How Much Do You Love Me?
- Kris J. Simpson
- 4 days ago
- 8 min read
Discerning and Quantifying Love
I must admit, I was a bit nervous when I sat down at the table that evening. I was with my girlfriend, and this was the first time I was meeting her closest friends. I’m well aware that most judgments of a person will be made upon first meeting them. What’s that old saying, “You never get a second chance to make a first impression.”
I soon got over the pre-judgement jitters and settled into the conversation. It helped when one of her friends complimented me on my blue shirt. I smiled and said, “I Love the colour blue.” Later, when it was time to order, the waiter asked what I’d like, so I asked her what was good on the menu. “The pasta is what most people come here for,” she replied. I confidently said, “I Love pasta!” As the night was wrapping up and we were saying goodbye, one of her friends said, “We should get together again, this was great.” Feeling relieved that, until the feedback from my girlfriends’ focus group (her friends) was in, I thought I had impressed them, so I happily replied, ‘I’d Love that!”
On the way back to my car, holding my girlfriend’s hand, I glanced at her, and she was grinning. I asked her what she was smiling about, thinking maybe one of her friends had given their first impression of me. She smiled back and asked me, “So, how much do you Love me?” I immediately thought it must be a trick question, kind of like, Guess how old I am. You have to be careful in that space; minefields are everywhere. I had just a second to think quickly, so I asked, “What do you mean?” — not the best response, I admit — more strategic than romantic.
“I’ve noticed you Love many things — blue shirts, spaghetti, going out with my friends — so I’m just wondering how much you Love me,” she joked.
For the record, I gave a wrong answer and quickly started an awkward, lengthy explanation. I hope she has forgotten that part of our evening, but I haven’t. I reflected on it for days afterward, especially noticing how often I express Love for something or someone daily.
It made me wonder: what is Love exactly — and can it be quantified?
The ancient Greeks understood the importance of Love and recognized it in different forms. For example, Eros is described as passionate, sexual, and romantic Love. Interestingly, it was considered dangerous because it could lead someone to lose control, which is the origin of the word ‘erotic’. This serves as a subtle reminder that lust — the brief, intense emotion primarily focused on physical desire and often mistaken for Love — is powerful and can drive people to absurdity. In contrast, Love is mature; it’s about resisting the urge for instant pleasure that requires little sacrifice — hedonism.
A thought-provoking question for another day is which comes first: Love or lust?
Philia refers to friendships, Storge to familial Love, including long-term partners, and the highest form, Agape, describes unconditional, selfless Love. It is also used in Christian religious texts to describe divine Love. Aristotle introduced Philautia — a form of self-compassion that can foster better Love for others. Because, arguably, the level of Love you have for yourself influences the Love you can offer others.
This should not be confused with Narcissus, the figure in Greek mythology, who ONLY enjoyed looking at his reflection. Aristotle’s philautia allows us to see ourselves in others intimately; the word comes from Latin “intumus,” meaning “inmost” or “deepest.” I like (not Love) relationship coach Esther Perell’s play on words, INTO-ME-SEE, which I expand on: INTO-ME-I-SEE-YOU and INTO-YOU-I-SEE-ME.
For the teleological description of Love, and what I believe is the simplest, most beautiful, and most comprehensible definition of Love, I turn to Saint Thomas Aquinas, the 13th-century theologian and philosopher, who summed it up in one sentence: “to will the good of the other” (velle bonum alicui). This type of Love can be as simple as hoping and praying for someone’s good, or it can involve deeds that require greater sacrifice.
Tongue in cheek, it means not wishing the worst for others, but further, even if they’ve dishonoured, stolen, or hurt you… Yes, it means embodying the most difficult virtue of loving your enemies.
Determining what is good for others isn’t as simple as it seems. Objective morality philosophers might disagree, but good and evil are not clear-cut distinctions. Often, actions that seem unfair or even cruel at first can lead to personal growth. A common example is a parent setting limits — which may seem unfair — on a child’s autonomy until they are mature enough to make their own decisions.
One could define Love by contrasting it with its opposite: Fear. Love expands beyond oneself, while fear contracts inward. Both are essential states, as the relationship and union of opposites shape our reality.
Love enables us to connect and bond with others, while fear applies constraints to prevent us from losing ourselves while pursuing the good of others. Fear is the feeling of being alone, whereas Love is the feeling of being part of something greater than ourselves.
Everything is a relation or connection to another thing; otherwise, there would be no thing, or more simply, for anything to exist (to be a ‘thing’), it must be in relation or bound to another thing. Therefore, Love is the centre of creation because there would be nothing to Love without another. That’s why it is all-powerful — omnipotent.
Just like in human biology, one liver cell must work with another to ensure the liver functions properly. In a sense, that liver cell is willing the good of the other by cooperating and connecting with it, understanding that it is both a separate entity but also part of a larger whole — in this case, your liver. This pattern persists as we increase in scale: the liver connects to the gut, the gut connects to the brain, and so on, possibly infinitely. As we analyze the parts of that single liver cell, we find more connections and cooperating entities — what we currently observe in the quantum world. We may uncover even more complexity as we keep exploring and trying to understand what creates the miracle of our existence.
