Wait…what even is love?

Love is one of those words we use so often that we rarely stop to ask what we actually mean by it.

At some point, almost everyone asks the same question:

Wait… what even is love?

We spend years searching for it. We cry when we think we’ve lost it. We build entire lives around the hope of finding it. Yet if someone asked us to define it in one sentence, most of us would struggle.

Is it butterflies? Is it peace? Is it chemistry? Is it sacrifice? Is it compatibility? Is it simply being loved in the language you understand?

And perhaps the harder question is this: Does everyone get to experience it? Or are some people destined to spend their lives watching others receive the kind of love they secretly pray for?

I’ve found myself sitting with these questions more than once, not because I have the answers, but because everyone seems to have a different definition.

Ask ten people what love is, and you’ll probably receive ten different answers.

One person will smile and tell you,

“Love is when they choose you every day.”

Another will say,

“Love is peace. It’s finally feeling safe.”

Someone else insists,

“Love is sacrifice.”

Another believes,

“Love is understanding.”

A mother may tell you,

“Love is staying awake all night beside a feverish child without ever thinking of yourself.”

An elderly couple married for fifty years might simply look at one another and laugh because they no longer have words for something they’ve spent a lifetime living.

A young person with a broken heart may whisper,

“Love hurts.”

A newlywed might say,

“Love feels like home.”

None of them are lying.

Yet none of them seem to capture all of it.

Love is strangely like trying to describe water. To someone dying of thirst, water is survival. To a child, it’s something to splash around in. To a sailor caught in a storm, it’s terrifying. To a farmer after months of drought, it’s mercy. The water never changed. Only the person experiencing it did.

Maybe love is similar.

Or perhaps love is like light passing through stained glass. The light itself remains one. But every window reflects a different colour.

Each person experiences the same reality differently.

Perhaps that’s why conversations about love become so confusing. We are often arguing about colours while forgetting the light itself.

Some believe love is a feeling. But feelings are beautiful and temporary. They rise. They fall. Some mornings you wake up overflowing with affection. Other days you’re tired, overwhelmed, frustrated, grieving or simply human. If love only exists whenever the feeling does, then it disappears far too often.

Others insist love is a choice. And there is certainly truth in that. Choosing patience when you’re irritated. Choosing kindness after disagreement. Choosing forgiveness when you clearly do not want to. But love cannot be reduced to duty alone. No one dreams of becoming someone’s obligation.

Then there are those who say love is compatibility. Finding someone who laughs at the same jokes. Shares your goals. Enjoys the same quiet evenings. Communicates the same way. Compatibility certainly makes life easier. But compatibility alone cannot sustain two people through illness, loss, financial hardship, infertility grief or old age.

Life eventually asks deeper questions than whether you both enjoy the same coffee order.

Our generation often talks about “love languages.” Words of affirmation. Acts of service. Quality time. Physical touch. Receiving gifts.

These ideas have helped many people understand how they naturally express affection and there’s value in recognizing that people often feel cared for in different ways. But I sometimes wonder whether we’ve accidentally made love smaller than it really is.

If someone doesn’t naturally love me in my preferred language, does that mean they don’t love me? Or does it simply mean they’re speaking with an accent I’m still learning to understand?

Imagine a grandmother who never says, “I love you.” Instead, she gets you your favorite meal before you visit. She reminds you to make du’a. She slips money into your hand when you leave. Someone else who’s used to being told they’re loved by their grandmother might think the love isn’t there. But the love was always there. It simply wasn’t spoken in the dialect they understand.

Perhaps love is less about receiving affection in our favourite language and more about learning to recognise sincerity in another person’s. And then another question appears.

Does everyone experience romantic love?

The honest answer is…I don’t know. Some people marry the love of their lives at twenty-three. Others marry someone they slowly grow to love. Some lose the person they loved. Some never marry at all. Some spend years waiting. Some experience affection that is one-sided. Some find companionship without the fireworks. Some spend their lives wondering whether the kind of love they’ve imagined actually exists outside books and movies.

Maybe that’s why we become so anxious. We assume there is one perfect version of love and if our story doesn’t resemble it, then we’ve somehow missed life itself.

But perhaps we’ve confused love with romance.

Romance is beautiful. It is flowers. Letters. Long conversations. Stolen glances. Butterflies. Anticipation.

Love can include all of those things. But it is also the husband making a meal for his wife because he knows she’s sick. It is the wife remembering exactly how her husband takes his tea after twenty years. It is visiting ageing parents when it is inconvenient. It is making du’a for someone who will never know you prayed for them.

Real love often looks remarkably ordinary. Perhaps that’s why we overlook it.

So perhaps we’ve been asking the wrong question all along.

Not, “What does love feel like?”

But rather, “What does love make of me?”

Does it make me more patient when patience is difficult? More merciful when my ego is being challenged? More generous when giving costs me something? More forgiving when resentment feels justified? Does it bring me closer to Allah, or does it pull me further away from Him?

Because perhaps love is not best measured by the intensity of what we feel but by the quality of what it produces.

Real love softens the heart. It teaches restraint. It makes sacrifice feel worthwhile and service feel beautiful. It asks us to become the kind of people we hope to one day meet in Jannah.

Perhaps that is why, when Allah speaks about marriage, He does not begin with passion. He says:

“And among His signs is that He created for you spouses from among yourselves so that you may find tranquillity in them, and He placed between you affection (mawaddah) and mercy (rahmah).” (Qur’an 30:21)

Notice what Allah chose to mention. Tranquillity. Affection. Mercy.

Not infatuation. Not constant excitement. Not a love that never struggles.

Because there will come a day when beauty changes. When health changes. When circumstances change. When life tests two people in ways they never imagined. Feelings will fluctuate, as all human feelings do. But mercy can remain. Mercy is love that has matured beyond emotion. It is love that chooses kindness when kindness is no longer effortless.

So perhaps love was never about finding the one person who would complete us.

Perhaps it was about becoming the kind of person who serves without keeping score. Who forgives without waiting to be asked. Who remains gentle when life becomes hard. Who loves not only because someone is easy to love, but because Allah loves those who show mercy.

And perhaps that is the greatest definition of love this world can offer: Not that someone makes your heart race. But that loving them helps your heart find its way back to Allah. Because every love that begins with Allah has a hope of ending with Him.

And perhaps the truest love is not the one that simply lasts a lifetime.

It is the one that, by Allah’s mercy, continues long after this life has ended.

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I’d love to hear your definition of what love is