Love Is A Rational Act

So, if Love is not feeling (certainly it is accompanied by an intense feeling), what is it then? Let’s say that it is a rational decision. I may have an intense feeling for a person, but I may choose not to love him or her. On the other hand, I may choose to love him or her, yet I may not have the kind of feeling that is associated with romance. Dr. Martin Luther King, for example, has much love for Americans, regardless of their race or religion. But, he is not ‘romantically’ linked to anyone in particular except his wife. A husband may have extra-marital affairs, and may choose to love his wife.

I am not endorsing extra marital affairs. I only want to show that it is possible to distinguish love and an intense feeling that has often been confused with love. We still need to explore the distinction, more so, the nature of love.

Love may be accompanied with an intense feeling; but love may be absent when there is only an intense feeling. I may have a fling, a lust, an unexplainable sexual attraction, so intense that I want her only for myself. This intensity of sexual attraction is so strong, I am led to believe that I had no choice in this matter. Now, this intense feeling can be directed to more than one person. It is so easy to persuade yourself that you are in love, when in fact, you merely experience an intense feeling that the other, as an object, can satisfy. (And, what happens when you have satisfied yourself?)

Intense feeling is what it is. If both parties feel the same for each other, they form a relationship that excludes everyone else. As they get to know each other in a more intimate way, it is possible for love to form. There is a commitment, a devotion to one another. Let us call it a romantic love. In a relationship overwhelmed only by an intense feeling, there is no romantic love.

Is there love between a parent and child? Perhaps, not yet with a child, who only learns at a very stage to accept that a parent is the only living object that he has learned to rely on. There is no intense feeling that a child has for a parent. There is only a connection that, through time and being together, deepens and widens as the child witnesses how the parent places much attention and care upon him. This connection is not a cause, however, to loving a parent. It is a condition, and a very important one. For without it, the child would not be able to come to love his parent.

Between friends, it may not be appropriate to say that they are in love with each other. There is nonetheless love - not in the way sexual partners have for each other. Friendship may have begun with similar interests and harmless fondness for each other. Like an intense feeling, the beginnings of a friendship may benefit both self interests. But a true friendship that enters the realm of love transcends self interests.

Love, then, transcends self interest. It is not an intense feeling for it would only wish to satisfy the ego. Love, then, since it transcends self interest, is a decision to care for the other as an other (as a subject), even at the expense of the self (for the self ceases to seek the satisfaction of self interest).