Is Love an Illusion or Reality?part one

A Scientific, Social, and Relational Exploration of Human Love

Part One

Is Love an Illusion or Reality?

 Part One:

The Structure of Love in Human Beings

Author: Soheila Dadkhah

Abstract
Introduction: Why Love Cannot Be Understood Through a Simple Definition
1. Love as a Multilayered Human Experience
1.1. Love Is Not Just a Feeling
1.2. Why Intensity of Feeling Is Not Always a Sign of Real Love
2. The Biological Layer of Love: Body, Brain, and the Reward System
3. The Sexual Layer of Love: Desire, Attraction, and Bodily Intimacy
4. The Attachment Layer: Safety, Fear of Abandonment, and the Need for Bonding
5. The Psychological Layer: The Mental Map of Love and Our Image of Relationship
6. The Social and Cultural Layer: How Society Teaches Us Love
7. The Historical Layer: How Love Has Changed Over Time
8. The Relational Layer: Love in Communication, Boundaries, and Everyday Behavior
9. The Ethical Layer: The Difference Between Love, Possession, and Emotional Consumption
10. The Meaning Layer: Love, Loneliness, and Building a Shared World
11. Love in Consumer Society: When Relationships Become Choice, Consumption, and Display
Summary: Real Love Is Built Through the Harmony of Several Layers
Key Questions for the Reader
Suggested English References
Core Sentence of the Article

Real love is not merely an intense feeling; it is the harmony of body, desire, safety, awareness, respect, communication, responsibility, and meaning.

Abstract

Love is one of the most complex human experiences; it cannot be explained only through an emotional, biological, sexual, or social definition. When a human being loves, they do not enter the relationship only with their heart or emotions. The body, brain, memory, sexual desire, attachment system, mental map, culture, history, language, ethics, and existential need for meaning are also involved. For this reason, the question “Is love an illusion or reality?” is not a simple question. Love can be a real experience, but not everything we call love is necessarily love. Sometimes what is called love may actually be infatuation, dependency, fear of loneliness, sexual attraction, need for validation, projection of an inner image, repetition of old wounds, or emotional consumption.

The purpose of this article is to provide a foundational framework for understanding the structure of love in human beings. In this article, love is examined as a multilayered phenomenon: the biological and neurological layer, the sexual layer, the attachment layer, the psychological layer and mental map, the social and cultural layer, the historical layer, the relational layer, the ethical layer, the meaning layer, and finally the layer of consumer society. This multidimensional view helps us avoid reducing love either to a romantic fantasy or merely to chemical reactions in the body. Human love is formed at the intersection of body and meaning, desire and responsibility, need and freedom, individuality and relationship, personal experience and social structure.

This is the first article in a continuous series about love, loving, and recognizing real love. Its purpose is not to answer every question at once, but to build a theoretical map that allows us to examine each layer more deeply in later articles. The main question of this article is: when a person says, “I love you,” what structure are they really speaking from?

Introduction: Why Love Cannot Be Understood Through a Simple Definition

Love is one of those concepts that everyone talks about, yet when we try to define it precisely, it suddenly becomes difficult. One person sees love as intense emotion, another as calmness beside someone, another as sexual desire and bodily attraction, and another as commitment, care, and responsibility. Some say love is an illusion; others say it is the only truth of life. But perhaps the problem is that we are trying to explain a multilayered phenomenon with one simple sentence. Love is not only a feeling, not only a choice, not only a social contract, not only a hormonal reaction, and not only sexual desire. Love may include all of these, but it is not made of any one of them alone.

In today’s world, recognizing love has become even more difficult. On one hand, popular culture and media often portray love as overly romantic, emotional, and dramatic. In this image, love means a racing heart, endless messages, constant excitement, possessiveness, jealousy, restlessness, and the feeling that “I cannot live without you.” On the other hand, consumer society has brought relationships into the logic of choice, comparison, display, and replacement. The modern human being is exposed to two contradictory images at the same time: on one side, fairy-tale and eternal love; on the other, fast relationships that can be consumed, replaced, and measured through immediate attraction. In such a situation, it is natural for many people not to know whether what they are experiencing is love, dependency, desire, fear of loneliness, or merely an image that society has built in their mind.

