path. I was once walking and felt her coming in my direction, even though she did not live near me. I felt her coming and I ran away. I came back to the spot and found she had walked by and saw her disappearing in the distance, so I know I wasn't crazy for thinking I felt her coming. Once on my vacation time, while immersed in entertainment late at night, I felt such a strong feeling suddenly to go walking. I was very frustrated at myself for imagining such silly ideas that I could be feeling her go by. I resolved to ignore my feelings. More than half an hour passed and I was again assaulted with such a strong feeling that I should leave immediately so that I did so, and in my frustration I ran in no particular direction after 2 a.m. I ran past her and startled her with her friend. I learned then that they had walked by my building and stopped not far to have a conversation and smoke before walking back. She walked by again shortly after, surely I had been given this first feeling the first time she walked by and again only moments after she has passed the second time, I ran out side in frustration over my strange feelings, feeling intensely that I must go immediately and also feeling that I would see her, and thinking I was crazy to imagine such feelings. But I did not imagine them. The several conversations we had only served to intensify my feelings that I had met the person I was looking for my whole life. Truly I have been looking for something all my life. Until I met her, I thought I was looking for the perfect job, actually. After experiencing such strange, unexplained feelings and after feeling such emotion from her and her pain such as I had never felt the emotions of another person before, and her words to me as I cannot bear to recount here, I became convinced this person is my soul-mate. And yet I have been filled with such heart break and sorrow. I did not know how to share my feelings with her. I had more fear that I would be unacceptable than I have ever had. Some months passed and I met a woman who saw me just as I had seen precious Sophie. This lady, 20 years my senior, engaged me in conversation, and met my eyes in a similar way, though I did feel in her eyes a strong feeling of attraction. We became friends quickly and shared conversations about many things, including my unrequited love for and first time to fall for the young woman I met that summer, Sophie. One night my new friend called me and suggested my company would be the best company and that her company with me would be pleasant to say the least. I accepted her invitation. Such conversations I only imagined before we shared that night, and I chose also to share with her my love in a passionate way. We made love into the morning and before we had finished she laughed and cried. She laughed as she shed tears and told me that she had never experienced such a thing. She sought to please me during what she thought was my time of need but for a moment in time we both experienced such a beautiful thing as what it is to feel loved by someone, as intensely as we shared it that night, and at a time in both our lives when we needed someone to care for each other and someone to care about. Perhaps what I needed was to please her, to feel some success at giving my love away.
She told me I should tell Sophie about my feelings. Then she moved away from me. She fell in love with me and she knew my heart was with another woman, so she left and moved away from me. I know because she told me when she left. I believe her because I felt from her the same genuine honest nature as I felt from Sophie.
So I attempted in degrees to tell Sophie my feelings. I learned she was seeing a man, before I told her my feelings. I met this man and learned his lack of love for her. I feel so foolish to recall this. I told her finally and I was so sorry for it. She told me she wished that I would not let her go, perhaps I should have told her she should leave him but I said that I should be the one to go away. He saw us talking and he was so jealous he hated me, and he hates me now, and he treated her so badly. He was so angry with her just for talking to me. Some months passed and I learned from a friend that she broke off with the jealous man. I bought her a thoughtful Christmas gift and Christmas eve, through tears she told me that she could not accept it. She told me that many people she knows would find it inappropriate. So it was some time for me to find my old self, or at least to learn that I could go back to a time inside myself when I did not know about all these feelings, and that I was once just fine, so that I could be able to act and feel fine again. The letters I have received since I returned have helped me to feel better. I never received such letters before. At first I needed the distraction from my grief, and I wondered if there is someone real here who is worth all of these tears and this pain to bear; or am I merely due this experience so that I can imagine how my ex must feel to lose me, and how others feel who have experienced this painful side of love. Before these experiences of last year I could not have imagined the depth and breadth of feelings that can come from love. Before these experiences I would have said I was "in love" with my ex, but truly I only chose to love her, and love her still but now I know I was right about love and the need for us to choose to love, but I was also wrong about love. I couldn't understand what it was to fall in love, until it happened to me. For anyone out there who thinks they know what love is, if you have plumbed the depths of your own capacity to feel pain and you know what it is to ache, worse than any other pain, wanting to see someone or to be near the one you love, and being worried for their feelings and their safety, then you know what it is to feel love for someone. If you found a place where you are happier than you could imagine you could be, and it is only in the presence of such a unique character who you think is very special, then you have likely felt love from someone.
I know it's true that Sophie loves me, I just think it's not the kind of love I wish it was. Otherwise she wouldn't be so nice. Otherwise she never would have cried to refuse my gifts. For those of you looking for love and haven't found it; please be careful. It can be more intense than you imagined, and sometimes all at once it feels like far too much. If only I had known how to guard my heart from such love,... but then perhaps I never would have known what I was looking for all my life.
Here is a picture of my cat Calvin. When I was much younger I had this little grey weirdo as my friend. I loved Calvin very much, and he was a strange cat who liked no one, except me. Calvin would come running as fast as he could run, whenever I called his name. And I know he loved me. As strange as he was to everyone, he dove into my lap and close his eyes and lifted his head up towards mine. I felt his love for me as I know he felt my love for him. I never expected anything from Calvin. I just loved him. I chose one day when I saw him as a little kitten that I would just love him and maybe I'd have a friend. And somehow he gave me that love right back. Sometimes it's nice when it's that simple. If you find that kind of simple perfect love, don't ask why, or what it means to someone else, or question the loyalty of it or don't dare put conditions on it. You just take it and give it back, as honestly and purely as you can.
So that's what I think about love, at least what I can share with you right now.
Good luck
God bless
-Alan