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*puts on nerd hat* Oof. As someone who has had to recover from a life of poor examples of love and learn the hard way…wait, isn’t that everyone to an extent?…never mind…here we go. (Still learning over here, but this might help.)

The operating definition of love which I have found to be extremely useful is this: Love is a commitment to the true good of another person.  It is truth played out in actions that truly benefit the other person in front of you. Not giving them what they want – because sometimes what they want is a form of self-harm. Not manipulating them to get what you want.

Not yourself. Not your emotional needs. Only God can fulfill your emotional needs for emotional intimacy and affirmation. No human being can ever do that. Expecting a human being to do that will lead to you worshipping them as an idol, and you toxically abusing them when your desires are unfulfilled. What you expect to emotionally satisfy you is what you worship. For females, especially, this statement is utterly true.

If this strikes you as confusing, keep in mind that the Holy Spirit literally lives inside your body and is closer to you than any human lover ever will be (no more details will be given). God controls every aspect of your life, including other people, and loves you through every single aspect of your life. Your emotional needs are <i>already </i>fulfilled in Him; the challenge is believing that they are. Sometimes God can use another person to fill that need – but, it’s still God that is doing it – if the other person stops doing it God will provide something different for you. It’s not the other person, it’s God.

If you are feeling emotionally unsatisfied right now, it’s because your emotions are still in control of the sin nature and are lying to you with all them pesky needs that aren’t real. But expecting you to resolve that overnight is unrealistic -that emotional development process is torturous. It’s God holding you down while you want stuff that is bad for you and saying “no, you can’t have that.” Love is not glamorous or romantic – it’s like holding down a drug patient in rehab to stop them from going back to the bad stuff. And giving the other person good things that they don’t want and can’t appreciate. (Sometimes they can appreciate it, but you can’t count on that.) That’s what God does for us, so that’s what we should do for each other. “For as God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.”

Thus love is also an intellectual process. It’s going back to the scriptures and understanding what is truly good for another person and giving it to them. What do they need to learn? How can the lessons be delivered in gentleness and kindness so they don’t violently attack you for being God’s instrument of love today? 😛 What idols may be blinding me to the truth here? What do I want in this situation that could hurt someone? It’s tearing down your own idols to help someone see the truth, letting go when you know that you will need more time to defeat your own sin sickness before acting. Love steps aside when another person would be better for them.

And it really has nothing to do with romance – you can love anybody. So what is romance all about? A marriage is a flat contractual agreement to stay together because you’re having children together. It’s also a form of mercy on the fact that male and female interactions can be rough to cope without marriage sometimes. (In addition to the symbol of Christ’s love for the church which other people have pointed out.) Our culture idolizes these intense emotions and insists that we should pursue these emotionally intense situations – no, no we should not. According to 1 Corinthians 7, it’s not really a thing to pursue. However, God has placed in most of us a longing for connection with the opposite gender, and we should honor that. Love should be in that connection, but it’s not a function of that connection at all. Romance is about the desire to deeply understand someone who is different from you and connect with them.

Which is different from love. It can maybe make love a bit easier because romance makes you want to understand the truth about another person, which makes it easier to truly love them, but yeah.