What has love become? I recently saw part of a documentary about methamphetamines. Meth interacts with the brain in a way that exponentially increases dopamine, and thus pleasure.  

Unfortunately, as with every high, more and more is required to achieve the same feeling.  

Physical love has a similar effect on the brain, albeit much less potent. As such, love in its physical form is addictive. Love can be addictive in its emotional form as well.  

English has a very narrow description of love. What we generally term “love” fell under what the Greeks called “eros,” the romantic love. They also had two other words for love: “philos” was the love of kinship or friendship, and “storge” was the name the Greeks gave to familial love.  

Yet another Greek word has come to mean love through the letters of the Apostle Paul. “Agape” was the Greek word for charity. Paul used it in a novel sense: a sacrificial love, as a man lays his life down for a cause or a woman.  

Now all of these Greek words fall under the same English word when translated. Valentine’s Day is the celebration of love, however you call it. But how has this definition of love changed over time? Compare the words of Solomon to Shakespeare, and compare both of them to Big Sean. All three are embracing the passion of love. But where the third gets straight to sex, the first two are much more anticipatory.  They relish the love because the beloved is not to be thrown away.  

Solomon and Romeo don’t want sex; they want a relationship.  There is an anticipation of more than sex from Solomon and Romeo. Perhaps, even, a hope that this could last forever, even through death.  More than the physical is at stake here.  

So personally, I can let the physical go. Not that the physical doesn’t matter; indeed, it does matter to me very much. But I don’t want a high that doesn’t last.  The emotional—a real connection—matters so much more.