Discover Exactly
What Love Is

Once you know what love is, you'll know how to keep it growing, instead of letting it slip away. That's how to make a marriage last.

What Love is — is a collection of memories

Every experience you have of your loved one creates a memory. Hopefully most of them are positive memories. Every memory comes attached to the feeling you felt when you had that experience. That what love is.

I use the term collection when I'm talking about memories, because they are discreet items you can recall one at a time.

Each memory comes with a feeling. Some good feelings. Some not so good feelings. The sum total of all the good and bad feelings connected to your partner becomes your "bundle" of love.

I call the bundle of feelings a bundle because the feelings get all mixed up together and become one big bundle of feelings (even though the memories can be recalled one at a time). The feelings are not as discreet as the memories. That is, they become all mixed together. One big bundle — that's what love is.

The collection of memories produces your bundle of love

I apologize for these unromantic words, collection and bundle. I wish there were better words to use to tell you what love is.

It's important to understand that the love you feel for your partner is a giant glob of feelings, some good and some not so good. All of the feelings were created by the experiences of, about, and with your partner.

If Harold imagines how wonderful it would be to hold Agnes tight and kiss her, he is creating an experience of Agnes. It will create a memory, and it produces a positive loving feeling. It adds to his bundle.

If agnes talks about Harold to her best friend and tells her how wonderful he is, she is having an experience about Harold. She is creating a memory that produces a positive feeling. It adds to her bundle

When Harold and Agnes kiss in a romantic place, it creates memories of a positive experience with each other. The memory creates a positive feeling. They are both adding to their bundles.

Their marriage will last if they protect their bundles

Harold and Agnes get married because they each have a bundle of loving feelings. By knowing that each experience together in the future will produce a memory — and add a good feeling or a bad feeling to their bundle — they can understand the secret to making a marriage last.

Harold and Agnes will stay married if their bundles grow over time. They need to find ways to add positive shared experiences, so their bundle will grow.

Harold and Agnes also need to know how to preserve their bundle from eroding. They need to know what to do when they have a fight. They need to learn to cope with the bad feelings a fight produces.

They need to know how to have fewer fights than other couples have. They need to know how to begin and end each 'issue' discussion on a positive and respectful note. They can even turn what might be a fight (for another couple) into a positive shared experience that will add to the love in their bundles.

What's the proof that love is a collection of memories?

You only need to visit a nursing home to see examples of people who have lost access to their memories. Alzheimer's, dementia, and other things that cause memory loss show us that when a woman cannot recognize a man as her husband, she feels no love for him. Her bundle of love has disappeared because she has no memory of her husband, good or bad.

Mothers or Fathers can't recognize and remember their children.

You can only feel love if you can recall the memories of, about, and with the person, pet or place.

In Summary, here's what love is

Attraction, infatuation, and romance all play a role in super-charging the experiences, so the memories and feelings are so much stronger, but they are not love.

To continue with the next article in the series:
"Physical Attraction Can Be So Strong,"
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