To understand love, we must move beyond clichés. Sentences such as “If they love you, they will always stay,” “Real love does not hurt,” “Love means complete sacrifice,” “Jealousy is a sign of love,” or “If the excitement fades, love is over” may mislead more than they help. Human love has both body and meaning; both desire and boundaries; both attachment and freedom; both passion and ethics. Therefore, to understand it, we must ask which layer we are in and what we may have mistaken for love.

1. Love as a Multilayered Human Experience

Love is better understood not as a simple feeling, but as a multilayered human experience. When a person falls in love or loves someone, it is not only a feeling in the heart that becomes active. The body reacts, the brain experiences reward and longing, the attachment system activates safety or anxiety, sexual desire may enter the relationship, memory connects past experiences to the new relationship, culture tells the person what love should look like, and the inner language of the person constantly interprets the other person’s behavior. For this reason, love is not a one-dimensional experience; it is a meeting point of biology, psychology, sociology, history, ethics, and meaning.

If we do not see this multilayered nature, we can easily mistake love for other things. A person may assume they are in love only because of intense sexual attraction. Another person may cling to a relationship out of fear of loneliness and call it love. Someone may create an idealized mental image of the other person and actually fall in love with the image they have created, not the real human being in front of them. Another person may be in a relationship filled with anxiety, control, and instability, but because they experience strong emotions, they may call it deep love. Therefore, the first step in recognizing real love is to accept that romantic experience must be examined on several levels, not only through intensity of feeling.

From this perspective, real love becomes possible when several layers become aligned. The body and desire may be present, but the relationship is not only body. Attachment and the need for bonding matter, but love should not turn into blind dependency. Culture and family influence our understanding of relationships, but mature love must be able to distance itself from unhealthy learned patterns. Communication, dialogue, and boundaries are necessary, but without ethics, respect, and responsibility, a relationship may turn into emotional consumption or possession. Therefore, mature love is the harmony of emotion, awareness, body, behavior, responsibility, and meaning.

1.1. Love Is Not Just a Feeling

One of the common mistakes is to equate love only with feeling. Romantic feeling may be very real, intense, and powerful, but it is not enough to define love. Feeling is part of the experience of love, but love is also visible in behavior, choice, presence, responsibility, care, the ability to communicate, and respect for boundaries. A person may have intense feelings but be unable to build a healthy relationship. They may say, “I love you,” while controlling, humiliating, ignoring boundaries, or being present only when their own needs are being met.

If love is only feeling, it becomes unstable with changes in mood, emotional states, and external circumstances. But in human relationships, love requires capacity: the capacity to see the other person as an independent human being, not merely as a source of pleasure, safety, or validation. Real loving means being able to see the other person, not merely using them to fill one’s inner emptiness. It means being able to express one’s own needs without forcing the other person to become responsible for saving us. It means being able to have desire, attachment, and affection while also recognizing the other person’s freedom, boundaries, and dignity.

For this reason, real love is tested over time. The initial feeling may open the door, but the quality of the relationship shows what structure exists behind that feeling. Does the relationship grow through dialogue, or does it become exhausted through silence and withdrawal? Can conflicts be repaired, or does every disagreement become a threat to the relationship? Do two people become more real beside each other, or are they forced to play roles? These questions show that love is not defined only in exciting moments; it reveals itself in daily life, conflict, vulnerability, honesty, and the capacity for repair.

1.2. Why Intensity of Feeling Is Not Always a Sign of Real Love

Intensity of feeling can be deceptive. Many people assume that the more emotional, tense, and full of ups and downs a relationship is, the deeper the love must be. However, psychologically speaking, emotional intensity is not always a sign of relational health. Sometimes intensity comes from insecurity, fear of abandonment, intense sexual attraction, scarcity, distance, ambiguity, or the activation of old wounds. A person may feel extremely anxious in a relationship, but because they constantly think about the other person, they may assume this mental preoccupation is love.

