Ｑ60. What is love?

Love is an attitude in the form of the exchanges between a mother and child.

　　The sixth basic emotion is love.
　　Love is maternal instinct added to interest, in other words it is interest modified by the principle of blood selection, and also extends to others of the same species. Love is an emotion which branches out from interest depending on the situation.
　　Love is not only that found between lovers, but also includes family love, parental love, fraternal love, love for humanity, and friendship. In addition, respect and worship are also variations of love.
　　Actions of love in humans is to do something for another person, or accepting and staying with someone. Love is an unconscious sense of duty to do something for another.
　　In the mother and child relationship, a mother gives love and her child receives this love. When these two sides are felt at the same time, it is love. Since human beings have a tendency to be neotenous, which means they retain child-like elements even after they become adults, so a child-like sensibility will remain in adults. For example, the desire to be spoiled or taken care of, a sensibility by which children depend on their mother, is not lost and coexists with love given to others as an adult. In love between adults both parties behave as both mother and child, mutually giving and taking.
　　Parental love is indispensable to babies, and friendship among adults is also advantageous to survival. Love is connected to maintaining a group. Actions of love exist in most animals which look after their offspring. We can assume that they have love, but the love's size and complexity is different.
Love is helpful in maintaining a group.
　　Love is maternal instinct, so it's primarily for females. Therefore, on average it is seen more strongly in females. The relationship of a parent and a child is eternal, so love can also be eternal.
　　In the history of evolution, there is the condition that love spreads to others not only to children. Love develops in animals whose sustenance depends on its fortune/luck regardless of the individual's ability. These kinds of animals profit largely from helping others.
　　For instance, researchers have confirmed that vampire bats may share blood they drank with each other. At that time the vampire bat first gives blood to another bat which gave it blood before regardless of their genetic relation. This can be said to be an act of love.
　　Attachment behaviors can be seen in apes. Grooming and mouth-to-mouth feeding in apes corresponds to caresses and kisses in humans. Hugs and such actions are completely the same in both apes and humans.
　　The triggers that cause love to occur are the object of love being cute like a baby, or sharing everyday life and an interest, for example, those going through life together, lovers, a husband and wife, or a parent and child. It is easy for love to appear between those who work together. In the case of the same sex, they usually become friends and it is called friendship.
　　We easily feel love when the other person's interests, character, values, mannerism, or appearance is similar to our own. It is because the person who is similar to you is your child. We feel we want to do something for the person who is similar to us. So a husband and a wife, a parent and a child, and siblings cannot have love unless they share an interest or their lives.
　　Love has a process.
　　In the first step interest ,which can also be called fondness, makes us search for someone compatible. In this period, we endeavour to learn about the other person and try to like the same things for example.
　　In the second step we act to test a relationship. We deliberately act in a way that the person may dislike to confirm how much we are accepted. For example, we tease each other when we become close to a person.
　　Love between lovers includes attachment behaviors. Lovers cuddle each other like a child. The behavior is like that between a mother and child, in which the couple alternate between the roles of mother and child.
　　A typical example of this is one of the lovers telling the other to open his or her mouth and feeding him or her. Researchers think that a kiss is a transformation of the primitive age behaviour of a mother giving a baby food after chewing it and making it soft. Skin contact such as caresses is originally designed to set a baby at ease. Holding hands is a behavior between a mother and a child. A lover is exactly like "my baby". Through these behaviors we unconsciously recall memories of our mother's love during our childhood. As a result an emotional memory of love is formed when this recalled emotion is directed towards our lover who is currently with us.
　　An adopted child may behave like an infant to its new parents. They cry, throw a tantrum, want to use a diaper even though they are already potty trained, or want to breastfeed or use a bottle which they no longer need.
　　Those who don't have a blood relation and don't experience mother-child behavior naturally need to trace a mother and child's relations to attain a deep relation like between parents and children. In this way we make emotional memories of love.