think it is generally the case that people agree with Tennyson’s famous line (often misattributed to Shakespeare), but it’s often for reasons which are superficial. Often it has to do with the wonder of the experience of romantic love — that emotional insanity which is unlike any other. But aren’t we selling love short when we reduce it to merely this romantic experience? Isn’t love more than just this obsessive attraction? I think it is, and I think everybody knows it, but they do not know quite what it is in any intelligible sense, nor do they tend to understand how important love really is in regards to our being.
Human love is not simply an emotion, it is not simply an attachment. Love includes a commitment, a rational willing, a reason that looks past the momentary sea of emotions whether they are high or low, and thus it is a feeling mediated by concepts and social norms. What we think love is and how committed we are to it determines how we deal with its correlated emotions.
We don’t stop loving when those we love no longer make us happy, become a burden, or even cause us harm. We also do not necessarily make those we love happy in immediate form; we sometimes must show tough love. Further, love, despite many believing it a mere contingent nicety which we could do without, is a necessity without which we cannot be fully human. Tennyson’s famous phrase is true, not because love is an amazing experience, but because it is a necessity for the development of a substantial free self.
Just what drives the feeling of love? With love, we desire something, but what is it that we desire? In general it is in fact no common desire we are normally aware of, and yet we are quite aware of what we desire when we experience it: we desire to be desired, to be wanted.
