True Love

What is the difference between love and true love?

There are two types of love.

1: Love at First Sight

This is the most popular form of love. It is based on physical or material attributes of the couple. When a man and woman see each other, they feel attracted towards each other and fall in love almost instantly.

A man is attracted usually towards the qualities like beauty, vivaciousness, innocence of the woman while a woman is attracted towards the man due to his looks, intelligence, wealth, power, position etc.

Their attraction is due to lack of the quality which other seems to have.

This form of love creates an attraction towards each other since each of them is feeling a deep desire which the other person can fulfill. They need each other to fulfill each other’s need.

Such desire is like hunger and hence looks extremely real and powerful. Just as people who are hungry can do anything to get food, the loved birds may do anything to get each other. They can give their life and even take other’s life to get the object of their love.

This type of love appears romantic while the real driving force may be lust for each other for various reasons.

The problem with this form of love is that it does not last long.

Just as hunger is satisfied as soon as you have eaten food and then you don’t like even the sight of the food, such love also loses its sheen soon and people who fall out of love as swiftly as they fallen into it.

The American writer Ambrose Bierce defined this type of love in the following words,

Love: A temporary insanity curable by marriage or by removal of the patient from the influences under which he incurred the disorder. This disease, like caries and many other ailments, is prevalent only among civilized races living under artificial conditions; barbarous nations breathing pure air and eating simple food enjoy immunity from its ravages. It is sometimes fatal, but more frequently to the physician than to the patient.

2: Love of Shared Life

The second type of love happens when we share our lives with each other for long. It comes from shared memories. This type of love is wide encompassing and includes the love between not only between couples, but also between parents and children, between siblings, between friends and even between colleagues.

When we share our life with others, a different type of love is created which is based on the shared experiences. These experiences have almost all shades of emotions whether sweet and sour, liking and disliking, anger and calm, criticism and praise and so on.

This type of love is not driven by attraction, but about caring and sharing.

We simply get used to each other so much that we can’t live without each other.

In this form of love, the loved ones become part of each other and they care their loved ones like they care themselves. They can share their deepest secrets, pains and joys with their loved ones. They are delighted at the joy of other and suffer when the other suffer.

In short, in this form of love, people become one with their loved ones.

It is for this type of love Aristotle said, “Love is composed of a single soul inhabiting two bodies.”

In this type of love, people don’t use each other for fulfillment of their needs and desires. Instead people give to their beloved what they want without expecting anything in return since the satisfaction of their loved ones provides them greater satisfaction than of their own.The love of shared life does not diminish with time and age as it does not depend on the physical attributes.

Such type of love gets deepened with longer association and get better with time like old wine.

Mark Twain described such love in the following words,

“Love seems the swiftest, but it is the slowest of all growths. No man or woman really knows what perfect love is until they have been married a quarter of a century.”

This is the true love.

Blessed are those whose love at first sight gradually leads them to enjoy the real love that comes from shared life. They enjoy the best of both worlds.

Unfortunate are those who fails to enjoy the love of shared life since they would never know what true love is despite falling in ‘love at first sight’ numerous times in their lives.