In some relationships, instability itself becomes the fuel of excitement. One day there is intense closeness, the next day coldness; one day promises, the next day distance; one day abundant attention, the next day silence. This fluctuation can keep the nervous system in a state of waiting and anxiety. Each time the person receives attention, they calm down; each time distance appears, they become anxious. This cycle may feel like intense love, but in reality, it may be closer to dependence on unpredictable reward. In such a situation, emotional intensity comes more from insecurity than from mature love.

Real love is not necessarily without excitement, but its excitement is accompanied by safety, respect, and relative stability. In mature love, the presence of the other person does not only activate the anxiety system; it also gives the person space for growth, calmness, dialogue, and authenticity. Therefore, the measure of real love is not only “How intensely do I feel?” but also: “What does this feeling do to me? Does it make me more mature, calmer, and more real, or more dependent, anxious, and lost?”

2. The Biological Layer of Love: Body, Brain, and the Reward System

Love is experienced as real in the body. When a person enters a romantic experience, the brain and nervous system do not remain indifferent. Neuroscience research shows that romantic love can be associated with the activation of the brain’s reward system, focused attention, motivation, longing, and hormonal and neural changes. Dopamine plays a role in reward, motivation, and desire. Oxytocin and vasopressin have been studied in relation to bonding, closeness, and attachment. Systems related to stress, anxiety, and anticipation may also become active in the early stages of love. This is why falling in love can make the body feel awake, sensitive, energized, anxious, or restless.

But this biological reality corrects two common misunderstandings. First, love is not merely imagination or poetry; the body truly participates in it. Second, bodily reaction alone does not prove that what we are experiencing is mature love. The body can also react intensely to danger. The body can become highly activated in the presence of someone who is uncertain, unavailable, or connected to old emotional wounds. The body can experience sexual attraction, anxiety, infatuation, competition, fear of loss, and need for validation with great intensity. Therefore, “my body reacts” means the experience is real, but not necessarily that it is healthy love.

Understanding the biological layer of love helps us avoid two extremes. On one side, love should not be reduced only to hormones, because human beings are not merely biological machines; meaning, choice, ethics, and relationship are also involved. On the other side, we should not ignore the body and treat love as purely spiritual or mental. The body is part of the truth of relationship. Calmness in someone’s presence, bodily safety, desire for closeness, reaction to touch, tension during separation, or contraction in the face of insecurity are all important data. But these data must be interpreted; they should not automatically issue the final judgment about love.

3. The Sexual Layer of Love: Desire, Attraction, and Bodily Intimacy

Sexual desire is one of the most important layers of human experience, and in many romantic relationships it plays an important role. However, one of the common errors is to equate sexual attraction with love. Sexual attraction can be fast, intense, and deeply influential. Two people may be physically and sexually attracted to each other, but this attraction does not yet say anything about their ability to build a healthy relationship, respect boundaries, communicate, take responsibility, or understand each other emotionally. Desire may open the door, but it is not the entire house of relationship.

Sexual relationship does not always mean emotional intimacy either. Bodily closeness may exist while two people remain psychologically, emotionally, and relationally distant. In today’s world, this issue has become more complex because sexual access is sometimes confused with intimacy. A person may assume that because physical intimacy exists, a deep bond must also exist. Yet real intimacy requires being seen, trust, vulnerability, dialogue, respect, and safety. Without these layers, sexual relationship may become consumption of the body rather than human bonding.

This does not mean that sexual desire should be minimized. Sexual desire can be a living, healthy, and important part of love, especially when it is accompanied by respect, consent, safety, care, and emotional connection. The issue is not separating desire from love; the issue is not placing desire in the position of love. Mature love can contain desire, but it does not confuse desire with possession, consumption, control, or proof of worth. The accurate sentence is: Sexual desire can be a gateway to closeness, but it is not, by itself, the home of love.

4. The Attachment Layer: Safety, Fear of Abandonment, and the Need for Bonding

Human beings are bonding creatures. From the beginning of life, our survival and psychological development are shaped through connection with early caregivers. Attachment theory shows that the quality of a child’s relationship with primary caregivers can create internal patterns about safety, trust, closeness, separation, and worthiness. These patterns later become active in adult romantic relationships as well. Therefore, when a person enters love, they are not only facing the other person; their attachment system also enters the relationship.

