ABSTRACT
Love is a word used to express complex human (and animal?) experiences. Grammatically love is a noun: affection, attraction based on sexual desire, admiration, benevolence, or common interests; a verb: to cherish, caress, fondle, copulate with, to desire actively, to seek and feel another’s passion, devotion, or tenderness; and an adverb: Narcissus looked at his image in the pool lovingly, she remembered the setting of their first kiss lovingly, he looked at his pipe, that old friend, lovingly. We will assert that, as a particular feeling, in its origin in infancy, love (noun) involves mainly the attachment and caregiving systems for which safety and affection are foundational. Additionally, the development of love as an experience involves the sensual, physiological, and exploratory systems. Once established, a feeling of affection and attraction, and the activity of cherishing and desiring can be experienced in any motivational system where the role of treating another, oneself, a group, and any setting or object lovingly (adverb) has great regulatory and survival significance. Despite all the positive qualities of love for human vitality and survival, affection, attraction, and desire easily activate possessiveness, envy, insensitive domination, and exploitation, and expose the lover to possible humiliation, shame, and embarrassment.
