There's an episode of Dawson's Creek, from season three, called "Cinderella Story", it's one of my favorites (and, by the way, the episode that includes the "billion dollar kiss"). In it, the college boy that Joey's been long distance dating has to read a short story he's written. They guy's oldest friend refers to it as his "nature of love piece" and the story starts by saying that, "the loudest sound in the world is love unspoken". Of course I agree with the sentiment, I might not say it's the loudest sound in the world and I might not refer to that idea as the nature of love, but, as they say in the legal world, I agree with the spirit of the quote if not the letter of it.
The premise that the "loudest sound in the world" idea is based on is that the college boy, AJ, is really in love with this girl who he's been friends with for a long time but he can't tell her because he's worried that it would ruin the friendship. Maybe he's worried that she doesn't feel the same, but even more than that he's worried that she does feel the same. They're young, but even if they weren't, so many relationships, especially these days, don't go the distance, that it's not such an unfounded fear that they might get together and then break up. He isn't willing to take either risk, and so he says nothing, but saying nothing changes everything. Incidentally, in that case she did feel the same and she said nothing either (out of the same fears).
You get so caught up in trying not to say anything, but when you're in love the impulse to shout it from the rooftops is so strong that the conflict between trying not to say anything when you really want to confess makes you crazy. You start acting like a completely different person. You know it's obvious that you're acting like an alien from planet crazy so you try to cover that up but that just makes it worse. Ultimately, it's better for your sanity, AND your friendship, if you just say what you're feeling. If the other person doesn't feel the same that doesn't mean an end to the friendship. If they do feel the same and you get together you just have to have faith that either you'll be the couple that beats the odds or you'll be able to remain friends if you do split up, and frankly you should be able to manage one or the other (Dawson and Joey did). While you never know what's going to happen, you do have some control over whether or not your relationship fails and you have absolute control over how you respond if it does.
While all of that is true, I would argue that the nature of love is that there is no nature of love. Each love is different. Even if you narrow it down to just romantic love (as opposed to familial or platonic love), it's still different each time, in fact even with one love it can change from day to day. It can be comfortable or passionate, or both, or anything in between along with a myriad of things that can't really be put in to words. Trying to write about the nature of love is...kind of impossible. Unless, when you do it, you realize that you're writing about the nature of a particular love, not love in general. I'll give you some examples...
I used to have pretty bad insomnia, in high school, I could only sleep if I'd had 10 or 20 cups of coffee right before going to bed. Otherwise I'd lie there thinking and I'd tell myself if I could just stop thinking, clear my mind, I'd fall asleep but I could never do it. I'd eventually fall asleep but I'd usually end up getting about 3 hours of sleep a night, maybe 4, which wasn't so bad, I could still function, but I love sleep and consider 6 hours really the minimum amount to keep me happy. When I went away to college my former remedy for insomnia, coffee, started making it worse (which I suppose just means it started working in its normal capacity). I quit drinking it and suffered through with less sleep for a month or so.
During that time I met a boy and fell fast and hard for him. We sort of dated for about a month. He was pulling away, I could tell, and I asked his roommate what the deal was, even though I knew already what the answer would be. He wasn't ready for a serious relationship. He was on the rebound when I started seeing him so it wasn't surprising. He went away for the weekend that week and I got really drunk with his roommates who were, aside from the boy himself, my best friends at school. When he came back on Sunday he told me himself, he wasn't ready to get serious, but he really liked hanging out with me and hoped we'd still be friends (I'm paraphrasing, but it's a pretty standard speech, I'm sure you're familiar with it).
That night I was lying in bed wishing I could fall asleep. I thought about him and I decided I could either take him at his word and continue hanging out with him (which I really liked doing regardless), or assume he didn't mean it (because no one ever really means it when they say, "we can still be friends", or so I thought at the time) and never really see him again. I realized that I didn't just have a crush on this boy, it wasn't lust, or infatuation, I loved him and I couldn't drop him from my life just because he didn't want to date me. I fell asleep and slept really well that night and pretty much every night since including the nights he came over to my dorm room to sleep with me because his roommates were having loud parties. You'd think that would keep me awake, having to try to sleep next to my, at that point, best friend, when I wanted so much more but all he wanted was a quite place to sleep. I think, if anything I slept better those nights. I always thought, that even if he never wanted more, not everyone is lucky enough to find someone that they feel completely and absolutely comfortable with. That was the nature of that love, it was comfortable, not that it didn't eventually become passionate too, and a million other things, but I think deep down, the nature of that one was always comfortable.
The next time I realized I'd really fallen for someone that I thought I just had a crush on I nearly dropped a full mug of tea on my best friends kitchen floor. There's very little that was comfortable about those feelings. First of all, I shouldn't be interested in this guy, not even at the crush level. Not that I've ever gone for the guys I should. The guys I want always seem to be too old, or taken, or gay, or too young, or out of my league. This guy is no exception, he's way out of my league (among other things).
A while back I talked about redefining perfection, but imagine if you met someone that lived up to your pre-existing definition of perfection and the more things you learned about them the more points they matched on your perfect guy checklist. Even so, I shouldn't have fallen for him, for starters he's never going to be interested in me, and I didn't even expect to see him again after the end of last year. I even asked him if he thought we'd ever see each other again and he said no. That was the kicker. I should have kept that question to myself because even though I fully expected we'd never see each other again, hearing him say it made me realize that the thought of not seeing him again made me sad.
If I'd just had a crush on him I could have let him drop right out of my life, nearly unnoticed. I'm bad enough at keeping in touch with the people I really care about that boys I have crushes on come and go almost without so much as an attempt at keeping in touch with them. That might have even happened in this case, because even though I was sad at the thought of never seeing him again, I still didn't think I'd really fallen for him. That realization came a few days later.
I was standing in my friends kitchen with a cup of very hot tea, waiting for it to cool, and apologizing for running a bit late (because I'd been discussing literature with the guy) and I realized that he, the guy, had really made me think, you know, really think. He'd challenged me. More than that I realized that it wasn't the first time he'd challenged me. I realized then that he'd challenged me in a lot of ways that I hadn't even noticed. He said something before I'd gotten to know him that flipped a switch in my head and made me recognize and discard this whole group of fears I'd been letting hold me back. I knew I'd abandoned those fears, and I knew what he'd said, and that it had struck me at the time because it was something I'd always believed, but the whole process of realizing that while I'd believed it I hadn't been living like I believed it was all subconscious so I didn't see the connection at first. Like I said, I nearly dropped the tea. And again I knew that I had to make an effort to keep this person in my life even though I'm interested in him and he'll probably never be more than a friend. It's just that not everyone is lucky enough to have friends in their life that challenge them like that.
Love means millions of different things, even if you can break it down into three major categories (familial, platonic, and romantic) each time you love someone it's different. I have great family, and great friends, and I have experienced great romantic love and I feel pretty confident in saying that there is no nature of love.
