What Society Got Wrong about Love

Let me first re-state something I’ve only briefly touched on in a few of my articles: you can grow to love anyone. There is an ancient debate about what Truth is—whether there is such a thing as absolute truth or whether all truth is relative. But if you believe in one true God, you already know that there is such a thing as absolute truth and that God knows all truth—whether or not we as mere mortals understand the truth or not. Therefore, the definition of Love has one actual definition; we just may not understand it yet. In fact, societies have misused the term to the point where it has strayed from the original truth it once held.—Simply put, society has love mixed up with other things.








There are two primary concepts that society associates with the word “love”; neither are 100% accurate:
The first concept can be replaced with the word “passion”, or the sexual desire for another person. This sexual desire is the combination of psychological connections and chemical reactions that your body produces. (e.g. hormones, etc.)
The second concept frequently associated with the word “love” has a few different terms that are synonymous with it, such as “the warm fuzzy feeling” and the “feeling like you can’t live without them”, or in other words, that you want to be around them all the time. This type of “love” is associated with the feeling of excitement; it is often the deciding factor when someone says they “click” with their partner. For lack of a better word, this concept will be labeled “infatuation” for the rest of this article.

Neither of these concepts can be limited to just one person of the opposite sex, because you can be infatuated with a couple different people at once, and you can obviously feel passion for many people of the opposite sex. You can even have a passionate, chemical or psychological, connection with someone of the same sex; but
again, neither of these two concepts are 100% accurate about love. When used together, these terms come close to the true meaning of Love.—Passion and infatuation are both a part of love, but there is more to the true meaning of love than just these two byproducts of it.

Love is primarily a verb, or an action word, that over time has been modified in the English lexicon to also become a noun. There are several languages that separate the verb from the noun and there are many languages that separate the word for passion from the word for infatuation.
This may appear obvious, but love also isn’t limited to male-female relationships, but over time, the word changed significantly enough for people to stop using it as often in other senses. For instance, “The soul of Jonathan was knit with the soul of David, and Jonathan loved him as his own soul” (Samuel 18:1). This is a good example of an old, accurate use of the word. David, who later became King David and Jonathan, the son of the present king, were very close friends. They cared for one another, they understood one another. They wanted to remain in each other’s lives; and because of this Jonathan did everything he could to prevent King Saul from killing David. We can learn from this story that another part of love is caring for another individual, sometimes going beyond our comfort zone to do so.

Another good illustration of the concepts above would be when your mother gave birth to you. She put aside her physical well-being to bring you into the world. There were plenty of chemicals and other things floating around at the time and you both shared a very close physical connection (passion). She was also obviously obsessed with you and probably felt like she wouldn’t want to live if you died*(infatuation). But she also cared deeply about you and wanted you to have a successful life; she risked her own life in order for you to have yours (caring). Thankfully, you survived birth and are here today because of that Love.

The best example of Love is actually the Savior. He gave up his entire life up, from birth to death, in order to make it possible for you to one day have a perfect body and become sinless and return to Heavenly Father’s presence. He suffered, He bled from every pore, He took on the consequences of your sins, and He died publicly on the cross because He loved you. He also loved Heavenly Father, which is why He did everything He was told to do.—You can learn a lot about Love by studying the Atonement, [i.e. praying in the Garden of Gethsemane, the Death on the cross, and the Resurrection from the tomb].

Even though society, or the world, might have multiple uses for the word “love”, there is only one kind of Love. Passion and Infatuation might be aspects, or rather byproducts of love; but the real kind of love is manifested when you put yourself out of your comfort zone in order to help other people. It is selflessness and charity. The same kind of love that you have for your parents and family members now will be the same kind of love that you will have for your future spouse, and before you can find someone who will love you in this way, you will need to learn to love her or him this way.

Love is an essential part of having a relationship; it can very powerful as well. It is likely that the people who you think are the best people ever, the ones you look up to, are also incredibly loving people. They have a way of loving everyone around them and because of this, it is easy for you to love and look up to them. But not everyone is easy to love; with some people it can be very difficult to look past their faults and flaws and all of the hurt and pain they have caused you in the past.
We are encouraged by the Savior to “love one another”, to care about them, to take an interest in their lives and to assist them with whatever they stand in need of. The Savior wouldn’t give us such a commandment if we couldn’t fulfill it; and if we can grow to care about anyone then we have the hardest part of love figured out--the other two, after all, can become byproducts.

Remember the initial statement: “You can grow to Love anyone?” Well, you can also cause anyone to love you. If you have a little bit of knowledge, you can create Passion in other people; you can build yourself up and become interesting and put yourself into a position for people to be Infatuated with you; last of all, if you do the right things, you can give people the opportunity to Care about you.

Just like you can and should forgive everyone, you can also love anyone you choose. You can care about another person and feel infatuated with them. This is an exciting bit of information because it puts agency in your hands. You have a choice in the matter of “falling in love”. It isn’t just some random thing that happens to two people. It isn’t a matter of fate. This also means that there isn’t such a thing as “one true love”**, and any two people can love each other in the necessary way for a lasting relationship.

The absolute truth behind love is that any two people can love each other and be perfectly happy spending the eternities together.

