What is Love?

Single Women's Responses

Two things... First, my favorite quote: "To love and be loved is to feel the sun from both sides" (David Viscott). Second, something my mom always told me: "Loving someone, be it a friend, family member, or significant other, means that whatever makes them happy at that moment means more to you than whatever makes you happy in the very same moment."
Valuing (cherishing, if you want to be more romantic) another's happiness and well-being as much as one values oneself.
Love grows through understanding or knowing another person and by investing time or energy in someone else.
Love is seeing and treating others and ourselves the way God sees us.
Love is perhaps god's greatest creation. It is the intangible emotion by which we feel the most exhilarating joy and the severest pain. It inspires and excites, grows and endures, is patient, selfless, thoughtful, sacred. Love is a gift, and not a guarantee. It is given when someone wants to give it. It is returned, when someone chooses to return it. Love is a power that each of us has the ability to give, should we desire. Love has many layers. Love is a mystery. Love has the power to heal. We are all blessed when we take the steps to show love to one another.
Love is caring about someone so much that you're willing to put their interests before your own.
The greatest example of love to me is Christ. He loves us unconditionally--even when we do really dumb things. He forgives and forgets. His motives are pure. His love is not exclusive, but inclusive of every human being....even those that hurt his own brothers and sisters, and those that have hurt him. He loves us during our ups and downs, when we're faithful and unfaithful. He feels our pain and has the capacity to empathize with every emotion we go through. He is unassuming, non-judgmental, and sees our absolute potential. Can I have Christ as my next roommate, please? I mean, I love my roommates, but come on.....
To me, love is understanding and appreciating someone for who they are, not who you want them to be.
The greatest power that governs the Universe.
Love: caring, affection.
Love is the backwards beginning of EVOLution. Evolution because love enacts powerful change. Backwards because the self's development starts with embracing the other.
love is wanting the best for someone else.
an inexplicable state that exhibits a broad range of emotions and behaviors. namely joy, hope, generosity, kindness, patience, unconditional support, selflessness, sacrifice, forgiveness, and total acceptance.

Married Women's Responses

To me love is seeing things as God would. When I do this any situation is resolved with peace.
I don't know if I can put my definition of love into words, but I'll try. To me, love is indescribable - it's trust, it's reliance, it's respect, humor, time, energy, laughter, and much more all rolled into one feeling. The trust is beyond "I trust you with a secret." It IS reliability in that sense of trust, but that's such a miniscule part of it. It's trust with your emotions, your ability to make a joke and know you won't be judged, it's not judging and giving someone else the reason to trust you that way too. It's a trust of a future, and your soul, as well as being trusted with another's soul as well. Love is a huge responsibility that doesn't feel like one.
Love is a self-imposed commitment that is driven by unyielding desires of our human character revealing a range of accomplishments from the most disasterous to the most poetic.
Love is action. Love is a verb.
Being six thousand miles from home.
To paraphrase Chief Justice Douglas, I can't define it, but I know it when I see it. Love is so different for everybody I think it is hard to define. But I do know that falling is love is fun.
Although you can feel love on many levels and they are all valid, I think true love is a function of time. The longer the love has time to grow the truer and deeper it will be, and it absolutely needs time--lots of it--to become true and deep. I think that true love is not so much a feeling as much as it is a shift in a person's being. It is Moroni 7:45, "And [love] suffereth long, and is kind, and envieth not, and is not puffed up, seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil, and rejoiceth not in iniquity but rejoiceth in the truth, beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things." As you shift towards feeling all of these things about the person you care about, you begin to love them in the truest sense of the word. True love is charity, the word I replaced in Moroni 7:45. It is seeing another person as Christ sees them. This "pure love of Christ" smooths over the imperfections in a person, choosing instead to find worth in their goodness, their strengths.
My definition of love (I use "another", "other", and "being" because you can love a human or an animal or any other living embodiment): an intense feeling of high regard for another that persists despite, or sometimes because of, differences between you. It requires that you acknowledge the differences and accept them both in yourself and in the other. And after all that, if what remains is the same strong desire to have that being in your life, and do what you can to contribute to their happiness, you love that being.
Love is the reassurance that someone who understands you will be there at the end of the day. Love is the security of knowing your good qualities are appreciated and your faults forgiven. And most of all, love is the joy of giving your best to another person and receiving much more in return.

