Why do you think the emotion of love doesn't exist?
Edit - and before Dumar spouts that it isn't real, love can be examined in other mammals too, as all other complex emotions.
I'll try to explain more precisely using both your own words as examples, if you're so interested (thanks for the examples, btw), which is why I assumed the language you'd use to describe the relationship with your wife in the same manner. However, this is a deep discussion that is really a tangent to RP. This has little to do with RP as a science or methodology; it's different altogether.
The 'emotion of love'
is not real. A certain emotion felt at a certain time, certain situation is
called love, which is a gigantic chasm of a difference.
Love doesn't exist: it's a word used to describe a WIDE (stressing wide here) range of hormonal and psychophysiological responses and impulses to a million different types of stimuli.
Moreover, it's used so often in so many places that even any definition is beyond meaningless. I love my wife. I love to fuck sluts. I love my children. I love grandma. I love chocolate. I love WoW (ok, that's one a lie).
So, Dumar? Why is this nuance of definition important?
The problem, is, as in religion, you take that next step, and the very thing or word (god, heaven, love) used as a description for a plethora of wide-ranging, different phenomena (fire, lightning strikes, carnal desire for your wife, your mom, chocolate) is taken
as real in and of itself, and is used in reverse, used retroactively, to give reasons for stuff going on in the real world.
You cannot do thisif you hope to understand reality as it is.
So you can't say something like: It's because of love that we're together. No. That's a religious statement because you're using a made-up term, mental fluffstuff to give a reason for some occurrence or concrete thing in the real world. The base hormonal and psychological reasons you might be together can
sometimesbe called love, but you can't cite love as
the reasonthat something concrete occurs in reality, like staying together. Otherwise, it's analogous to saying 'It's because of god that lightning struck khalid dead.' The term, god, is a made-up mental thing created by us, and you're using that term to describe a concrete event in real life.
This gets our understanding nowhere, as you're going in mental circles. We can't use this lexicon to describe relationships. We have to use real, concrete words with specific meanings if we are hoping for true epiphany, true understanding.
Which, as I said, is one of the fantastic aspects of RP-awareness: the religious vocabulary falls away.
