What is love?

I believe love is the sense or feeling of belonging to someone and very often this feeling is confused with the feeling of possessing someone. In fact in my opinion sense of belonging and sense of possessing are the exact opposites of each other. Belongingness can be defined as the feeling of being a part of someone whereas possessing will mean that someone is a part of you. Only when you are a part of someone will you be able to understand its value while if someone is a part of you that someone loses its value.

And what is the purest form of love?

It is the love of a mother to her children. She knows that she belongs to everyone she knows that everyone of her children are individuals and have their own identity but at the same she is a part of everyone of them. From this comes the most important quality of love i.e. selflessness, only a mother can give selflessly to her children and that is why this is called unconditional love.

When do you know you are in love?

Love can not happen overnight, it needs time to blossom. A mother loves her children because she keeps them with her for nine months even before they are born. In most cases the feeling that you love someone is actually the feeling of liking that person. You enjoy being with that person thus you like him/her. This why many love marriages fail, the couple thinking that they love each other get married without considering whether they are compatible or not. More often than not these marriages happen just on the basis of attraction. Liking or attraction without understanding is the culprit in these cases. The couple though they like each other fail to understand one another; this creates disappointment as they start feeling that their needs are being neglected. Love is always unconditional and develops with time, and the basic ingredients for the same are trust, understanding and a healthy respect for each other. So when you have understanding trust and a healthy respect for that person then you know that both of you have the basic ingredients to fall or should I say grow in love. And when you feel that relationship has become unconditional then you are truly in love.

Is love always romantic?

No absolutely not. Every person loves his/her parents, siblings and friends. This is platonic love. One can even love flowers, pet animals, etc. When there is a certain amount of sensual interest between two people then this is called romantic love. This is why we hear of heartbreaks when someone proposes to a person and gets to hear that I have never seen you in that way. This basically means that the second person is not sensually interested in that person and wants to keep the relationship a platonic one. Romantic love in the initial phases is not the purest form of love though as people start expecting a few things in such relationships, thus it is not unconditional. It is only with time that such relationship start moving towards true love. If the initial few years of these relationships are maintained with understanding between the couples, then true love will follow. In this kind of love the physical need will always remain but slowly it will be more about giving than about taking and thus will truly become unconditional.