Single Men's Responses

Love is true altruism. love finds idiosyncracies charming, love is unfaltering loyalty and compassion.
Love: what we ain't got as singles.
Love is caring about someone or something more than yourself, such that you will prioritize that person or thing above your own desires.
"Love is putting another's well being ahead of your own."
A feeling for someone (or something) that makes you do things you wouldn't normally do just because you want to benefit/help them in some way.
Love is when your concern for someone else surpasses your concern for yourself?
Dedication to an ideal. In my more idealistic phase, I would have included "passive" to that expression such that it would read, "passive dedication to an ideal."
A fallacy.
Love is an emotion that makes you do irrational things. It can be dangerous, but if harnessed correctly, it's very useful.
Love is when you pour yourself a bowl of cereal and then find out that your significant other used up the last of the milk, but you don't get mad or frustrated or depressed.
Loving someone is knowing the worst thing about them, and it doesn't matter.
Love is desiring someone else's happiness. So if we truly love someone we want them to be happy even if it's not with us.
Love is feeling. a feeling of happiness, but not happiness alone. it's a feeling of warmth. it's a feeling of belonging. it's a feeling that you care deeply about someone, that you're connected with her/him emotionally and/or spiritually and/or mentally. it's a feeling that you're dedicated to another person's happiness, and will do anything for it. love is a feeling of selflessness. it's also a feeling of empathy--that you will cry when he/she cries, comfort her/him when s/he needs comfort, rejoice with her/him when s/he experiences joy and success.
Love is commitment. love is always a verb and only sometimes a noun. love isn't always a feeling... the feelings of love may not always persist... so more importantly, love is a choice. it's always a choice. you choose to do things, even when you don't feel like it. you give compliments and look for the good in someone else. You sacrifice your time to help someone else, even when you're really busy and could really use the time, and inside you're a little put off that the person is asking so much of you. you choose to be pleasant and kind, even when you're tired and your boss yelled at you at work and your friends have just done something mean to you, or the kids have messed up the house and the dog pooped on the livingroom floor... despite those things you CHOOSE to be pleasant and kind and serve others and not complain. That's love.
Love is a covenant. love is the covenant and power by which the atonement was accomplished. love is the power by which Heavenly Father covenants with us to save us from our sins if we repent. Love is the covenant two people make with Heavenly Father to love and build each other for this life and the eternities. heavenly father blesses those who are willing to covenant to love with love for each other. love is the covenant and power of creation. things as diverse and varied as worlds, universes, people and molecules are all created from the power of love.

Married Men's Responses

Love is more important than imagination... Love can be a joyous feeling in your heart that comes when you think of another person. It can be a sense of loyalty to another. It can be the determination to support someone despite struggles. It can be an attitude toward the Other.
Love is when you put your kids to bed and they somehow look cuter. Love is when you put your kids to bed and your wife somehow looks cuter.
When you show some concern or interest in the well-being of others. Of course there are different levels, but love is when you are willing to give a part of you to someone else. Love in a marriage relationship is founded upon those same principles-doing things for each other, looking to each other's needs before your own. As both of you do this, you will receive love in return. It is what the scriptures say: Charity- it is long suffering, it endures, it is not jealous, it does not envy, SEEKS NOT HER OWN, bears all things, hopes all things...
Complete dedication, Sacrifice, Kindness, Selflessness, Willingness to change. I hope to show my love to others by emulating, no possessing, these qualities.
I like Scott Peck's definition because it is consistent with my experience in living on the planet for about 54 years: "Being willing to put yourself out for the well being of yourself or others."
Love is that state of mind when you are far more concerned about another's happiness and well being than you are about your own self-centered, selfish, and thoughtless desires.
There are many aspects to love. There is the spiritual perspective which is embodied by charity or the pure love of Christ. It fills you and affects the way you think, believe, and act... directly affecting the way you view/treat people and yourself. Another perspective, which can definitely be linked to the former, is the more romantic form of love, which in a pure since I believe combines a deep friendship and partnership with intimate affection in a context of commitment, dedication, sacrifice, and covenants made in the temple (ideally). Lastly, you can refer to the John Lennon song, "Love" for more perspective on philosophical definitions of what love is in a very broad sense.
Full acceptance of someone.
When you watch your child being born... it is hard to believe that you can be so in love with someone you have never met before. Your heart pounds and you cannot take your eyes off of her, and what's funny is how you feel them love you back when they look at you or when you hold them, are we born with emotional instinct?