This article is on Perspectiva’s website…
Many stories have been told about love, exploring the way it works, the way it pains, its delight and promise. It is a confusing subject, at once a self-evidently “good thing”, perhaps the most important capacity possessed by human beings, and simultaneously a confusing feeling, which can lead people astray as well as direct them aright.
It is a matter to which developmental psychology has turned, producing ideas such as attachment theory, and I think the significance of this still relatively new understanding of love is, as yet, not fully appreciated. The new science tells the story of love as it emerges across the course of a human life. It also suggests a source of love attested to by wisdom traditions across many ages. But before coming to that, consider first the development of love in our lives.