There are so many takes on what love is. Love is sexual desire. Love is attraction and "chemistry". One can be in love or one can simply love. To be "in' love often means one is obsessed with the loved one, mesmerised, entranced by the loved one, and constantly passionate about the loved one. To simply love means that one does not want the other to hurt. At least, these are the meanings I often hear from clients whose intimate relationship is breaking up. One will say to the other, "I love you, but I'm not in love with you".

To love is to be other-oriented. To be "in" love is to be self-oriented.

Surely, to be in love is to be fascinated by and attracted to another, but the feeling of being in love is what people are talking about here, and that feeling is something a person has as one's own. One aches for another, but one aches. One yearns for another, but one yearns. One gets all keyed up and hyper when the other comes near, and it's that feeling, that experience, that tells a person he or she is in love in a passionate state of mind. Having a love experience. It is subjective. It is self-oriented. So, when a person says to another, "I am not in love with you", it's like saying, "You don't turn me on anymore; you don't make me feel that way anymore."

And we all want to feel that way. It's a wonderful experience. Sometimes older people, people who have been through several relationships, wonder if they "will ever love again". What they mean is that they wonder if they will ever feel "in love" again if they will ever feel the chemistry and get all keyed up about another person again. If someone could bottle this stuff and sell it, they could never keep enough bottles on the shelf, and they could retire with wealth beyond their imagination.

But to love is to be other-oriented. It's to lose oneself in concern for another. The Bible describes this in what is likely one of the best known passages of scripture, something read at many weddings regardless of whether the bride and the groom actually believe in God:

Love is patient, love is kind and is not jealous;

love does not brag and is not arrogant,

does not act unbecomingly;

it does not seek its own, is not provoked,

does not take into account a wrong suffered,

does not rejoice in unrighteousness,

but rejoices with the truth;

bears all things, believes all things,

hopes all things, endures all things.

(1 Corinthians 13: 4-7)

We have likely all been through the loss of an important relationship. I'm not talking about when someone we love dies. I'm talking about when someone who causes us to feel "in love" turns away. Often that brings about a crisis. It feels like a disaster, and it brings on grief. However, what not many realise is that it also presents the grieving person with an opportunity for growth in the understanding of what love is and the capacity to love.

The opportunity for growth is not a guarantee of growth however. One has to choose it. Instead of doing what is common (chasing after, hounding, trying to argue the beloved back into one's life, demanding, manipulating and controlling), the aggrieved person needs to do the uncommon thing (let go, want the other to be happy, pray for the other's welfare, and otherwise celebrate the other's value but from a distance).

To love is not to seek one's own, not to treat another person as one's to own, a person used to enjoy that feeling of being "in love". In other words, to love is to not seek the feeling of being "in love", and that might not seem so attractive. I don't think it would be if it were not for the greater experience of loving.

To love is to bear all things, including the pain of feeling rejected. It is one thing to not be accepted in the first place, which is not pleasant, but it is a far greater pain once having been accepted and brought into the inner circle of intimacy with another person, to suddenly be put out.

To love is to be patient and to wait on others. Gestalt therapists have a saying: "Trust the process". It drives me crazy. You cannot trust the process unless you allow each other person involved to proceed at his or her own pace. For that matter, the whole situation proceeds at a pace that is greater than the mere sum of the various people involved, and so one needs to be able to back off and give it time. This is why I turned away from asking God to give me patience years ago; it's painful to wait. I suffer the pace of more plodding people, but when I love, I endure all things, especially the pain that I experience when I am patient.

There are many more takes on love than this. Those who study romantic relationships speak of love languages, love colors, and love styles. It's all good. This is one take, though, on the difference between loving and being "in love". Long may each one reign!