For bell hooks, love isn't a feeling that happens to us, it's a choice we renew every day: the will to help someone else grow, or to grow ourselves, through four concrete practices (care, respect, knowledge and responsibility toward the other person).
What if love wasn’t a feeling, but a choice?
For bell hooks, love isn't a feeling that falls on us: it's a decision we make, and keep making.
For bell hooks, love isn't a feeling that falls on us: it's a decision we make, and keep making. She defines love as an act of will: the will to help someone else grow, or to grow ourselves, spiritually. It's a choice we make, day after day, through concrete actions.
These actions have names: care, respect, knowledge of the other person, and the responsibility we take for them. There's nothing abstract or magical about it. Love becomes a verb we conjugate every day, whether we're in a couple or on our own, each time we choose to watch someone grow: the other person, or ourselves.
Why does love hold, even when everything around it changes?
No two love stories look alike. A relationship just starting out doesn’t call for the same commitment as a couple together for decades, and that’s exactly as it should be. For hooks, the degree of commitment shifts from one relationship to the next, but the values behind it never do.
That's where the real difference lies. Living by an ethic of love isn't about following one more rule. It's about shifting your inner compass: looking at the other person and at yourself with the same demand for truth, whatever shape the relationship takes. That foundation holds, even when everything around it changes.
So next time love feels hazy, or you doubt what you’re feeling, simply come back to the verb: what did you do today to help the other person grow, or to grow yourself? Whether you’re asking it alone some evening or sharing your life with someone you’ve known for years, it’s the same question waiting for you, and it’s that question, asked again every day, that holds a relationship together far more reliably than a feeling we’d merely wait around for.
More to Read on La Sultane
Nurturing Love and Passion in Your Relationship
The Neuroscience of Love: Decoded
Love in a Relationship: 3 Secrets to Spark It and 5 Mistakes That Kill It
