Love, Romance & Defining Romantic Love

How do you know whether you have love or are experiencing romance? Are love and romance one and the same? Does one equal the other? The answer is “I’m not sure.” Is your reflection in a mirror really you? Love is a feeling that lives deep inside the heart and soul; but romance is the reflection of that love, and it lives right out in the open for all the world to see. Real romance happens all the time, just like real love is there all the time.

We may desire romantic love in one way, but the partner that we are with may express it in a totally different way. Defining any deep emotion is an exercise in futility. There are no words that can adequately describe emotion. Oh, that doesn’t stop the world from trying to define emotion, of course. You can find definitions for all sorts of human emotions in any dictionary. Unfortunately there’s no dictionary definition that can help or save us whenever we may feel an intense deep emotion such as a loss of love.

Dictionary.com has 21 different definitions for “love,” and another dozen for “romance.” Love and romance are human emotions that defy definition. When we try to fit human emotion into words, we will create misunderstandings because emotions are felt in different ways. Each individual has a different understanding of human emotions because of his or her upbringing as well.