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.

"Addicted", A Story of a sex addict woman

If you are in touch with you're sexuality and enjoy sex for that matter...this book is for you. You will be taken on a journey with a woman who just seems like she can't satisfy her sexual needs...but in the end the truth behind it is revealed and she gets her life back on track...I really enjoy reading books especially those that keep me wanting more...Zane is known for writing amazing novels...this is just another edition to her collection! For successful African-American businesswoman Zoë Reynard, finding the pleasure she wants, the way she wants it, is not worth the risk of losing everything she has: marriage to the man she has loved since childhood, a thriving company, three wonderful children. But Zoë feels helpless in the grip of an overpowering addiction...to sex. Finding a compassionate woman therapist to help her, Zoë (main character of this thriller) finally summons the courage to tell her torrid story, a tale of guilt and desire as shocking as it is compelling. From the sensitive artist with whom she spends stolen hours on rumpled sheets to the rough and violent man who draws her toward destruction, Zoë is a woman desperately searching for fulfillment. And she wants something darker, deeper, and perhaps deadly. As her life spins out of control and her sexual escapades carry her toward a dangerous choice, Zoë is racing against time to uncover the source of her "fatal attraction" -- as chilling secrets tumble forth from the recesses of a woman's mind, and perilous temptations lead toward a climax that can threaten her sanity, her marriage...and her life. Zoë and Jason fell in love as teenagers, they got married, had three kids, and they enjoyed a wonderful life--except for the sexual side, which has never been enough for Zoë. And so she becomes a sex addict, with three lovers. And that time, it is a situation that does not end well.

World's the First wonder and The Symbol Of Love, TAJMAHAL

The Taj Mahal in Agra, India,is one of the most beautiful monuments in the world. The Taj Mahal was built by the Mughal Emperor Shah Jahan, as the mausoleum of his beloved queen Mumtaz Mahal, after her death in 1631.The Taj Mahal is recognized worldwise as a symbol of eternal love.Built of white marble and surrounded by green gardens. The Taj Mahal is a breathtalkingly beautiful sight. The Taj Mahal is a UNESCO world heritage site and is consideres as a first wonder of the world this year, and it is the supreme example of Mughal architecture in India. Shah Jahan came to power in 1622.He was generous and extravagant.He adorned India with some of its most beautiful architecture, and built The Taj Mahal as a symbol of devotion to his wife. He had married 'Mumtaz Mahal' when he was 21.Mumtaz died at the age of 39.This tomb was only one of hundreds of beautiful buildings that Shah Jahan erected, mostly at Agra and in the new Delhi that came into being under his planning. Many architects have rated it as the most perfect of all buildings standing on earth. Three artists designed it: a Persian, an Italian, and a Frenchman. Even the skilled artisans who built it were brought in from Baghdad, Constantinople, and other centers of the Muslim faith. For 22 years more than 20,000 workmen built the Taj. The Maharaja of Jaipur sent the marble as a gift to Shah Jahan. The building and its surroundings cost more than $200,000,000 in today’s currency.
Passing through a high wall, one comes suddently upon the Taj - raised upon a marble platform, and framed on either side by handsome mosques and stately minarets. In the foreground spacious gardens enclose a pool in whose waters the inverted palace becomes a quivering dream. Every portion of the structure is of white marble, precious metals, or costly stones. The building is a complex figure of twelve sides, four of which are portals. A slender minaret rises at each corner, and the roof is a massive spired dome. The main entrance, once guarded with solid silver gates, is a maze of marble embroidery; inlaid in the wall in jeweled script are qotations from the Koran, one of which invites the "pure in heart" to enter "the gardens of Paradise.” In 1657 his son Aurangzeb led an insurrection from the Deccan. Aurangzeb defeated all the forces sent against him, captured his father, and imprisoned him in the Fort of Agra. For 9 bitter years the deposed emperor lingered there, never visited by his son, attended only by his faithful daughter Jahanara, and spending his days looking from the Jasmine Tower of his prison across the Jumna to where his once-beloved Mumtaz lay in her jeweled tomb.The new emperor Aurangzeb was a more pious Muslim than his father Shah Jahan had been. He memorized the entire Koran, spent days in fasts, and campaigned against infidelity. He cared little for luxuries, but, paradoxically, gave the world one of its most perfect works of art: a marble screen inside the Taj Mahal. Native and European thieves robbed the tomb of its abundant jewels, and of the gold railing, encrusted with precious stones, that once enclosed the sarcophagi of Shah Jahan and his Queen. Aurangzeb replaced the railing with an octagonal screen of almost transparent marble, carved into a miracle of alabaster lace. Few products of human art have ever surpassed the beauty of this screen.From afar the Taj Mahal, with its delicate details, is not imposing. Only a nearer view reveals that its perfection has no proportion to its size. When in our hurried times, we see enormous structures of a hundred stories raised in a year, and then consider how 20,000 men worked for 22 years on this little tomb, hardly a hundred feet high, we begin to sense the difference between industry and art. And perhaps more importantly, we sense the ultimate lesson it offers: beauty is based on love.