In secure attachment, the person can experience closeness and independence at the same time. Loving does not mean clinging and losing oneself, nor does it mean escaping intimacy. But in anxious attachment, love may be accompanied by intense fear of abandonment, constant need for reassurance, sensitivity to distance, and rapid interpretation of ambiguous behaviors as rejection. The person may say, “I am deeply in love,” while part of the intensity of their experience comes from attachment anxiety. In avoidant attachment, the person may fear emotional closeness, deny their needs, create distance, or equate love with loss of freedom.

For this reason, when examining love, we must ask: Am I truly seeing and loving this person, or has my wounded attachment system been activated? Am I speaking of love, or of fear of being left? Is the other person’s distance truly dangerous, or has an old map of rejection been activated in me? Does intimacy bring me safety or threat? These questions help separate love from dependency and attachment wounds. Sometimes we have not fallen in love; an old pattern within us has simply awakened again.

5. The Psychological Layer: The Mental Map of Love and Our Image of Relationship

Every human being enters love with a mental map. This map includes beliefs, memories, fears, expectations, mental images, and hidden rules that the person has built about relationship, intimacy, loyalty, trust, betrayal, being lovable, and being worthy. We do not see the other person in a completely raw and unfiltered way; we interpret them through our mental map. This is why the same behavior can carry completely different meanings for two different people.

For example, a delayed reply to a message may mean simple busyness to one person, but to another it may mean lack of interest, rejection, or the end of the relationship. The other person’s silence may be a chance to calm down for one person, but a reminder of punishment, neglect, or abandonment for another. Therefore, many of our romantic reactions are not only related to the actual behavior of the other person; they are related to the meaning our mental map gives to that behavior. This is where love becomes tied to perception, memory, and interpretation.

Another important issue in the psychological layer is projection. Sometimes a person does not fall in love with the actual other person, but with an image they have created of them. They may project unmet needs, old desires, an ideal parent image, or a fantasy of being saved onto the other person. In this situation, the relationship may seem magical at first because the person is actually encountering their own inner image. But when the reality of the other person appears, disappointment begins. The key sentence of this section is: We do not always love the person themselves; sometimes we love the image our mental map has created of them.

6. The Social and Cultural Layer: How Society Teaches Us Love

Love is not built only in the privacy of two people; society also shapes how we understand love. Family teaches us what relationship means, how women and men are supposed to love, what commitment means, how conflict is resolved, how much emotions can be expressed, and who holds more power in a relationship. Culture and media also create images of love: love as total sacrifice, love as possession, love as rescue, love as constant excitement, or love as social success.

These teachings may be obvious or hidden. A child who grows up in a family where love is tied to control may later interpret control as a sign of care. Someone who grows up in a culture that values limitless sacrifice may feel guilty for expressing their own needs. A person raised in an environment where vulnerability is seen as weakness may not be able to tolerate emotional intimacy. Therefore, when we speak about love, we must ask: Where did I learn love from?

Media also plays a powerful role. Films, series, music, and social networks often create images of love that differ from real relationships. Displayed love is dramatic, flawless, constantly attractive, and always suitable for public presentation. But real relationship includes silence, fatigue, difficult conversations, responsibility, boundaries, differences, doubt, repair, and gradual growth. If human beings live only through media images of love, they may see real relationships as insufficient because they do not resemble romantic displays. Therefore, we do not only experience love; we also learn love from society.

7. The Historical Layer: How Love Has Changed Over Time

What we call romantic love today has not always been understood in the same way. In many historical periods, marriage was more often a family, economic, social, or political contract than a bond based primarily on individual love. Family, social class, property, security, reproduction, and social alliances played important roles in choosing a spouse. This does not mean that love did not exist in the past; it means that love was not always the central criterion for relationship and marriage.

With the growth of individuality in the modern world, changes in family structure, urbanization, increasing personal autonomy, and changes in gender roles, romantic love gained a more prominent position. Modern human beings expect relationships to provide not only economic or social security, but also intimacy, meaning, excitement, being understood, personal growth, and individual choice. This historical change has created new possibilities for love, but it has also placed new pressures on relationships.

