To describe the ‘phenomenon’ of love, I tend to group things into three different kinds of love. I have recently come to realize this is mainly due to the fact that we seem to use this one unfortunate word to describe what are essentially three separate and different concepts. No wonder we get so confused talking about ‘love’.

The three types of love are:
1. Hormonal Love
2. Emotional Love
3. Cerebral Love

Hormonal Love is what we see in nature and on the discovery channel. Simply put, hormonal love is lust. It is the biological drive to mate. It is a very sensuous exploration involving shape, texture, touch, smell, and taste. This type of ‘love’ is noncommittal and drives the ‘lover’ to explore all possibilities. The interesting aspect is that hormonal love leads individuals away from monogamous relationships - which conflicts with needs of Emotional Love.

Emotional Love is best understood as the warm fuzzys we feel in a certain relationships. This is not an exploratory kind of love, but rather a drive to fulfill needs of security and stability. (read up on codependence) This is the drive to live in an environment with individuals who make us feel secure. Any lack of security or stability, whether real or perceived, can lead to many curious ‘side-effects’ such as jealousy, suspicion, anger, etc. We all know how Emotional love is often betrayed by the drives of Hormonal love, but curiously enough, Emotional love can also be betrayed by Cerebral love.

Cerebral Love has much in common with emotional love, but it functions somewhat differently. It could perhaps be described as fascination. Examples of Cerebral love could be a love of jigsaw puzzles or perhaps a love of photography. It is something that deeply engages that person’s time and attention, sometimes at all cost.

So be warned: I just might ‘love’ you when you’re not looking.