love is "unconditional selflessness". #jotchahal #iamranachahal



Love, a kind of emotion, is a result of psychologically evolutionary adaptation, also, like other emotions such as anger and curiosity. I want to answer this question in two parts through the lens of evolutionary psychology. First part the interrelated parental and intimate love; second, the importance of love on pair-bond and motivation.

When we were young, our parents should foster us with almost all material and spiritual support, collaboratively, and most importantly, unconditionally and selflessly. Otherwise, as infants, hardly can we survive because of the longer period of development. That's the unforgettable parental love, which is similar to intimate/sexual love because they are interrelated. That is, we're searching for a responsible and capable parent for the future child[ren] while looking for the other half for ourselves in the courtship period.

Because of the long period of gestation, those offspring of the emotional stable fathers who are tightly pair-bonded with their wives are advantageous in passing the corresponding gene from generation to generation. That kind of fathers/males are always highly motivated by love and hence can find and gain more goods and materials to better nurture their kids.

All these mechanisms have been programmed in our brain by natural selection. Thus, we inherently and spontaneously know what love means to our survival, development and reproduction and then know its importance.