Today, we expect a relationship to provide both safety and excitement, both freedom and commitment, both intimacy and personal growth, both living sexual desire and psychological calmness. We expect the other person to be a friend, a lover, a life partner, and a companion in growth. These expanded expectations have made modern love highly complex. Therefore, the love that seems obvious today is the product of a long history of social, economic, and cultural transformation. Understanding this history helps us see love not as a fixed and simple truth, but as a human experience in transformation.

8. The Relational Layer: Love in Communication, Boundaries, and Everyday Behavior

Love must ultimately be seen in relationship. Many people have intense feelings but lack relational skills. They cannot express their needs, cannot listen, cannot tolerate conflict, cannot set boundaries, or cannot accept the other person’s boundaries. In such conditions, romantic feeling may exist, but the relationship can become harmful. If love cannot become healthy communication, it remains at the level of emotion.

A healthy relationship requires dialogue; not just an exchange of words, but the ability to hear the experience of the other person. In real love, two people must be able to speak about their fears, needs, boundaries, hurts, desires, and differences without every conversation turning into a power struggle or a threat to the relationship. A healthy relationship also requires repair. No relationship is free of mistakes, misunderstandings, or pain. The difference between a mature and immature relationship is not that no harm ever occurs; it is whether two people can take responsibility and repair after harm.

Boundaries are also an important part of love. Contrary to popular belief, boundaries are not the enemy of intimacy; they are the condition of healthy intimacy. When there are no boundaries, the relationship turns into fusion, control, or exhaustion. Real love does not want to swallow or erase the other person; it wants to connect with them. Therefore, in the relational layer, real love is seen in daily behavior: in how we speak during disagreement, in respect for “no,” in the ability to apologize, in care without domination, and in presence without control.

9. The Ethical Layer: The Difference Between Love, Possession, and Emotional Consumption

Love without ethics can become dangerous. A person may place the name of love on possession, control, jealousy, emotional consumption, or dependency. They may say, “Because I love you, I must know where you are,” “Because I am in love, I have the right to control you,” “Because you matter to me, you should not make decisions without me,” or “If you love me, you should always put my needs first.” These sentences may appear romantic on the surface, but underneath they may indicate possession, insecurity, or domination.

Ethics in love means seeing the other person as an independent human being, not as a tool for calming our fears, filling our emptiness, or proving our worth. Ethical love is accompanied by respect, honesty, consent, loyalty, transparency, and responsibility. It means that if I love someone, I should not use love to control them. I should not justify my harm in the name of affection. I should not make my needs so absolute that the other person loses the right to breathe.

Emotional consumption occurs when a person treats the other not as a human being, but as a source of excitement, validation, calmness, body, attention, or social status. In modern society, this danger has increased because relationships sometimes enter the logic of consumption: fast choice, fast experience, fast excitement, fast replacement. Against this situation, real love requires ethics. The key sentence of this section is: Love without ethics quickly turns into emotional consumption or possession.

10. The Meaning Layer: Love, Loneliness, and Building a Shared World

Love is not merely the desire to have another person; it is the desire to build shared meaning with another person. Human beings do not only need survival, pleasure, and safety; they also need meaning, being seen, being understood, and belonging. At its deepest level, love can be a response to human existential loneliness; not in the sense of completely eliminating loneliness, but in the sense that another human being sees us in the world, hears us, and shares in the construction of meaning with us.

In real love, two people are not merely beside each other; they build a shared world. This shared world may be made of memories, private language, values, choices, endured suffering, shared dreams, and daily acts of care. This meaning forms over time, not only in the excitement of the beginning. For this reason, deep love often becomes richer through time, knowledge, shared experience, and passing through difficulties. Time alone does not create love, but love without the construction of meaning over time remains shallow.

The meaning layer of love reminds us that relationship is not only for satisfying needs. If a relationship exists only to escape loneliness, receive validation, gain financial security, experience sex, or display social success, part of the human being remains unseen. Mature love can help a person know themselves better, experience the world more deeply, and move beyond pure self-centeredness. Of course, this does not mean idealizing love. Love can help human beings grow, but if unconscious, it can also trap them. The difference lies in the quality of awareness, ethics, and communication.

