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Love
Love is the emotion of strong affection and personal attachment. In philosophical context, love is a virtue representing all of human kindness, compassion, and affection. In some religious contexts, love is not just a virtue, but the basis for all being, as in the Roman Catholic phrase, "God is love". Love may also be described as actions towards others (or oneself) based on compassion. Or as actions towards others based on affection.
The word love can refer to a variety of different feelings, states, and attitudes, ranging from generic pleasure ("I loved that meal") to intense interpersonal attraction ("I love my partner"). "Love" can also refer specifically to the passionate desire and intimacy of romantic love, to the sexual love of eros (cf. Greek words for love), to the emotional closeness of familial love, or to the platonic love that defines friendship, to the profound oneness or devotion of religious love. This diversity of uses and meanings, combined with the complexity of the feelings involved, makes love unusually difficult to consistently define, even compared to other emotional states.
Love in its various forms acts as a major facilitator of interpersonal relationships and, owing to its central psychological importance, is one of the most common themes in the creative arts.
The word "love" can have a variety of related but distinct meanings in different contexts. Often, other languages use multiple words to express some of the different concepts that English relies mainly on "love" to encapsulate; one example is the plurality of Greek words for "love." Cultural differences in conceptualizing love thus make it doubly difficult to establish any universal definition.
Although the nature or essence of love is a subject of frequent debate, different aspects of the word can be clarified by determining what isn't love. As a general expression of positive sentiment (a stronger form of like), love is commonly contrasted with hate (or neutral apathy); as a less sexual and more emotionally intimate form of romantic attachment, love is commonly contrasted with lust; and as an interpersonal relationship with romantic overtones, love is sometimes contrasted with friendship, although the word love is often applied to close friendships.
When discussed in the abstract, love usually refers to interpersonal love, an experience felt by a person for another person. Love often involves caring for or identifying with a person or thing, including oneself (cf. narcissism). In addition to cross-cultural differences in understanding love, ideas about love have also changed greatly over time. Some historians date modern conceptions of romantic love to courtly Europe during or after the Middle Ages, although the prior existence of romantic attachments is attested by ancient love poetry.
Because of the complex and abstract nature of love, discourse on love is commonly reduced to a thought-terminating cliché, and there are a number of common proverbs regarding love, from Virgil's "Love conquers all" to the Beatles' "All you need is love". St. Thomas Aquinas, following Aristotle, defines love as "to will the good of another." Bertrand Russell describes love as a condition of "absolute value," as opposed to relative value. Philosopher Gottfried Leibniz said that love is "to be delighted by the happiness of another."
Love is sometimes referred to as being the "international language", overriding cultural and linguistic divisions.
Dating
Dating is a form of human courtship consisting of social activities done by two persons with the aim of each assessing the other's suitability as a partner in an intimate relationship or as a spouse. While the term has several senses, it usually refers to the act of meeting and engaging in some mutually agreed upon social activity in public, together, as a couple. The protocols and practices of dating, and the terms used to describe it, vary considerably from country to country. The most common sense is two people trying out a relationship and exploring whether they're compatible by going out together in public as a couple, and who may or may not yet be having sexual relations, and this period of courtship is sometimes seen as a precursor to engagement or marriage.
On the reproductive spectrum between tournament species, in which males compete fiercely for reproductive privileges with females, and pair bond arrangements, in which a male and female will bond for life, humans are somewhat in the middle, according to neurobiologist Robert Sapolsky. Humans form pair bonds but there is the possibility of cheating or changing partners. The institution marking a male-female bond has generally been known as marriage, and in most societies, and during much of human history, marriages were arranged by parents and older relatives with the goal not being love but "economic stability and political alliances," according to anthropologists.
During much of human history when men were the dominant sex in a system of patriarchy, women "connived to trade beauty and sex for affluence and status," according to columnist Maureen Dowd. Men dominated women; while men and women formed pair-bonds, wives were sometimes seen as a form of property serving the function of reproduction. Communities exerted pressure on people to form pair-bonds in places such as Europe; in China, according to sociologist Tang Can, society "demanded people get married before having a sexual relationship."
In the Middle Ages in Europe, weddings were seen as business arrangements between families, while romance was something that happened outside of marriage discreetly, such as covert meetings. The 12th-century book The Art of Courtly Love advised that "True love can have no place between husband and wife." Clandestine meetings were the precursors to today's dating, according to one writer in The Guardian. A few centuries ago, dating "evolved out of a courtship ritual where young women entertained gentleman callers, usually in the home, under the watchful eye of a chaperone." Since about 1700, however, according to professor David Christian of Macquarie University in Australia, a new worldwide movement described as the "empowerment of the individual" took hold, leading to the emancipation of women and the equality of individuals.
Men and women became more equal politically, financially, socially in many nations. Women earned the right to vote and own property and equal treatment by the law; and these changes had profound impacts on the relations between men and women, including dating. Among young people, initially among the lower classes, whose homes were often not "suitable for entertaining", dating in public places became more prominent, with the sense that a couple would go out to a movie or dinner with the expectation that this might ultimately lead to a relationship "the capstone of which was marriage." Advice for women was often "play hard to get." Traditional dating activities included entertainment or a meal, and happened in that portion of a person's life before marrying, between the teen-aged years and early thirties; in 1851 in Britain, the average age of people getting married was 24 and it stayed there, dipping slightly in the 1950s, before rising to the current age of 29.
