The Anatomy of Love

What is love exactly?

You love your dog, you love ice cream, you love your friends, and you love flowers. This is the true essence of love. When you say you love your houseplant, you simply love it. You don’t expect anything in return; you just want to nurture it, pour into it, and take care of it. That’s it. This is all that love is.

But when the subject receiving your love is a human, things become a bit complicated (although unnecessarily) because the other person comes with their own history, intentions, motives, emotional state, upbringing, childhood traumas, values, worldview, and whatnot.

So today, we’ll try to understand exactly what love is when it is between two humans. But why do so? Why are we even indulging in this exercise? What is the utility?

Reason 1: You are a human. 

Reason 2: Being incapable of giving or receiving love but being too successful in the material world is like having one very strong bicep while the rest of your body is paralyzed. 

So, as I observe the world around me and spend time with my family, friends, colleagues, cousins, and even strangers, I can’t help but notice that there’s a certain pain associated with love. People very close to me have experienced the heartache of breaking up long-term relationships, being cheated on, or being exploited by partners who said ‘I love you’ 11 times a day. Then there are people who invest their life savings, sometimes in the range of lakhs or crores, in fancy weddings to marry the love-of-their-lives only to end up divorcing within a couple of months or years. Conversely, wise men throughout history and across cultures have consistently emphasized that “Love doesn’t hurt; love is the only thing that doesn’t hurt.”

So, why this contradiction? What is the problem exactly? Why are we failing so miserably in understanding and identifying love? Why is the line in front of divorce chambers growing longer, with people retreating into their cocoons of loneliness out of the fear of being exploited? This is a legitimate issue that demands analysis and resolution.

People who know me know that I have this borderline obsession with creating structures, which has led me to develop one on love as well. I’ve been refining this structure for the past three years now. I observe relationships very closely, pondering why some are happy while others are not, why some end in divorce while others culminate in marriage, and what triggers different reactions. After applying this hypothesis or framework to hundreds of relationships spanning various ages, I’ve concluded that it holds true. 

So, I have constructed this structure of love (I know I know, I understand the contradiction of rationalizing an emotion, but please hear me out). This structure is designed for love between two humans (parent-child, friend-friend, sibling-sibling, teacher-student, etc.), of which romantic love is a subset. 

Love is the simultaneous existence of three pillars: Respect, Trust, and Friendship. Romantic love is a cabana made of these three pillars with an additional top layer of romance, under which you can take shelter and build a family of your own. Let’s visualize this. 

Parental or Platonic Love can be healthy only if it is built on these three pillars. Respect (given they have carried themselves in a way all their life that they deserve respect, so it comes naturally and is not asked for or forced upon) helps build in-house role models, trust helps in expressing and sharing the hard truths, and friendship brings warmth and helps you laugh and giggle with your parents.

Sometimes parents confuse disagreements with disrespect, which isn’t true. Your kid doesn’t have to be your carbon copy. What growth does your generation offer if you and your kids are alike? So give them that space to express themselves, and even if there is misalignment in your perspectives, it should be expressed respectfully. Only then is it healthy parental or platonic love. If there is an absence of any one of these three pillars, then love crumbles, and the family collapses or becomes rather toxic. 

Romantic love encompasses all three pillars with an extra layer of romance on top, making it the most complicated of them all. So, let’s dive a little deeper into this.

1. 1. Respect:

Lack of respect makes fights ugly, pitches hurtful, and words cheap. When you truly respect your partner, you won’t disrespect each other, even when you have different opinions or heated arguments (which are inevitable). Fight with grace & respect. Lack of respect starts with emotional neglect, grows into emotional indifference, and eventually results in the death of the relationship. People start cheating, finding ways to seek that respect from people outside the relationship. Don’t dig your own grave by disrespecting your partner.

But what exactly is respect? Why do you respect some people and not others? As far as I have figured out, you respect someone who is happy with themselves, lives by principles, and has the courage to tell the truth, even if it is a difficult thing to do. This brings us to another question: When & how can a person do so?

This is possible only when a person is self-reliant across domains.

