The PoE Concepts: Love Is CBI™

What Is Love?

For years Dr. Lukens pondered, what is love? A companion emotion? A “chameleon” feeling? How should he define it? He had been studying and theorizing about emotion for his whole career and many years ago he had come to the conclusion that love was NOT one of the basic emotions. 

He realized there could be sadness with love and sadness without love, or love could show up mixed with anger which might appear at first glance to be contradictory, or love could affect our fears in some obvious ways and get mixed up in worry and motivate controlling behaviors “for the good of the other,” and so on. And then he came to see that guilt would not exist at all without love. So, love was apparently all over the emotional map, and he was very uncertain about how to define or explain love in emotion terms. He pondered for a couple of years...

After 20 years he concluded that Love is Committed Benevolent Interest. It might seem underwhelming, but you may find that you come to really deeply appreciate just how “fitting” the definition is — Committed Benevolent Interest.

Love is just a special form of Interest.

Love Is Committed Benevolent Interest

  • Committed

    So, what is the special part? The commitment level and the “degree” of benevolence are what make the difference in terms of this special orientation to the world and this set of intentions.

  • Benevolent

    When I am interested in being good for and doing things that are intended to be for the good, for the wellbeing of the ‘loved one,’ then this is that special form of Interest that we call Love.

  • Interest

    The “size” and dedication of my commitment and the “quality” of my benevolence together are what infuse my Interest with the intention and the experience to make this concept of Love.

Dr. Lukens redefined Love as CBI. The hope is that this concept will change the world, three words at a time: Committed Benevolent Interest.