Companionship is the highest form of love.

This is an automatically translated post by LLM. The original post is in Chinese. If you find any translation errors, please leave a comment to help me improve the translation. Thanks!

I've long pondered the question: what is love? Recently, I've gained some new insights, and I'd like to share and discuss them here. To put it simply:

Companionship is the highest form of love.

Love is interpreted differently across various philosophies, religions, and cultural backgrounds, each imbuing it with unique meanings. Here, I won't delve into those perspectives; what follows reflects only my personal views.

In my opinion, love is something profoundly difficult to grasp. Even now, my understanding of it remains vague, as it is often shrouded beneath layers of emotion and outward expressions.

Take, for example, the typical progression of a romantic relationship. The general process goes something like this:

1. One person expresses affection and makes efforts to pursue the other; once the other agrees, they enter into an intimate relationship (liking).
2. During the relationship, both experience a passionate phase, inseparable and longing to be together at every moment (passion).
3. After the passion fades, the relationship settles into a calmer phase. Both gradually get used to each other's presence in daily life, slowly accept each other's flaws, and lay the foundation for a shared future (commitment).

Although individual experiences may vary, nearly every romantic relationship includes these stages. This naturally leads to the question: which part of this process constitutes love, demonstrates love, or embodies love?

It's difficult for me to answer this question directly. However, from another perspective, if we can strip away the elements unrelated to love, perhaps what remains is the true manifestation of love.

Re-examining the process above, we find:

• Affection for someone may stem from sexual attraction, curiosity, gratitude, and other psychological impulses—these are usually unrelated to love.
• The motivation to pursue someone arises from these impulses and the expectation of future rewards from being together. Such motivation is fleeting and cannot represent love.
• Responding to another's feelings is similar in origin to one's own affection and is also not necessarily related to love.
• During the passionate phase, both are driven by hormones, longing for each other. Though they appear deeply in love, this is more about physical desire than genuine love.
• After the passion fades and the relationship enters a calmer phase, attention shifts away from each other's strengths and hormonal influences. When both begin to see and accept each other's flaws, preparing for a shared future, this stage seems to best embody love. This process is often painful, and it is sustained by something positive that helps both endure and grow.

From this reflection, we can tentatively conclude: in the course of a romantic relationship, the transition from passion to calm acceptance is where love is most evident.

Yet, even this conclusion feels incomplete, as many other factors can drive this process. For example:

• The desire to continually gain material or emotional value from someone attractive, wealthy, intelligent, or reliable.
• Gratitude for the other’s efforts, making it hard to refuse them.
• Being drawn to qualities in the other that one has always longed for, like a moth to a flame.
• ......

In short, overcoming the challenges of the calm phase in a relationship can be driven by many external factors, not just love alone.

Therefore, let's consider some inherent qualities of love:

• Love is a unilateral act; loving someone does not require their love in return.
• Love seeks no reward; any feeling that demands reciprocation is transformed by that expectation.

If we strip away behaviors that do not fit these attributes, what remains can be considered the true expression of love. In summary, that is companionship.

Before writing this article, I asked both DeepSeekV3 and DeepSeekR1 for their thoughts on the title. I believe their responses beautifully capture the meaning of companionship. I’ll end this piece with their answers.