Ah… love. Love is… a lot of things to a lot of people. It comes in all hues, shapes, sizes, and forms. It doesn’t have a definition, and you may experience it in so many different ways, that it’s impossible to foresee what kind of love you would experience it until you actually experience it.
Despite it being painful, reckless, happy, confusing, angry, hopeless, obsessive, and everything in between, love is something that no one wants to deny themselves of. It’s an experience that everyone looks forward to. Throughout your life, you’ll find yourself in many circumstances of love. However, what you’d experience would be one of these ten types of love. And if you’re open to it, you might even get to experience all ten types of love in your lifetime.
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Take a look at the ten types of love there is, and if you don’t think they’re actually ‘classified’ as love, then think again. Because there’s no fixed definition of love, and just because you don’t think it’s love, doesn’t mean it isn’t. 😉
1. Platonic love
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This is the love shared between childhood friends, siblings, and even a few growup friends. There are no strings attached nor are there any sexual intentions. It’s one of the pure kinds of love out there. It’s friendly, and something that we experience from a very young age, when we don’t even know what love is, or have any idea of its multitude of manifestations.
2. Limerence or infatuated love, and crushes
This refers to all those crushes you’ve had on people. That first crush is possibly the most memorable for you, that was filled with furious blushing, strange sensations in your body, especially in your tummy, sudden urges to throw up or swoon, and even a stupid sense of grinning to yourself every time the object of your affection so much as looks at you. Sigh! It’s a beautiful yet unfulfilling experience in your life.
On the other hand, limerence, although close to a crush, is much more intense and is called infatuated love. This is the love that you experience when you have intense, maddening infatuation for someone who’s out of your reach, like a teacher, or a pop star, or even an actor. Although you have such intense feelings, you wouldn’t want to mess it up in your head with reality raining on your parade, right? That’s what limerence is.
3. Obsessive love
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If you’re addicted to your partner and feel helpless and lonely without their presence, even for a short duration, then you’re experiencing obsessive love. Obsessive love can be dangerous, in that the obsessive lover can suck the very life of their partner, so much so that they’d need to take drastic actions to rid themselves of their obsessive lover.
Obsessive lovers are mostly experienced by newbies, who are experience love, probably for the very first time in the their lives. They are scared, insecure, and obsessive about their lover and of their relationship.
4. Selfish love
This is the kind of love where you want all the love, where you take all, while giving nothing. That is, your partner loves you, and you love yourself. It’s a narcissistic love where you don’t care about your partner or their needs or even their happiness. You just care about yourself. Selfish lovers are pretty selfish, and more often than not, they get into a relationship to see what they can get out of it, rather than what they can give to the other person.
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5. Unrequited love
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I’m sure many people would have experienced this heartbreaking kind of love. This is the love that has spurred and inspired many a poet and writer to pen ballads, novels, prose so touching that you can’t help but identify with it. Unrequited love is the dreaded one-sided love where you like someone, love them even, but they don’t reciprocate it, probably never will either. They may be in a relationship with someone else already, or they may just be using you, or they may not even know your existence. Any of these three situations can end in an unrequited love.
Even knowing that they will never love you back, you find yourself falling in love with them more every day. It’s like you’re helpless to control how you feel for them. This is the type of love that will help you understand the real value of reciprocal love.
6. Mushy love
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The kind of love that makes you go awww. Right, the cute kind. That is more spontaneous, and also the one that you’ll forget in record time. It may last from anywhere between a few seconds to a few minutes. This is the kind of love that you reserve for cute dogs, adorable babies, or a super sexy car, or even a dolphin, for that matter. It’s hard to believe that this is actually love, but it is what it is, and it’s an overwhelming sense of intense affection for something or someone, not necessarily animate every single time. It’s love at first sight, and yet, nothing like the other kinds of love that affect you intensely.
7. Lustful love
This is the kind of love where you’ve in ‘lust’ with someone. They could melt you and leave you in a puddle of want with a mere look or a touch or even a caress. A love where someone could make you want to do things that you wouldn’t even dream of doing, not ever! You experience this kind of love mostly when you’re purely sexually attracted to someone. In this kind of love, you’re always looking to getting it on, no matter where you are. Trying new positions, ripping each other’s clothes off to get to their skin that much more sooner, doing it because that’s the only way you connect with them – these are all the classic signs of lustful love.
8. Same-sex love
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Now, now. Don’t freak out on me. Read on further, and then freak out (if you find enough cause for it). See, love is love, and if two people of the same gender love each other, good for them. Who are we to judge? If that works for you, then go for it. If not, then don’t be judgmental.
However, what we’re referring to here is the intense affection and love you feel for that friend of the same sex. You could probably say that you have a man crush or a girl crush on this friend of yours. It’s in no way sexual, because you don’t get physically intimate, nor do you grope each other. It’s more to do with your admiration of this person and the respect you have for them.
9. Romantic love
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This is the love that most people aspire to experience in their life. Butterflies play a major role in fluttering around in your tummy. The world looks so much more beautiful and wonderful. You start to understand what Louis Armstrong was on about when he sang What a Wonderful World, you experience sleepless nights, and you can’t hold back a grin whenever you think about the object of your affection. You just can’t seem to hold back your urge to be with this person. You’re happy, your lover is happy, and the world around you seems happy. Sigh! Isn’t that wonderful?
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10. Unconditional love
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You could call this an extension of the previous kind of love. But this is not just limited to lovers. The most common example of unconditional love is between a mother and her child. This is the most special kind of love there is, and if you’ve experienced it from your lover, then you’re truly blessed. This kind of love doesn’t have any conditions attached to it. It’s given freely, without any fetters or restrictions. It’s not easy by any stretch of the imagination, but if you do ever have the will to take a leap of faith, then you’d most probably experience true love, in its purest, most intense form – unconditional love.
This is the love where you love another person more than you love yourself. You care about this other person and their welfare more than you do yours. They mean the world to you, and you don’t care about anything else in the world. Unconditional love, apart from mothers (sometimes fathers too) and their children experiencing, is what fairy tales and romance novels are made of. If you and your partner love each other selflessly, without attaching any conditions on your love, then you truly belong to the select few who have experienced it.
If you’re really hankering to experience unconditional love, then you’ve got to take a leap of faith and just go for it. Fall in love with your lover without reservations, without holding anything back, and someone who loves you for you, and not some imagined version of you.
There you have it; the ten types of love that you’d experience in life, as long as you’re willing to risk your heart and put yourself out there. How many kinds of love have you experienced so far in your life? Share your thoughts in the comments below.
Featured image source: Pixabay, under Creative Commons License
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