Difference between LOVE and AFFECTION

LOVE is many things: the protective love of a mother for her child, the passion of a couple newly in loves, the deep love of long-term companions and the divine love of God. Some cultures have 10 or more words for different forms of love, and poets and songwriters always find myriad aspects of love to celebrate. Is there anything universal behind all this diversity? As Pope Benedict recently asked in his first encyclical letter: "Are all the forms of love basically one, so that love is ultimately a single reality?” It is about feeling with someone, rather than just for them. You try to put yourself in their shoes, to enter into their situation. It comes from your intestines. The word love appears in many contexts: there’s maternal love, familial love, romantic love, sexual love, a wider love for fellow humans and religious love for God, to name but a few. Some cultures have ten or more words for different forms of love, and poets and songwriters always find myriad aspects of love to celebrate. The science of love is still in its infancy. Yet scientists are beginning to get early insights into the nature and origin of love. We can now look inside human brains to view changing patterns of activity and biochemical changes that take place during love.
In the brain, romantic love shows similarities to going mildly insane or suffering from obsessive compulsive disorder. Lust is driven by sex hormones such as testosterone, which can go off-kilter too. And love is not only restricted to partnerships between men and women. IT IS a common observation that we are attracted to people who resemble us. We are more likely to like them, bond with them and have stable relationships with them - a phenomenon that social scientists call "homophily". This seems to make sense: partners of the same age, race, religion or educational level, or who have similar personalities and attitudes, will reinforce each other's self-esteem, find mutually enjoyable pursuits and receive support from their extended families and social networks.
Many factors add up to make us desirable to potential partners. There's the obvious stuff like symmetrical features and good skin - which showcase a healthy development, immune system and good genes. Women look for tall men with masculine faces, kindness, wealth and status. Men prefer young, fertile women with a low waist-to-hip ratio and who are not too tall. Neither sex is very keen on people who wear glasses.
Beauty can come at a price however. Other factors are more random - a woman's attractiveness and pheromones can fluctuate with her hormone levels and menstrual cycle. As a consequence, taking the pill can inhibit a woman's ability to select an appropriate mate. When men and women are attracted to each other, fall in love and enter into lasting relationships, they are choosing partners who differ from themselves. At the very least they differ biologically, in physical appearance and body function - but that is just the beginning. For men and women also differ from each other, statistically at least, in cognitive traits such as visuospatial skills, navigational strategies, verbal fluency, memory skills and mathematical reasoning, and in aspects of personality such as aggressiveness, competitiveness, self-esteem, risk-taking, neuroticism, emotional sensitivity, Unfortunately, it's not all wine and roses when it comes to love. Ecstasy, euphoria, elation and contentment may be accompanied by jealousy, rage, rejection, and hatred. Falling in love may have evolved because people, who focus their attention on a single ideal partner save time and energy, therefore improve their chances of survival and reproduction. Unfortunately, this also means people are pre-disposed to terrible suffering when jilted by their beloved. Painful emotions develop when the reward centers of the brain, associated with the dopamine high of falling in love, fail to get their hit. Paradoxically when we get dumped we tend to love back even harder, as the brain networks and chemicals associated with love increase. First we protest and attempt to win the beloved back. Panic also kicks in as we feel something akin to the separation anxiety experiences by young mammals abandoned by their mothers. While love in virtual worlds may still be unusual, less intense online relationships have become commonplace. A study completed last month by the non-profit Pew Internet & American Life Project based in Washington DC found that 74 per cent of single internet users in the US have taken part in at least one online dating-related activity, including sites specifically devoted to finding a match, while 15 per cent of American adults say they know someone who has been in a long-term relationship with a partner they met online. So it is the big attraction.