Technology has played a huge role in dating. The telephone enabled dates to be arranged without face-to-face contact; the automobile extended the range of dating as well as back-seat sexual exploration. In the mid twentieth century, the advent of birth control as well as safer procedures for abortion changed the equation considerably, and there was less pressure to marry as a means for satisfying sexual urges. New types of relationships formed; it was possible for people to live together without marrying and without having to deal with children. Today dates in Australia and elsewhere are arranged by text messaging.
Due to the wider availability of information about traditionally secretive issues, individuals became open about their interest in sexuality both in form of dating, language and dress. Alternative arrangements such as homosexuality became more accepted. In Britain, it used to be an unwritten duty for couples to introduce single people to each other by inviting them to parties and meals, but this practice happens less and less.
In an informal survey by USA Today in 2010, 300 persons responded to an inquiry about how they met, and the results suggested that the Internet was becoming an increasingly important tool for arranging dates which is eroding, to some extent, the importance of family, neighbors, and co-workers. People are becoming increasingly mobile worldwide, and are less likely to find a permanent job and settle in one town but change jobs and towns with increasing frequency; as a result, they're somewhat removed from traditional social networks.
Singles
a single person is someone who is not in a relationship. If a marriage is annulled, however, or it is found to have been void ab initio (i.e. not valid in law to start with), and assuming the person was not married previously, that individual is single, rather than unmarried. In that situation, the law behaves as though the parties thought they were married when, in actuality, they were not. The term single in its common usage is often referred to someone who isn't involved in any type of romantic relationship, whether it would be dating, engagement, or marriage.
Both single and unmarried people may participate in dating rituals and other activities to find a long-term partner or spouse. However, in some cases single people are not interested in marriage, domestic partnership, or other types of formal, committed relationships. People may remain single for a variety of reasons, including: financial and emotional or physical health issues, stress in the family, time constraints, education, career, personal preferences, advanced age, social fears or love-shyness, and even living in a society or locality where there aren't enough people of the sex one is attracted to. Certain careers and positions require that people remain single. Sometimes, this is coupled with celibacy or chastity, either for secular or for religious reasons, such as priests, nuns and monks in certain faiths.
Loneliness can occur for some people who look for but cannot find anyone they might wish to date, especially for those suffering the loss of companionship following divorce or bereavement. Some single people, however, regard and appreciate solitude as an opportunity.
Marriage
Marriage is a social union or legal contract between people that creates kinship. It is an institution in which interpersonal relationships, usually intimate and sexual, are acknowledged in a variety of ways, depending on the culture or subculture in which it is found. Such a union, often formalized via a wedding ceremony, may also be called matrimony.
People marry for many reasons, including one or more of the following: legal, social, emotional, economical, spiritual, and religious. These might include arranged marriages, family obligations, the legal establishment of a nuclear family unit, the legal protection of children and public declaration of commitment. The act of marriage usually creates normative or legal obligations between the individuals involved. In some societies these obligations also extend to certain family members of the married persons. In cultures that allow the dissolution of a marriage this is known as divorce.
Marriage is usually recognized by the state, a religious authority, or both. It is often viewed as a contract. Civil marriage is the legal concept of marriage as a governmental institution irrespective of religious affiliation, in accordance with marriage laws of the jurisdiction. If recognized by the state, by the religion(s) to which the parties belong or by society in general, the act of marriage changes the personal and social status of the individuals who enter into it.
"Marriage is the union of two different surnames, in friendship and in love, in order to continue the posterity of the former sages, and to furnish those who shall preside at the sacrifices to heaven and earth, at those in the ancestral temple, and at those at the altars to the spirits of the land and grain." - Confucius
Relationships
An interpersonal relationship is an association between two or more people that may range from fleeting to enduring. This association may be based on limerence, love, solidarity, regular business interactions, or some other type of social commitment. Interpersonal relationships are formed in the context of social, cultural and other influences. The context can vary from family or kinship relations, friendship, marriage, relations with associates, work, clubs, neighborhoods, and places of worship. They may be regulated by law, custom, or mutual agreement, and are the basis of social groups and society as a whole.
A relationship is normally viewed as a connection between two individuals, such as a romantic or intimate relationship, or a parent-child relationship. Individuals can also have relationships with groups of people, such as the relation between a pastor and his congregation, an uncle and a family, or a mayor and a town. Finally, groups or even nations may have relations with each other, though this is a much broader domain than that covered under the topic of interpersonal relationships. See such articles as international relations for more information on associations between groups. Most scholarly work on relationships focuses on romantic partners in pairs or dyads. These intimate relationships are, however, only a small subset of interpersonal relationships. Interpersonal relationships also can include friendships, such as relationships involving individuals providing relational care to marginalized persons.
These relationships usually involve some level of interdependence. People in a relationship tend to influence each other, share their thoughts and feelings, and engage in activities together. Because of this interdependence, most things that change or impact one member of the relationship will have some level of impact on the other member. The study of interpersonal relationships involves several branches of the social sciences, including such disciplines as sociology, psychology, anthropology, and social work.
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