By Douglass Anele
St. Valentine’s Day for 2011 has come and gone, but it raises some fundamental questions about love which deserve thoughtful consideration. First and foremost, what is love? How can one differentiate genuine love, if such a thing exists, from counterfeit love? Why do we love at all? What are the basic ingredients that define love?

Before we attempt answering these questions, it is pertinent to note the origin of St. Valentine’s Day. The term ‘Valentine’ designates the name of several saints on whose day, 14th February, according to mythology, certain birds choose their mates.

What is now popularly celebrated as St. Valentine’s Day or Lovers’ Day commemorates the practice of kindness and love by a Catholic priest, a Christian martyr of the 3rd century A.D., St. Valentine. Hence, millions of people all around the world celebrate the event as a day to practically show affection to their loved ones.

Looking at the way the youths mark the event, one gets the impression that Lovers’ Day is all about romantic or erotic love. But that is far from what St. Valentine’s Day is all about. At any rate, a proper understanding of the science and art of love is necessary so that the celebration will be a source of happiness and fulfillment for people. Therefore, what is the science of love? The science of love centres primarily on systematic knowledge of the biological and psychological determinants of the experience of love. But, then, what is love? Love is a complex emotional experience.

As a result, it is not surprising that different scholars have defined it in different ways. In The Art of Loving, Erich Fromm defined love “as an art, just as living is an art.” Spencer A. Rathus says in his book, Psychology, that love is emotional which we will make great sacrifices, the emotion that launched a thousand ships in the Greek epic, The Ilaid.” Albert Ellis defines it in Sex and the Single Man, as “a reasonably strong emotional attachment between two individuals; and heterosexually, it is an emotional attachment or attraction between a man and a woman.”

The scientific study of the biological substrate of human love is extremely difficult because, as Natalie Angier acknowledged in Woman: An Intimate Geography, in order to do so they need reliable experiments on animals. But it is not easy to define the phenomenon of love in humans, let alone in animals. However, the biology of love is located within the amazing circuitries of the brain, with its astronomical number of interneuronal connections and electrical pathways. Once triggered by the appropriate stimulus, love is fed by every sense organ, every nerve fiber and every cell. There are different types of love and different objects of love.

The archetypal kind of love, in terms of selflessness, is motherly love, epitomised in a mother’s unconditional love for her children. Brotherly love, sometimes referred to as agape love, is, according to Fromm, love for all human beings, the kind intended by Jesus when He said, as reported in the gospels, “love thy neighbour as thyself.”

It is love among equals, because we all need help. Erotic or romantic love, the most popular type celebrated by the youths on St. Valentine’s Day, is the craving for complete union, for fusion with one other person. But Ellis, citing several authorities, believes that some people (especially men, due mainly to culturally-induced differences) can be passionately attracted to more than one member of the opposite sex simultaneously.

There are observable physical manifestations of romantic love which are triggered by contraction of the adrenal glands that subsequently flood the blood with adrenaline and cortisol – pounding of the heart, dilation of the pupils and sweating. Intense heterosexual love is subject to change: its intensity fades with time. Self love is different from selfishness: it is the love of oneself which forms the foundation for love of others.

Self love is the springboard of brotherly love, whereas a selfish person is only interested in himself, wants everything for himself, and feels pleasure only in taking, not in giving. The religious form of love is divine love, or love of God. In different religions of the world, divine love takes on the character of the relation which is believed to hold between God, the ultimate reality, and the believer. Sometimes, especially among Protestants, God’s love is grace, and the appropriate religious stance or attitude is to have faith in that grace.

In Eastern religion and mysticism, the love of God is an intense feeling experience of oneness, inseparably connected with the expression of this love in every act of living.  Fromm identifies four basic elements common to all forms of love. The first one is care.

A mother, for example, expresses love to her child by caring for it. In caring and showing concern for a loved one, some labour or work is needed. Next is responsibility: there can be no genuine love unless one feels responsible for the object of one’s love.

Depending on the situation, love requires that a lover should feel responsible for the physical or psychological needs of the loved one. True love cannot exist in the absence of respect. To respect someone means to see the person as he is, in his unique individuality.

Therefore, the best way to show respect to a loved one is to be concerned that the person should grow and unfold as she really is – which implies absence of exploitation. Finally, knowledge is important in love. We need deep knowledge of the people we love. It is only through knowledge that we can act reasonably while in love.
To be concluded.