11. Love in Consumer Society: When Relationships Become Choice, Consumption, and Display

In consumer society, even love does not remain untouched by the logic of the market. Relationship can become something like choosing a product: many options, constant comparison, immediate attraction, fear of missing a better option, external display, and reduced tolerance for the real difficulties of relationship. The modern human being has more freedom to choose, but may also lose relational depth in an ocean of choices. When every relationship seems replaceable, commitment, patience, dialogue, and repair become more difficult.

Social networks have also changed the image of love. Relationship is not only experienced; it is displayed, compared, and sometimes consumed for external validation. Two people may become more concerned with the image of the relationship than with its actual quality. A relationship may look beautiful, romantic, and successful from the outside, while lacking dialogue, safety, and respect on the inside. In contrast, a calm, deep, and healthy relationship may appear “boring” or “ordinary” to consumer culture because it is not performative.

In consumer society, the body is also turned into a commodity, and this affects love. Bodily attraction matters, but when human value is tied only to appearance, youth, body, sexual performance, or displayability, relationship moves away from humanity. Real love in such a space requires conscious resistance: resistance against turning the other person into an option, a body, an image, or a consumable experience. Consumer society can turn even love from a human experience into a commodity for choice, consumption, display, and replacement. Recognizing this process is necessary for preserving the dignity of love in the modern world.

Summary: Real Love Is Built Through the Harmony of Several Layers

Love cannot be defined with one simple sentence because human love is made of different layers. In this article, we saw that love has both biological and meaning-based roots; it is connected both to the body and brain and to culture and history. It can contain sexual desire, but it also needs safety, respect, dialogue, boundaries, ethics, and responsibility. Therefore, the question “Is love an illusion or reality?” requires a more precise answer. Love can be real, but not every intense experience, bodily attraction, dependency, fear of loneliness, or romantic image can be called real love.

Real love becomes possible when several layers become aligned. The body must be heard, but the body alone should not issue the final judgment. Desire may be present, but it should not become consumptive. Attachment should create safety, not constant anxiety. The mental map must be seen so that the person does not fall in love only with a self-created image. The relationship must be tested through dialogue, boundaries, and daily behavior. Ethics must prevent love from turning into possession, control, or emotional consumption. Meaning must move the relationship from immediate need to the building of a shared world.

This article is the first step in understanding love. In later articles, each of these layers can be examined separately and more deeply: the brain in love, sexual desire, attachment, the mental map of love, history and society, consumer society, and finally the criteria for recognizing real love. The final sentence of this article is: Real love is not revealed only through intensity of feeling; it is revealed through the quality of relationship, safety, respect, freedom, responsibility, and the meaning two people build together.

Key Questions for the Reader
1. Is what I call love only an intense feeling, or is it also visible in behavior and relationship?

If love appears only in excitement, longing, or attraction, but not in respect, communication, responsibility, and safety, it needs to be examined more carefully.

2. Do I love the real person, or the image I have created of them?

Sometimes we do not fall in love with a real human being, but with an image built from our needs, wounds, and desires.

3. Does this relationship make me calmer and more authentic, or more anxious and dependent?

Healthy love is not without challenges, but it should not constantly activate anxiety, fear of abandonment, and feelings of worthlessness.

4. Is sexual desire in this relationship accompanied by respect, safety, and intimacy?

Bodily attraction matters, but when it is separated from respect, dialogue, and safety, it may turn into sexual consumption rather than love.

5. Are my boundaries and the other person’s boundaries respected in this relationship?

Real love does not see boundaries as a threat. Healthy boundaries allow the relationship to breathe, respect, and endure.

6. Have I confused love with possession, control, or limitless sacrifice?

If love leads to self-erasure, control of the other person, or loss of dignity for either person, its meaning must be reexamined.

7. Is this relationship only an escape from loneliness, or does it truly build a shared world?

A relationship can calm loneliness, but real love is not merely escape from loneliness; it is the creation of meaning, connection, and shared growth.

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