So one could say, it’s Love, not turtles, all the way up, and all the way down, or as the ancient hermetics would say, as above, so below.
All our emotions, and therefore what shapes our behaviour (good and bad), can be classified as either fear-based or Love-based, and trigger a contracting or expanding response.
For example, the Abraham Hicks emotional guidance scale or E.G.S. defines emotions by their vibration. The phenomenon of energetic states can’t be measured (currently), but we can certainly feel them. Have you ever been acutely angry or scared before? Most likely, your biological response would include muscle tension and a racing heart, as your body contracts and readies itself for fight or flight.
In the E.G.S. scale, there are 22 emotions that range from the lowest vibrations. Every day emotions such as doubt and worry, when our default mode network in the brain isn’t suppressed, can lead to more decisive and acute emotions like jealousy and anger, all the way down to the depths with feelings of guilt, shame, and powerlessness. These are all fear-based emotions that, in Hicks’s philosophy, are inherently low-vibration, and I would add that they all cause you to withdraw into yourself, separate from others, and become self-conscious, protective, and even aggressive.
The Buddha described the suffering that manifests in the fear-based emotions of depression and its cousin anxiety as an over-attachment to the “I’, “me”, and “mine”. Therefore, one could surmise that the best therapies for these disorders are all of the clichés you can name like “Love is the answer,” “Love is all you need,” “Love is the healer,” “Love conquers all,” and “the power of Love can heal anything.”
Heading in the opposite direction — upward and onward — the scale shifts back to the highest state of being, beginning with hope and progressing toward passion, culminating in the pinnacle of joy, empowerment, and freedom. These are all Love-based feelings that, in this model, are called high vibrations. I believe they enable a person to go beyond themselves and recognize the other as different from us, yet still relatable, and to choose to will their good.
Perhaps the best way to gain more clarity about Love is to stop using it as a noun and instead understand that it is a verb — that some action must be taken when wishing the good of the other.
We often view love as a feeling, but I believe it is also a choice. Through our free will, we will the good of others. To experience love’s rewards, one must commit and take responsibility through good times and bad, richer or poorer, in health and sickness. As the Christian faith teaches, we must bear our cross and willingly accept the hardships of sacrifice and duty to love. This may not sound romantic, but only through these actions can one truly understand love and its meaning.
And yes, the measure of love often determines how much sacrifice you’re willing to make. I have this unusual, perhaps even morbid, way of trying to quantify my love for someone. I ask myself: would I sacrifice my life for that person? This might seem extreme, but it leads me to a place of knowing.
An important caveat about Love — it doesn’t exist, at least in this dimension of reality, in the absence of fear, so yes, if we Love, we will undoubtedly suffer at some point — it is inevitable, but meaningful.
Because our nature is to attach, attempting to alleviate the existential anxiety, as a baby holds onto its mother tightly, and as Lovers longing for each other when apart. But all that we are is impermanent, so by attaching, we will undoubtedly suffer when that bond is broken.
If you have been heartbroken, then you know that the suffering is real when Love is lost or taken from us, but there is wisdom in that pain, and we must courageously stay open so we can not only continue to transmit Love but also receive it.
As Viktor Frankl vividly described in his book, Man’s Search for Meaning — there is meaning in our suffering.
As with everything within reality, Love exists on a spectrum. As the Greek philosopher Heraclitus would have said, Love is in a constant state of flux. It’s never black and white, and it develops to different degrees depending on the relationship, context, and complexity. Moreover, complexity requires time, as we literally build the foundation of Love for the other, one act at a time.
Does this mean that Love at first sight is just a myth? Perhaps Love possesses wisdom and, through an attraction from an unseen intelligence, can enable a knowing that someone is the one. However, there is still much work to be done before that Love can truly flourish. That said, you may Love many people, and you might even say you still Love them now, but not in the same way. Because Love can soar, but it can also fade.
Love exists on a spectrum, and that can be difficult to accept at times — trying to understand why you don’t feel the same as before, or why someone else has fallen out of Love with you. This is the hard truth about Love.
To summarize this not-even-close-to-exhaustive discussion of Love, I will try to describe what is beyond words. If language could bring us closer, Love is the union of all that is true, beautiful, and meaningful. You might see it as the divine in action, the mother of everything, creation itself. It not only explains how we exist but also serves as the purpose of existence. If you’ve felt called to Love, given it, received it, seen it in others, or watched it in animate nature, then you might agree that Love could very well be the meaning of life.
It’s been a while since that night out with my girlfriend, and I have learned about Love, or rather, what Love has taught me — It continues to fill me with awe. Looking across the living room at my girlfriend, now my wife, who once asked me how much I Love her, I now have my answer, as I have been building it brick by brick, again and again.
How much do I Love you?
I Love you all the way to heaven.
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