What Is Love? A Gentle Exploration of the Hungers That Shape Our Hearts
What is love, really?
We ask it in songs, in therapy, in moments of heartache and wonder. We ask it quietly when we feel alone in a room full of people. We ask it aloud when we’re lucky enough to feel close and connected. But even after all the poems, studies, and Sunday morning conversations, love still resists being nailed down in one definition.
Over time, I’ve come to think of love not as a single thing, but as a constellation—a cluster of inner hungers that light up together when the conditions are right. Sometimes they’re synchronized. Sometimes one takes center stage while others rest. And sometimes, if we’re not paying attention, the whole sky of connection can seem to go dark.
But those stars are still there. And understanding what fuels them may help us bring them back into view.
Love as a Collection of Emotional Hungers
What if love is really made of smaller pieces—ancient, instinctive hungers we carry in our bodies and minds?
Here are a few that seem to show up again and again:
• The hunger to nurture—to care for someone else, to protect and uplift.
• The hunger to be nurtured—to feel held, safe, and soothed.
• The hunger for communion—that deep desire to be known without needing to explain ourselves.
• The hunger for validation—to feel seen, valued, and understood.
• The hunger for intimacy—not just physical closeness, but emotional vulnerability.
• The hunger to contribute—to make a mark on someone’s life, to matter.
These aren’t just passing wants. In Jaak Panksepp’s Affective Neuroscience, he maps out how mammals—including humans—are hardwired with specific emotional systems like CARE, PLAY, and SEEKING. These systems light up different areas of the brain and body and motivate us to connect in distinct ways.
Love, then, is not one emotion—it’s the symphony these emotional drives create when they harmonize around another being. Or a cause. Or even ourselves.
Love vs. Attachment: They’re Not Always the Same
It’s easy to confuse love with attachment. But they serve different functions.
Attachment, as first described by John Bowlby and later explored in books like Attached by Amir Levine and Rachel Heller, is our nervous system’s blueprint for connection. It’s the subconscious pattern we formed in childhood around closeness and safety. If you were consistently comforted and protected, you may have developed secure attachment. But if love came with anxiety, distance, or unpredictability, your attachment style may be anxious, avoidant, or disorganized.
These patterns don’t mean we’re broken—they just shape how we seek and react to love.
You can deeply love someone and still struggle with attachment. You might want closeness but get overwhelmed by it. Or you might pull away just when things feel vulnerable. That doesn’t mean you don’t love—it means your old safety system is running interference.
Sue Johnson, in Hold Me Tight, writes that our attachment systems are like internal alarms. When we feel disconnected, they activate. But if we don’t understand our style, we may react in ways that sabotage the very love we crave.
Is Love a Verb?
It’s easy to think of love as a feeling—something that rises up unbidden and sweeps us off our feet. But Erich Fromm, in his timeless book The Art of Loving, argued that love is “an activity, not a passive affect.” It’s something we do.
That doing might look like:
• Listening without interrupting.
• Showing up, even when it’s inconvenient.
• Choosing kindness over winning.
• Caring when no one else sees.
• Saying, “Tell me more,” when someone opens up.
Love, in this way, is less about intensity and more about consistency. It's found in daily actions, not dramatic declarations. As the Gottman Institute has shown in decades of research, what sustains love over time isn’t passion—it’s turning toward each other in small moments of need.
When Ego and Shame Get in the Way
We all carry internal barriers to love. Two of the biggest are ego and shame.
Ego wants to protect our image—be right, look strong, avoid rejection. It says, “If I show my soft spots, I’ll lose power.” But love isn’t a power struggle. It’s a surrender into something mutual and mysterious.
Shame, on the other hand, tells us we’re unworthy of love in the first place. It whispers, “If they really knew me, they’d leave.” That kind of story becomes a wall between us and real connection.
Brené Brown, in Daring Greatly, reminds us that vulnerability is the birthplace of love. And that shame loses its grip when we meet it with compassion.
Kristin Neff’s work on self-compassion supports this, too. Her research shows that people who treat themselves with kindness when they fail are more likely to be open, generous, and resilient in relationships. When we can forgive ourselves, we create space to love others without demanding they be perfect either.
The Role of Self-Security in Loving Well
It’s not a surprise that people who are more secure in themselves tend to love more deeply.
When you’re not constantly seeking validation or fearing abandonment, you can actually listen. You can offer patience. You can show up without keeping score.
This kind of self-security doesn’t mean you never get triggered. It means you know how to come back to your center. You’ve made peace with your own worth, so you’re not begging others to prove it.
Daniel Siegel, in The Developing Mind, talks about “mindsight”—our ability to observe our thoughts and feelings without being controlled by them. That mindfulness helps us respond rather than react. And it makes room for love to move through us without distortion.
Other Emotional Agents That Feed or Fracture Love
Love is often thought of in romantic or familial terms, but it’s present in all kinds of relationships—and it’s supported by a wide range of inner drives. Some of them include:
• Play – Laughter, exploration, shared joy.
• Awe – Spiritual wonder, reverence for life.
• Sexuality – Intimate bonding, when rooted in respect.
• Fairness/Justice – A sense of reciprocity and shared power.
• Legacy – The desire to create something meaningful together.
Esther Perel, in Mating in Captivity, explores how our need for safety and our need for excitement often collide. Balancing these opposing hungers is part of the lifelong dance of love.
How to Practice Love in Real Life
If love is made of many drives, actions, and habits—then we can actually practice it. We can tend to the garden daily, not just sit around hoping it blooms.
Here are a few simple ways to start:
• Learn your attachment style. Knowing your patterns helps you show up differently in relationships.
• Name your hungers. Ask: “Do I need more communion? Validation? Safety?” Get honest about what’s missing.
• Do one small loving action daily. A text, a smile, an honest check-in.
• Talk to yourself like someone you love. Self-compassion is foundational.
• Create something with someone. A shared ritual, a project, even a playlist—love thrives when we build together.
As the psychologist Eli Finkel points out in The All-Or-Nothing Marriage, modern love places enormous expectations on relationships—but we don’t always give them the nourishment they need. With time, patience, and intention, we can change that.
Final Thoughts
Love isn’t a lightning strike. It’s a slow burn, kept alive through small choices and steady grace. It’s made of many hungers, some ancient and some learned, braided together in the ways we speak, listen, give, and receive.
It’s not just about how we feel—but how we move, show up, and forgive. Again and again.
And perhaps the greatest gift we can give each other is this: to see one another not as perfect, but as hungry—for safety, for meaning, for joy—and to feed those hungers with care.
Suggested Reading:
• The Art of Loving by Erich Fromm
• Affective Neuroscience by Jaak Panksepp
• Attached by Amir Levine and Rachel Heller
• Hold Me Tight by Sue Johnson
• Daring Greatly by Brené Brown
• Self-Compassion by Kristin Neff
• Mating in Captivity by Esther Perel
• The All-Or-Nothing Marriage by Eli Finkel
• The Developing Mind by Daniel J. Siegel
• When Things Fall Apart by Pema Chödrön
Credit: ChatGPT & Paul Tupciauskas
|
|
+