-------
*If you’ve ever met anyone who has lost a baby at birth you’ll understand what I mean when I make that statement.
**This is another term that has multiple meanings and confusion in society. I’m referring to the definition that there isn’t just one person out there who you are destined to fall in love with.

How to Attract the Right Person

I recently updated this article to go into better depth of what the original topic was. You can find the new article here.

Imagine going to the ice cream parlor to buy some ice cream, only to be told when you get there that your favorite flavor is sold out, forcing you to buy the next closest thing.
Looking for the right person to marry is like that.

There is no such thing as “one true love” or a “soul mate”; these are romanticized terms to make you feel better about your situation and give you a false hope that there is someone specific out there waiting for you.—On the contrary, you are capable of marrying anyone you choose, just like you are capable of eating every flavor of ice cream (food allergies aside). With love, there isn’t such a thing as destiny or fate, nothing is pre-decided beforehand that you will meet, let alone marry, the perfect person for you. You will marry the person you choose to marry, regardless of whether they are the best thing for your life or not.
However, because it is your choice, you may set certain criteria that you wish your future spouse to possess. This is what I want to theme today’s article around.

If you could take a look at your life, taking note of all the people you come in contact with every day and the people you know personally and how you know them, where you met, how good of a relationship you have with them, etc. You will have a general idea of what your “sphere” is. These are the networks you are connected to as well as the people who go to the same places you do and are likely interested in some of the same things you are.
Your sphere is all of the people who you could build a relationship with if you chose to. Out of that “sphere” about half of the people are ineligible for you to date based on sexual orientation. Depending on where you live, there are still plenty of people in your sphere who you could date and build a relationship with. Think of your sphere as the ice cream store which has many different flavors, toppings, and options.
In the ice cream story, you were faced with a dilemma, you left your house expecting to buy your favorite flavor but that flavor was sold out. Before we cover the dilemma, how do you know what your favorite flavor is? Perhaps you have tasted it in the past and enjoyed it. Maybe you’ve had something similar to it and you enjoy anything of that flavor. Maybe you know what you don’t want your ice cream to taste like and your favorite ice cream is the one that is completely opposite.

Relating this to finding your future spouse, how do you know what you’re looking for if you don’t have some sort of criteria or preference? Take out a piece of paper (or since most of you are on the internet, open up a document) and write down a list of criteria that you want for your future spouse, these can be things you want and things you know you don’t want.



Is the list very long? –Many people share this common list: Devoted to God, honest, trustworthy, successful, and attractive. ---Hold on, what does that mean? How do you plan on determining if someone is trustworthy? How can you find out if someone is honest or devoted to God? Do you plan on following your girlfriend around everywhere to see if she returns that extra change that the cashier gave her? Are you going to take notes on how many commandments your boyfriend breaks? How about people you don’t know but who are in your sphere, how can you tell if they are trustworthy without giving them a little bit of trust first and risking them breaking that trust?
Rewrite you list now, but write more specific things down that you could reasonably gage without being a creeper. I would recommend basing them around goals that you are working towards as well as your values and lifestyle. For instance, if all you want to do is be a stay at home mom with lots of kids, you could write that your husband better want to have a lot of kids as well and that he’ll have a better career than working at subway his whole life so that he can support your family. If you have a goal of owning and running your own restaurant, you’ll want a wife who will either support your business in some way by helping out with one of the business aspects, or who will support you for running the business. Perhaps you know that you don’t want to marry someone who is in the military because of the stress it has put on your present family for having a father or brother who is serving. Maybe you don’t want to marry someone who drinks or smokes or someone who doesn’t take life seriously. Write these things down.








This exercise is meant to help you describe what your ideal partner is like. In the ice cream analogy this is your favorite flavor.

When you go to the ice cream store you go with the intent on purchasing your favorite flavor with all the right toppings and served as a milkshake or in a bowl or cone. When you start looking for someone to marry, you might discover that there is no one who perfectly fits your criteria within your sphere. (the dilemma) That is okay and merely means that you either need to expand your sphere and branch out in order to discover the people who are like that (perhaps you don’t know enough people), or you need to settle on the flavor that is most similar to what you are looking for (perhaps your criteria is too strict). Again, it is perfectly fine to run into this problem. On the other hand, you may find it easy to fill your criteria, just be sure to get the most out of what you want in life (don’t be too general unless it is honestly what you want).

The second part to finding the right person to marry is a little more complex than choosing ice cream at the store. Now that you have an idea of what you are looking for, you need to switch places with that person. Get inside their shoes: what types of things do THEY like and are looking for in a spouse? It would be nice if we could put as our number one criteria: “they will love me for who I am”. But what is essentially being said by that statement is that you aren’t going to change in order to help them with their life or to help them to love you. Selfish relationships rarely last—if they can even get off the ground to begin with!
The important precept to understand is that “you need to be the right person for the right person.” Don’t think things are automatically going to fall in your lap and be easy. Remember that there is no such thing as destiny or fate, everything is your choice and if you want something out of life, you will have to work for it. If you become the right person for your right person, the hardest part will be over. –It will be easy to convince him or her to marry you because both of your lives will fit together perfectly.

As time goes on, you change and your likes and dislikes change as well, be sure to update your list of what you are looking for. At the same time, strive to become the kind of person that your future husband or wife will easily fall in love with and it will make finding the right person a lot easier.