Jay Shetty

It is a daily decision.

A student once asked a teacher, what's the difference between I like you and I love you?

The teacher replied, when you like a flower, you simply pluck it.

But when you love a flower, you water it every day.

Love is a daily act, a daily decision, not just a feeling.

I've saved this one for last deliberately because I think it is the most important and I think it is the most misunderstood and I think getting it wrong is responsible for more human suffering than almost anything else I could name.

Here's the story our culture tells us about love.

Love is a feeling that arrives, a lightning bolt, a chemistry, a sense of recognition.

There you are.

That happens to you rather than being made by you.

And when the feeling is there, the relationship works.

And when the feeling fades, which it inevitably does because all feelings are temporary, the relationship is over because the love is gone.

This story is everywhere, in every rom-com, in every love song, in every dating app, designed around the initial spark.

It is so pervasive that most people have never questioned it.

The psychologist Robert Sternberg at Yale developed what he called the triangular theory of love, a framework that identifies three components of genuine durable love, passion, intimacy, and commitment.

And his research found that of the three, passion, the feeling, the spark, the chemistry, has the shortest lifespan.

It peaks early, often within months of a relationship beginning, and it declines predictably regardless of how compatible, how suited, or how deeply in love two people genuinely are.

This is not a bug.

This is biology.

The neurochemicals responsible for the early intensity of romantic love, dopamine, norepinephrine, are designed to initiate bonding, not maintain it.