Love is a commodity
The word “love” is often used in relationships yet rarely defined by its participants. The lack of definition can be risky because the word “love” itself is fuzzy. Below is the definition of “love” according to a quick Google search:
Love: (n.) an intense feeling of deep affection, or (v.) feel a deep romantic or sexual attachment to (someone).
And yet, we use the word “love” so colloquially — “I love that show,” “I love summer,” or “I love my job,” — such that we’re diluting its true and intended meaning. Maybe that’s why it’s so hard to define romantic “love”. Maybe that’s why we’re scared of being asked “do you love me?” because we don’t have a good gauge on where colloquial love ends and where real love begins.
The Greek distinguish love into four forms: kinship (storge), platonic friendship (philia), sexual or romantic desire (eros), and divine love (agape). In conversation, the phrase s’agapo means I love you referring to a “pure” love rather than eros, a physical love.
In Chinese, Ai (愛) is referred to as the Western equivalent of love. But unlike its Western counterpart, Wo Ai Ni (我愛你) or I love you carries with it a specific sense of responsibility, commitment and loyalty. A much more common phrase to show affection is Wo Xi Huan Ni (我喜欢你) or I like you.
And yet in the English language we mainly rely on a single word, love, to encompass different kinds of emotions: affection, appreciation, desire, friendship, etc. (a quick search in the thesaurus doesn’t help much either). This fuzziness can lead to different expectations between partners who “love” each other. And different expectations can cause trouble.
So instead of waiting for some new slang to rise into popular colloquialism, we might consider defining what love means to us personally first. The beauty of a fuzzy definition is its ability to evolve. We get to shape our personal definition of love through the sum of our experiences. And once we have internal clarity, we can love our partner in more ways than one.