A self-reliant person will never be a leech on you, will never try to extract something from you, will never operate from entitlement, won’t be exploitative, and won’t put the burden of making them happy on you. Instead, they will only pour their love, care, and warmth on you because their cup is full, even overflowing. They won’t pull you down or get scared of your success because they are secure, but rather support your growth because they are growing themselves.

“But many of us seek community solely to escape the fear of being alone. Knowing how to be solitary is central to the art of loving. When we can be alone, we can be with others without using them as a means of escape.” – Bell Hooks

2. 2. Trust:

Lack of trust makes people petty and controlling. Partners resort to all sorts of cheap tactics like checking each other’s phones, being hyper-vigilant, controlling each other’s social circle, who they talk to, tracking each other’s activity, and more. This is anything but love; this is pure bullshit. You shouldn’t be with someone (in any capacity) if you don’t trust them. 

Rather, you should love in such a way that the person you love feels free. Only a rock-solid foundation of trust can bring this freedom and peace in a relationship, nothing else.

But how do you build trust?

Primarily by two things: staying true to your word and being vulnerable. For the former, just stay true to your word– do that thing you said you were going to do, show up if you said you’d come, call back if you said you would—it’s the little things that build or break a foundation. Don’t make the other person look like a fool for trusting you. Build alignment on life values and principles.

Then, trust is built through shared vulnerability. What is the difference between a random man walking on the road and my partner? I know his story. How do I know his story? Because he told me. Why did he tell me? Because he trusted me with it. Thus, it becomes my emotional responsibility to take care of him and his story and help him write a better one.

Trust is built by sharing your truths, demons, and vulnerabilities with each other and believing that they won’t use them against you. How do you believe that they won’t use it against you? By healing your childhood trauma (read here), so even if they do, it doesn’t take away much from you, and by choosing a kind person to love and receive love from.

For men who are reading this—let me explain emotional vulnerability in business terms to you. Think of it like you are an angel investor; you invest your money in 10 startups, out of which 9 might fail, but the return from the 10th is going to be so great that it covers the loss of the last 9 and puts you in net profit. It is similar with love and vulnerability.

“Your task is not to seek love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.” – Rumi

3. 3. Friendship:

Friendship is essential for two reasons. First, you can fall out of love, but you can’t fall out of friendship. I read somewhere a very long time ago that humans are very seasonal; whoever you are with now won’t be the same person 5, 10, or 15 years down the line. You will attend multiple funerals of who that person used to be. So, if you two are best friends first, you will keep pushing each other towards your personal goals in life. Both of you will keep growing and evolving together, and thus your relationship will never feel suffocating or become obsolete. True love begins when the honeymoon period ends. True love is an everlasting romantic relationship with your best friend.

Second, in friendship, you see the person as they are, which takes unnecessary pressure off that person of being ‘perfect’. In friendship, you see a person exactly as they are. You don’t put them on a pedestal. You know their range, their shortcomings and strengths, their best and worst tendencies; you are well aware of their spectrum of possibilities, and it doesn’t bother you. You don’t try to change your friends according to YOUR idea of them. You accept them as they are.

So, the litmus test of romantic love is the affirmation of these three statements:

• • “I respect him, his values, and his principles, AND I also feel like kissing him.”

• • “I completely trust him with his intentions towards me, AND I also feel like kissing him.”

• • “He is my great friend, AND I also feel like kissing him.”

So, before getting married or entering into a relationship with someone, check if these statements hold true.

If you find someone who you truly respect, deeply trust, is your friend, and you ALSO feel like kissing, then that’s your person right there.

It took me 26 years to realize that just because I can do something by myself doesn’t mean I have to or I should. The journey of life is long, very long indeed, and everyone has to traverse it on their own, there is no doubt about that. However, it is better to have a companion on this road trip. Your partner shouldn’t be a distraction but a best friend with whom you can build, have fun, and experience life with.

So wise men were right: love doesn’t hurt, but loving the wrong person does. Let’s stop blaming love when the problem lies in your human selection.

Love is the only thing that does not hurt.

Love is the only thing that heals.