The media does not define love

Navigating unrealistic expectations and the reality of something I barely understand

Jun 16, 2025

love
n. a complex emotion involving strong feelings of affection and tenderness for the love object, pleasurable sensations in their presence, devotion to their well-being, and sensitivity to their reactions to oneself. Although love takes many forms, including concern for one’s fellow humans (brotherly love), parental love, erotic love, self-love, and identification with the totality of being (love of God), the triangular theory of love proposes three essential components: passion, intimacy, and commitment. Social psychological research in this area has focused largely on passionate love, in which sexual desire and excitement predominate, and companionate love, in which passion is relatively weak and commitment is strong.1

In this definition by the APA Dictionary of Psychology, love is vaguely described as a “complex emotion,” that reveals itself in many different forms. Only a theory can be discussed because there is no way to definitively describe love.

I used to believe I had it all figured out. Agape love, a love that wants what is best for the other. Sacrificial love, the kind I learned about in theology class in high school. Seventeen year-old Alaina called out my ex boyfriend for using those three words too lightly. Love is a choice, I thought, a choice to stay, a choice to appreciate every flaw, to support another in sickness and in health. How could he say he loved me if he was leaving the relationship?

I did not consider that love is not confined to one definition. What even is “love?” Can you love someone from a distance? Can you love someone and not be in love with them? Absolutely. I have loved before, and I will love again. I have loved my friends, romantic partners and my family. I have loved men, women and people. I have loved strangers I have never shared a conversation with.

There are so many cliche’s, so many arguments about what love is. Love is so confusing that we have created labels for how we love so that we can better understand ourselves and our human capacity to love. We have explored the possibility that love and sexual attraction may or may not be mutually exclusive. We have said before that love is not as finite as we claim.

Love is love, we say. It comes in many different forms and shapes, we say, but we still argue about what it is, what it should be. For to view love from a relativist standpoint may reduce its significance. It allows us to manipulate its form and definition to our advantage. The syntax we employ to define love can play a significant role in how we view it, how we treat it, how we view and treat others. Still, I argue that love is a concept created to describe what is far beyond the grasp of human language and comprehension. To mold “love” into an object, an expectation, a purpose, an emotion is to diminish the reality of its broad nature.

The songs we hear, the stories we are told and the art we admire attempt to express love, to capture what love is. I have loved hard, maybe too hard, maybe so hard it was not love. Or maybe it was love blinded by ideals and expectations. The issue with love being shaped by the media is that people often get caught up in the romance, the passion of love, when that is only a part of the whole.

One of my favorite songs gives a reminder that “Love is a verb. It’s an action. It’s not a film reenactment.”2 When I was eighteen, I was dating someone who ended things because they did not “feel it.” Sometimes I struggle with the same thing. Many argue that love is a feeling as well as a choice, but people tend to place too much of an emphasis on the feeling. We see what love looks like in films and we expect to have that perfect date under café lights, the moon reflecting over the water, rain pouring over us as we share an intense, passionate kiss like the one in The Notebook.

Stop trying to make love beautiful;
allow it to just exist.
In its raw form; in its purest state.
Some days it will shine; some days it will barely glow.
Most days it will be quiet.
— simple
only seen when looked for;
a reflection of the people it exists within.
Imperfect people
who rise.
who fall.
How can we expect something
that lives. that grows. that dies.
within us.
to behave differently than we do?3

One reason that so many relationships end around three to six months is that they lose the “spark,” the butterflies, the intrigue, the passionate and exciting aspects of new relationships. By the time a relationship reaches a certain milestone, the love shared can seem dry, quiet or even messy. Love is less of a feeling and more of an unknown, an abstract journey that we are intended to navigate together. It is in long-term serious relationships that we begin to see the sides of another person that we may not like very much. This is the time in which love becomes a choice.

“I can love you in spite of-”
Do I want to be loved in spite of? Do you? Does anyone? But aren’t we all, to some degree? Aren’t there important parts of all of us which must be, so to say, gazed past? I turn a blind eye to that aspect of you, and you turn a blind eye to that aspect of me…4

Many of us want to love and be loved because of our flaws, not in spite of. This is a difficult topic to cover. Is it possible to like every single thing about someone? I argue that to love is different than to like. To truly love is not to turn a blind eye, but to acknowledge someone’s traits and learn to grow with them, to offer a tenderness, a caring touch where it is needed. Love is an art. It is a work in progress because no one is ever fully healed. “When somebody loves you, they take you as you are.”5

Show me a brave love;
a dirty love.
One dusted with soil from digging and planting.
One tenderly grown with sweat and tears.6

Some of the sweetest, most romantic pieces of art are beautiful but unfortunately unrealistic. “You’re the coffee that I need in the morning,”7 is a sweet phrase, but to love is not to need someone. As discussed by

gor

, love should not be the end goal. Love is not meant to complete someone; it is meant to complement someone. Gor discusses the importance of loving oneself before loving another.

Because how can a man love a woman fully if he has no practice in facing his own pain? How can he sit with her rage if he’s never made peace with his own? How can he protect her joy if he’s ashamed of his own tenderness?8

When I did not fully understand this concept, my first break up was immensely difficult. I had experienced a joy I’d never felt before and it had been snatched away from within my fingers. The quote below from Alex Warren’s Ordinary is how I would have described my first love: the feeling of infatuation, my palms sweaty, suddenly seeing a world full of color when it had previously been black and white.

Something so heavenly, higher than ecstasy whenever you're next to me, oh my, my world was in black and white until I saw your light. I thought you had to die to find something so out of the ordinary9

Warren discusses kissing the ground of his love’s sanctuary. While loving his partner may feel this way, it will not always. Love songs like this tend to raise unrealistic expectations. It seems to me that Warren places his lover on a pedestal. He worships the love shared as something “out of the ordinary.”

Maybe love should be ordinary. It is mundane, messy, beautiful and scary all at once and not at all. We cannot expect love to be perfect, the way it is portrayed in our fantasies. Love is not rational. It is difficult to define, difficult to attain and to manage. News flash: No one knows what they are doing. We can try to define, try to express our love, but no love is simple, easy. No art, no definition can illustrate the true dignity of love. Media can guide and misguide us, but we are left to build connections on our own.

The media does not define love

Navigating unrealistic expectations and the reality of something I barely understand

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